To us Rex Nhongo (Solomon Mujuru) represented a young man deprived an opportunity to realise his full academic potential by an acute colonial repressive bottle neck education system that allowed only a selected privileged few to advance with their education, including those who went to Kutama College, a Roman Catholic effort to educate brilliant young African boys.
By Reason Wafawarova
If Rex was ”semi-illiterate”, to us he was semi-literate, because we saw him as half full as opposed to half empty, and that because he represented many of us who were equally deprived of opportunities that many of us today take for granted.
For a semi-illiterate to rise the way Rex did among a group of people that valued literacy so highly, it essentially means he had an exceptional extra-literacy talent that impressed cadres in the trenches we all know were so tough that even highly literate cadres like Cde Chris Mutsvangwa could not find it easy to rise beyond foot soldier ranking.
Rex to us is the semi-illiterate who went to war to give Zimbabwe the tag of being Africa’s highest literacy at 94%, easily comparable to literacy in developed nations.
As for Robert Mugabe’s “dubious prison degrees”, Africa is the Ultimate Judge. His record needs no defence. The world knows him well. His principles are common knowledge.
If dubious prison degrees can create Robert Mugabes of this world, then incarcerate me a 100 fold more.
If we are told that the only thing those degrees acquired over 11 years of imprisonment only resulted in English eloquence then we wonder why one of those who studied with him in prison speaks English like a villager.
But I digress. My point is we cannot afford to do revisionism with our own liberation war legacy.
My point is 17 November 2017 was never a war against Robert Mugabe. I was intimately part of it, and it was an operation to restore the legacy of not only our Liberation War effort, but that of Robert Mugabe too.
The enemy had Mugabe captured in his hands, and with him the party Zanu PF. Something had to be done, and something was done.
Me and Cde Chris Mutsvangwa talked daily through the five day operation, culminating in the return and rise of ED Mnangagwa.
Both of us know what we wanted.Both of us had known what was needed for a long time. Both of us know today what is needed. Both of us know about the impediments in the way of ED today.
We need to deal with these, not to fight posthumous wars with our own departed heroes.
I have nothing but total respect for Cde Chris, and he knows it. But like him, I hide no feelings or opinion to appease anyone, and that is why me and him are very close.
Zimbabwe we are one and together we will overcome. It is homeland or death!!!
- Reason Wafawarova writes in his personal capacity.
