The Chronicle
Stephen Mpofu, Perspective
A THEME trending in this communicologist’s mind, and no doubt also in the minds of other, uninverted Zimbabwean patriots who heard the news about ruling Zanu-PF youth leaders recently being taught the significance of electoral processes so that they repeat the same awareness exercise to other youths in their constituencies, is about the beauty of national unity in diverse political ideologies standing as a fortress against diabolic, racist and imperialist machinations such as diabolic, racist and imperialist Western economic sanctions imposed against Zimbabwe to try to remove the Zanu-PF Government as punishment for introducing the land reform programme soon after getting into power four decades ago.
Zanu-PFZimbabwean youths are a majority in a population of just over 16 million and should therefore be inculcated with the spirit of political tolerance in order for them in turn to reproduce future generations into a culture of replicated tolerance of people who share different political ideologies to safeguard the freedom and independence wrenched from colonial oppressors by gallant sons and daughters of the soil some of whom sacrificed their dear lives to free all of us from the knuckles of colonial oppression.
In a nutshell, therefore, political tolerance of ideological diversities can be said to resemble a ploughshares that prepare the ground replete with grass and stones for food for all the hungry and not as knobkerries with which to brutalise and draw the blood of fellow citizens belonging to political organisations other than their own.
Youths, boys and girls from different provinces recently preparing for election to leadership positions in the junior parliament must have left anyone who listened to them when tackling the issue of drug abuse and substance abuse with a realisation that young people have the potential to contribute to our country’s forward movement like wheels, no matter how small they look, which make big vehicles move forward at the required speed.
drug abuseThe candidates said they knew what ought to be done to rescue peers rendered wrecked by drugs and substances they abused in most cases as a result of unemployment and poverty among other dysfunctional realities confronting young people in our country.
Some people have suggested, and with discernable patriotism too, that youth from different political parties could be engaged together in some projects and sporting activities as a demonstration to them that together Zimbabweans will move forward as one people but that divided by political intolerance they will fall like leaves from a tree to wither away on the ground and trampled underfoot by other people who feel more and so have regard for young people.
As no one will disagree, youths belonging to one political party do not on their own volition commit violent acts against members of rival political organisations but are loosed by elderly members of their parties to neutralise rivals feared to have the edge in elections.
But you (yes, you) come to think of it, the political geriatrics who loose subordinate youths on political rivals at elections no longer have much vivacity to plant the seeds for continuity in political, economic and social development, so that the youths come handy in driving the nation of Zimbabwe into a brave new future.
Some political thinkers have suggested a quota system under which political parties may field young people for parliamentary elections for the latter to contribute in the august House their ideas in the quest for a one Zimbabwe, one nation for the people of this country to move forward undivided either by local political greed or by foreign imperialist machinations.
This writer humbly but strongly believes that the suggested quota system above will make firebrand youthful MPs contribute to more lively debates in Parliament with the result that some rural MPs will take the fire to revive the hearts of some folk out there which may have turned cold under a belief, right or wrong, that the people out there in the periphery have been forgotten by an incumbent government.
Thus, youths must not be left in the woods, as it were, abusing drugs and substances, but must help lead our nation into a future that will “have no more of” street children, as William Shakespeare would say.
Article Source: The Chronicle