Our Lost Culture

We all grow up manifested in a certain type of culture whether born in Africa, Asia, Middle East, Europe or any where else in the world. But as a concern to some scholars like me, most of the children in this generation do not know much or none at all about their cultures today especially the youths of Zimbabwe.

Firstly, some people confuse the difference between culture and the aspect of tradition. According to the oxford dictionary Culture is the art of being enlightened and having discipline acquired by mental and moral training for human intellectual achievement, it is basically a people’s way of living. Tradition is the unwritten delivery or oral delivery of information, opinions, customs and practices from one person to another, mainly from father or mother to their child.

What boggles the mind of many Zimbabweans is why our culture is no longer being implicated by young adults and youths. Only to imagine how wonderful and amazing the core values of our culture is, it would have been so magnificent if they were actually put into practice and passed on from generation to generation. If we try look deep into the causes why the youths of today do not practice our cultures, it would be quite depressing because to some extent the parents and basically the whole society are the ones to blame as a result of it not being put into action.

Some youths are so enthusiastic and very much keen to learn about their culture but do not know much because they are rarely taught about it at home or in schools. While on the other hand they are actually taught about it but are simply ignorant whereas they quote it as ‘an old school practice’ due to the time of age we are in now, and that it is an embarrassing thing to do.

One factor hindering us from performing our cultural skills is that we now know a lot about gender equality, which although could be a contrary fact to some aspects of our culture. Originally in our African culture it is a taboo to find a female citizen being above the male in terms of education or the position of power, of which is exactly what is happening of today and is being implemented worldwide on a large scale. However this fact alone cannot hinder a society as a whole from practicing their cultural beings. 

Respect is one major aspect which resembles our culture, but it seems as if it is not being looked upon well by the youths as something of great importance. This is because they think that they are more educated or wiser and also that they have more money causing them to think that they are superior henceforth lacking respect towards their elders in the society.

These days, most Zimbabwean children are being taught English as their first language and some kids even find it embarrassing to be heard speaking in their own language. It is true and it is actually happening which simply shows that the pride for our culture has dismantled thoroughly. It is absolutely not a bad idea to be taught the English language, but it has gone to the extent that some children cannot even communicate well with their grandparents, relatives or other members of the society because they cannot speak Shona or Ndebele well. We should not always think and talk like other people.

Colonialism was and still is one cause as to why our culture is deteriorating. We adopted the western culture so much to the extent that some youths do not even know where they originate from; some youths are even annoyed by the fact that they are referred to as an African, which I think is practically a pathetic thing to be annoyed about. During colonialism, the white settlers brought up a system called assimilation whereby you are transformed or incorporated into a specific type of way. It was simply a way of wiping away our cultural resources from within our society and to assimilate us with their western culture which they achieved quite well at.

We have been tied up and put to a corner of dependency that we practically cannot do many things for ourselves. By being too dependent towards someone, it is quite easy for that person to diminish that of our belongings. We need to take heed of our ancient Shona and Ndebele culture and implicate it, for culture resembles who we really are and we can prove to other human beings where we truly belong.