Today, Zimbabweans commemorate Heroes Day; that hallowed day when national valour is honoured and cherished on our land.
It is that day when we remember, salute and commemorate the huge sacrifice that went into liberating this country from the yoke of racism, repression, oppression, indignity and colonialism.
Sadly, and probably in fulfilment of a grotesque and atavistic 100 percent local content mantra, a wholly indigenous criminal elite has taken over the country.
Indeed, 44 years after our purported national independence, the plunder and repression of the citizens is now fully indigenized as local colonialists who go by the moniker of Vene have taken over the entirety of the State and its vast mineral wealth.
This year we commemorate (not celebrate) this day like no other. For this year’s day of valour comes when the unarmed heroic citizens of our land are facing serious threats from those that purportedly liberated them.
We are commemorating this great day of national gallantry when the innocent citizens of this great country are being abducted, bludgeoned, brutalised and harassed by their own government.
The innocent victims of this Piranha State that are currently languishing in prison include a one-year old baby and a young but committed democracy activist prayerfully named Namatai.
They are heroes.
Namatai is being persecuted for a concocted crime committed while she was out of the country. At this rate, the regime could even arrest my 12 year-old daughter Lee Anne for a fictitious crime committed 24 years ago during the 2000 referendum when she was still to set foot into this world!
The rogue regime is in serious panic mode ahead of the forthcoming SADC summit and has petrifiably gone gung-ho against its own citizens.
Military tanks have been deployed into the townships to strike fear into the hearts of the citizens. The regime fears the citizens might take to the streets to remind the SADC leaders that the last election was a farce and that Mr Emmerson Mnangagwa, the incoming SADC chairperson, was not legitimately elected as President, as affirmed by the regional body’s own observer mission.
The huge milieu of intelligence officers, armed soldiers and police officers harassing and arresting citizens on the streets and the spectre of unbridled avarice and unmitigated corruption in the ruling elite have all conspired to betray and expose the murderous and clueless lot steering the ship of the State.
Now they have deployed soldiers to threaten innocent citizens in the townships.
Tomorrow is Defence Forces Day and perhaps a short message in that regard will suffice.
The Zimbabwe Offensive Force (ZOF)
Instead of being defensive, our Defence Forces have ironically become an Offensive Force against the very citizens they are supposed to protect.
The ruling elite probably feels rolling out the military tanks into the streets represents a massive show of power.
However, my other life as a political scientist has given me invaluable insight into the evolving notion of power as a political concept.
Hard power as expressed through traditional military force is no longer relevant in all situations. Power has largely shifted from its traditional condign, brutal expression through guns and armies to the benign realm of charm, diplomacy, non-violence and persuasion.
Indeed, the world has largely moved from hard power to embrace the utility of soft power and smart power. The world in the brave 21st century has moved from coercion to persuasion, from harm to charm, from hard power to soft power especially in situations involving local citizens.
Armies can only be used in situations involving hostile foreign States but you cannot use the army against your own citizens.
The notion of hard power as expressed through guns, gunfire, batons, tear smoke and military tanks is no longer in vogue.
Analogue Mnangagwa does not know that in this brave digital age, any regime that rains live bullets on defenceless citizens legitimately shouting to be heard will invoke a torrent of international outrage and condemnation.
It was Armitage and Nye (2007) who posited that while militaries were well-suited to fighting States, they are often poor instruments in fighting ideas. One can’t use the military to contain ideas.
And in Zimbabwe, the desire for change is a big idea now so deeply embedded in the national psyche and it cannot be fought by traditional weapons such as guns, batons and tear smoke.
You may deploy military tanks into Chitungwiza, Nguboyenja and Budiriro but that will neither quench nor snuff out the citizens’ desire for change.
Martin van Creveld (1991), in his seminal work titled The Transformation of War, makes a poignant argument about the futility of using traditional weapons in the evolving arena of dissent and conflict.
And someone must tell this analogue regime that you don’t kill poor people to fight poverty; that military power and brute force are unsuitable weapons to fight ideas and opinions.
The fast-changing world has proved to be quite a challenge to rogue governments such as the Mnangagwa regime whose fixation and dalliance with State-led violence for political survival remains archaically Machiavellian, if not Fanonian.
Like the dinosaur, rogue regimes such as ours are inextricably caught up in a time warp. They run the very serious risk of extinction due to their failure to adapt to a dynamic and rapidly changing world.
The world has now embraced the utility of soft power. Those still stuck up in the age-old penchant for using military prowess to solve every problem will find it difficult to cope in this brave century of twitter, Instagram and other social media tools.
These tools and platforms have become a form of soft power. And these modern tools have become useful weapons for repressed citizens fighting for change
How do you fight ideas using bullets and rockets|? How do you fight the social media and their users using an AK 47? Just how do you cope with complex nuances that don’t call for violence but that have a huge potential of changing the world and redefining human circumstances?
This explains why simple, non-violent expressions have left indelible footprints in the history of social and political struggles.
Simple gestures of soft power cannot be contained by guns and brute military force.
She did not carry a gun and neither could a gun be used against her, but on Thursday, 1 December 1955, Rosa Parks, a black simple taylor’s assistant sparked the famous Montgomery bus boycott when she refused to stand for white passengers as was the norm in the USA then.
The black woman refused to stand up and cede her bus seat for her white compatriots in a solemn historical gesture that engendered a tectonic historical impact and forever redefined governance in America. Rosa remained glued to her seat and refused to stand up for whites.
She remained seated so that the dignity of the black people could stand again!
The simple gesture by Rosa Parks phenomenally challenged the racist status quo and the United States would never be the same again
To my cowardly compatriots in Harare, the lesson from Rosa is that sometimes it is the simple non-violent gestures that can change our lived circumstances in a gargantuan, seismic way.
Let me leave it at that.
A nation of heroes
So today we commemorate this Heroes Day with the world’s eyes firmly trained on Zimbabwe because of the brutality being meted out on the innocent citizens of our country.
It is only the innocent civilians and human rights defenders that are being targeted while the criminal elite led by one Wicknell “My Son” Chivayo are roaming the country scot free under the protection of the State.
While the criminals and the villains are celebrating, this Heroes Day must be a day of serious reflection, not least because of the State-led violence by our erstwhile liberators but because of the reconsideration, renewed calculus and the deeper reflection that must necessarily happen on such epic days.
I have often said the biggest national folly over the years has been to regard heroism as only limited and confined to the sacrifice associated with our liberation struggle, which has been betrayed anyway.
As a nation, we ought to seriously reflect on this monumental handicap.
Heroes Day should be a day to celebrate national heroism in all areas of endeavour including sport, the arts and other non-political vocations.
Even the new heroes that have emerged in our current political struggle to complete the unfinished business of our sacred war of liberation also deserve recognition.
True, our national war of liberation will remain an epic chapter in our national story considering that our national independence did not come cheap.
Zimbabweans—both villagers and the liberation war fighters—combined as fish and water to swim the nation to political independence in April 1980.
It will always remain a unique tale of national heroism that this country waged a brutal war of liberation to subdue racist and colonial repression.
But the tragedy is that we have narrowed this great day to the sole celebration of only our political achievement, which achievement has now been betrayed by this criminal lot now leading us.
Yet heroism is not just political. As a nation, we have exhibited and displayed valour in many other spheres that ought to be included in these moments that we cherish national heroism.
This fixation with gallantry as depicting only the story of our liberation struggle has led to the tragic folly in which an organ of a political party determines and declares heroes in our country.
Only recently, our national rugby team, the Sables, won a big trophy when they became the champions of Africa. Yet there was no single government official to welcome them at the airport when they brought home that coveted continental trophy.
This is because we have been made to mistakenly think heroism is about politics and that heroes are only found in Zanu PF.
And yet the Sables were supposed to be feted as national heroes. It takes great personal and collective valour to win such a big trophy when you are from Zimbabwe, given our collapsed sport infrastructure and the epic cluelessness of our Minister of Sports.
True heroism, even if a nation decides to go for declaring it, should have such declaration and conferment done by an impartial, non-partisan, multi-stakeholder national committee that looks at excellence beyond our war of liberation.
And even if politics were to be the yardstick of heroism—which it should not–heroes are not necessarily found in Zanu PF. All those patriotic Zimbabweans including Ndabaningi Magigwana Sithole, Edgar Zivanai Tekere and Morgan Richard Tsvangirai are national heroes.
It is a travesty of history that they have not been duly recognised as such. .
You may sit in your motley political group called the Politburo and claim to be “declaring” national heroes. Yet the truth is that true heroism is never declared or conferred by anyone.
True heroism is attained in one’s lifetime; it is the cherished memories human beings leave behind in the course of the tenuous journeys of their lives.
Nelson Mandela died a few years ago and was buried in his home village of Qunu, not in any special acre or hectare reserved for heroes.
Yet world leaders, including the then US President Barack Obama and our own Robert Mugabe and Morgan Tsvangirai descended on that village as the world saluted the global icon.
No politburo-style body sat anywhere to confer Madiba with any hero status. But his funeral in that village grabbed world attention and left no one under any shadow of doubt that true heroism is never conferred. It imposes itself.
As Zimbabwe celebrates Heroes’ Day today, we must reflect on whether we are doing justice in the way we cherish national excellence.
One would have thought this is the moment to celebrate our country’s sons and daughters in all spheres whose works and capabilities have shone through the mediocrity of our time.
You don’t need to be dead first for you to be feted as a national hero. And heroes go beyond the narrow sector of politics!
We all have our frailties as mortal human beings but I will hazard a personal view and say today we ought to be celebrating our national heroes such as George Shaya, Shacky Tauro, Peter Ndlovu, Madinda Ndlovu, Willard Mashinkila Khumalo, Moses Chunga, Winky D, Thomas Mapfumo, Alick Macheso, Byron, Wayne and Cara Black.
On Oliver Mtukudzi, we did well by granting him the highest national honour.
Indeed, Heroes Day should be broadened for the nation to spare a thought for Proud “Kilimanjaro” Chinembiri, Alfonso Zvenyika, Jairos Jiri, Margaret Dongo and the many sons and daughters of this great land whose achievements we must all cherish across the racial, political, religious and ethnic divide.
Heroes’ day should be about celebrating the broad successes and achievements of this nation’s sons and daughters in their various zones of distinction.
Given our painful national moment, I wish to conclude by saying today should be about celebrating every Zimbabwean within and outside the country.
Indeed, we are a nation of heroes and heroines.
When you have millions of people slugging out a living every day with whole families surviving on less than US35 cents a day, they are heroes.
The rest of us are vendors and small-time traders, honestly earning a living through the rigours of honest, hard work. Our daily grind may have been curtailed by a regime afraid of demonstrations but vendors and all informal traders are national heroes.
Those millions who survive by selling wares on the pavements of our cities need to be celebrated today. They chose a life of honesty and hard work.
Indeed, they are national heroes.
Millions have left the country to do menial jobs in the Diaspora but collectively, they remit billions of dollars every year that are aiding national sustenance.
They are national heroes.
Those old men and women in the villages scrounging for food handouts without raising a whimper of the indignity of it all are true national heroes.
Those remaining workers in the few formal companies still operating are national heroes. They are honestly working and praying for a new dawn for the country that they love.
While the elite in government are on an unrestrained spree of looting the country’s vast wealth, the patriots in the civil service who toil every day and wait patiently for inadequate tokenism at the end of the month deserve to be celebrated today.
Not everyone is in the cockpit of power and can afford fleecing taxpayers as is the case with the few connected, particularly Mnangagwa’s inner circle and the kleptocratic lot in the Office of the President and Cabinet. The rest of us are hard-working, valiant citizens who continue to work and live honestly in the hope that tomorrow will be a better day.
We are all part of this nation of heroes.
Today I particularly take note of the unarmed Zimbabweans in the townships and especially the opposition members, trade unionists and human rights defenders that have been arrested, tortured and brutalised by this regime
They are national heroes.
To Mr Mnangagwa and his criminal and corrupt elite in government, I can only say all political power has an expiry date.
Indeed, tomorrow is another day.
To my fellow countrymen, perhaps the time to show our ultimate heroism has come.
We must now confront this dictatorship that is looting our national treasure and our national wealth while the rest of us suffer.
As ED himself said last week, we must all be constitutionalists. And section 59 of the national Constitution must be our avenue for a sonorous collective national expression!
After all, we are a nation of heroes!
Luke Tamborinyoka is a citizen from Domboshava. You can interact with him on his Facebook page or via the X handle @ luke_tambo.
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