By Margaret Kamba 

ZANU PF Secretary for Information and Publicity Department Ambassador Chris Mutsvangwa says the Chitepo School of Ideology is in honour of the illustrious revolutionary who died in March 1975.

Speaking during the recent tour of the school by the Politburo members, the Party’s Spokesperson noted that the late National Hero had clarity of mind to pursue the national vision.

"The month of March is a very tragic month for Zimbabwe. Here is an outstanding Zimbabwean lawyer who made it in colonial times and made a very good impression as Tanzania was becoming an independent country.

He became a good friend and was mentored by Julius Nyerere in Tanzania. He actually became part of the Tanzanian Government to the extent that he was in his first Cabinet advising him when President Nyerere was going abroad in Washington to meet the Americans as a newly independent state, Chitepo was by his side.

"Along the way, Chitepo also crafted a relationship with the Chinese when they were still very poor. At that particular time China was not a prosperous country. It had just emerged from its own wars, he developed a relationship and in the process acquired the ideology of a people’s war where you address the asymmetrical advantage of a modern superior army to be offseated by the organizational capacity of the majority population who have been colonized.

"This is what Chitepo did and by 1969 he was able to implant a homegrown army on Zimbabwean soil in the North East and afterwards our victory was won after another because our army was on Zimbabwean soil.

"So this is why this place is named after this illustrious revolutionary who became the victim of a heinous assassination in Zambia in 1975 in March. 

"So it is befitting that we are visiting this school in his honour. This is part of the proud revolutionary intellectual tradition of Zimbabwe. Among all revolutionaries of Zimbabwe, you have to have somebody with clarity of mind to pursue the national vision and national task to untangle the country out of colonial imperial military bondage and he was at the forefront of that."

The Chitepo School of Ideology will soon open its doors to numerous citizens as it moves towards decolonizing the mind.