Every year in August, the nation is called to gather and commemorate two public holidays that are meant to be pillars of our collective memory — Heroes Day and Defence Forces Day.
In state speeches, these days are painted with the warm brush of patriotism, sacrifice, and unity.
We are told to remember the gallant sons and daughters of the soil who crossed rivers, forests, and borders to fight against white minority rule.
We are reminded of the blood spilled, the limbs lost, the families broken, and the dreams buried in unmarked graves across Zimbabwe, Mozambique, and Zambia.
But in the streets, the taverns, the queues at boreholes, and the dusty rural villages, a very different conversation is taking place.
For the ordinary Zimbabwean, these days no longer feel like a celebration of liberation, they feel like a performance staged by the powerful to remind us who rules, not who served.
The Liberation We Dreamed Of — and the Liberation We Got
When Zimbabwe gained independence in 1980, hope poured through the country like fresh rain after a drought.
The majority had spoken: One man, one vote. It was the birthright denied to us for generations.
Men and women — teenagers even — had carried that dream on their backs and in their hearts across borders to train and fight.
Some came back victorious, wearing their scars like badges of honour.
Others came back broken, limping on crutches or nursing wounds invisible to the eye — wounds of the mind and soul that have never healed.
Too many never returned at all, their bones lying in foreign soil.
The freedom they fought for was not just about removing white rule; it was about land to the landless, education for all, healthcare that heals, and a government that serves the people.
Forty-five years later, those promises remain mostly unfulfilled.
From White Minority Rule to Black Minority Rule
In the corridors of power, the faces changed colour, but the behaviour remained strikingly familiar.
The new ruling elite, many of them former liberation fighters or those who claimed the title — consolidated power not to serve the people, but to serve themselves.
The gains of independence were pocketed by a few, men and women whose greed is matched only by their ruthlessness.
They have plundered the nation’s rich natural resources, from gold and diamonds to lithium and timber, selling out the country piece by piece while the majority remains trapped in poverty.
For the commoner, Heroes Day feels like a cruel joke.
The people being celebrated are often the same people who have presided over economic collapse, political repression, and the slow suffocation of the freedoms they once claimed to fight for.
Fear as a Tool of Rule
In the early days, people dared to dream aloud.
Now, they whisper in corners.
To question the leadership is to risk harassment, arrest, or worse.
Imprisonment without trial remains a convenient weapon for silencing dissent, just as it was under Rhodesia.
The arms of the state — are no longer for check and balance as well as protector of the people.
They have become extensions of the ruling party, tasked not with defending the nation, but with protecting the wealth and power of a few.
It is a bitter irony that on Defence Forces Day, the same forces being honoured are the ones many citizens fear most.
Soldiers and police patrol the streets not to keep us safe, but to keep us in line.
The Dance of the Powerful and the Pain of the People
The ruling elite preside over these national days with pomp and ceremony.
They arrive in motorcades that cut through traffic like knives, dressed in designer suits and sunglasses worth more than a civil servant’s yearly salary.
They speak of sacrifice, unity, and progress while the ordinary citizen watches from behind the barricades, or from home, if they can not afford the bus fare to the stadium.
For the poor, these speeches are salt in an open wound.
The leaders dance to their own music, willfully deaf to the cries of the people.
Whose Heroes? Whose Defence?
When the President stands to read the roll call of heroes, the names belong to those the state chooses to recognise, often political allies and loyalists.
True heroes, including many who challenged corruption and dictatorship from within, are erased from the record.
The Defence Forces being honoured may wear the uniform of the nation, but too often they serve as an appendage of political power, not as a shield for the people.
Their real mission of defending the sovereignty of the nation is abandoned in favour of defending the status quo.
From 1980 to 2025: The Commoner’s Ledger of Loss
Let us be honest:
- The economy has been looted and mismanaged to the point where millions survive through informal trading, cross-border hustling, or remittances from relatives abroad.
- The healthcare system has crumbled; hospitals often lack basic drugs and equipment. The poor die from treatable diseases while leaders fly to foreign clinics.
- The education system, once the pride of post-independence Zimbabwe, is now crippled by underfunding and teacher strikes.
- The land reform programme, though necessary, was hijacked by the powerful, who grabbed vast estates for themselves while ordinary landless citizens remain in crowded communal areas.
- Freedom of expression is a fragile right, constantly threatened by repressive laws and the heavy hand of the state.
And yet, every August, the state calls on us to celebrate.
Celebrate what, exactly?
The bitter truth is that for the commoner, there is little to celebrate and much to mourn.
The Real Heroes Among Us
If we are honest, the true heroes of modern Zimbabwe are not always the ones in military graves or official speeches.
They are the grandmother who raises orphaned grandchildren on a small plot of maize.
They are the teacher who stays in the classroom despite earning less than a street vendor.
They are the nurse who works double shifts in a hospital with no medicine.
They are the young entrepreneur who starts a small business with nothing but determination.
These are the people who defend the nation every day from collapse, without medals, uniforms, or parades.
A Call for a New Liberation
Zimbabwe does not need more empty speeches.
It needs a new kind of liberation, one that frees the people from black minority rule, from corruption, from fear, and from poverty.
True heroes will be those who put the country before themselves.
A true defence force will be one that serves the people, not a political party.
Until that day comes, Heroes Day and Defence Forces Day will remain hollow rituals — theatre for the powerful, not a celebration for the people.
Closing Reflection
The gallant fighters who crossed borders in the 1970s did not imagine that one day their struggle would be claimed by men who enrich themselves while the majority starves.
They did not fight so that gold and diamonds could be traded for personal wealth while children learn under trees.
They did not risk their lives so that ordinary people would once again be ruled by fear.
In 2025, as the drums beat and the flags wave, many of us will remember the fallen.
But we will also remember that the struggle they began is not yet finished. And until it is, the real Heroes Day is yet to come.