It’s easier to mourn you, Cde Bombshell Geza, than to heed your call to stand up for ourselves!

Truth carries a light far too blinding for a nation comfortable in the shadows.

The ritual of repatriation has a somber, rhythmic quality in Zimbabwe, a cadence of grief that we have mastered over decades of burying the giants who once shook the earth.

As the remains of Cde Blessed “Bombshell” Geza crossed the Limpopo, returning from a lonely hospital bed in South Africa to the soil he once bled for, the nation slipped into its most comfortable costume: that of the professional mourner.

We are, quite frankly, brilliant at the “Rest in Power” liturgy.

We excel at the digital shrine, the hagiographic obituary, and the somber reflection on a life well-lived.

But as the dust settles on the road from Beitbridge, we must confront a harrowing truth that no state funeral or eulogy can mask: it is infinitely easier to mourn a dead revolutionary than it is to heed the call of a living one.

We prefer Geza as a memory because memories are static; they do not issue demands, they do not point fingers, and they do not ask us to sacrifice our hard-earned, quiet compliance.

Blessed Geza was not a man of half-measures, and his nickname—“Bombshell”—was less a title and more a prophecy.

For most of his life, he was a pillar of the establishment, a ZANLA veteran whose credentials were beyond reproach and whose seat at the ZANU-PF Central Committee table seemed permanent.

He was part of the architecture.

Yet, in the final act of his life, he chose to become the demolition ball.

When he broke ranks in 2025, he didn’t just whisper about the rot; he screamed it from the rooftops.

He spoke of a liberation struggle that had been commodified, of a “noble” cause that had been bartered for narrow interests, and of a leadership that had grown fat on the dreams of the thin.

When he called for a “day of action” to demand accountability, he wasn’t asking for a hashtag; he was asking for a country.

And in that moment of high-stakes truth-telling, the silence that met him from the masses was perhaps more painful than the expulsion and the subsequent flight into exile.

We find comfort in the grave because a dead man cannot correct the record.

We can mold the image of Cde Geza into whatever version of a hero suits our current mood.

To the state, he can be the wayward son whose “pre-2025” contributions are acknowledged with a begrudging nod while his final dissent is scrubbed as the “delusions of a sick man.”

To the opposition and the disillusioned, he can be a convenient martyr used to score points in an endless political game.

But to the man himself—the man who spent his final months in the shadow of cancer and the cold reality of exile—we owe a debt we are too terrified to pay.

That debt is agency.

Geza’s late-life transformation was an apology in the form of an invitation.

He admitted his role in the transitions that birthed our current predicament, and in doing so, he stripped away our favorite excuse: that we are merely victims of a system we cannot change.

If a man who was part of the very core of power could find his voice at 81, what is the excuse for the rest of us?

The irony of our grief is that it serves as a release valve for our collective guilt.

By weeping for the “Bombshell,” we convince ourselves that we still value the ideals he died defending.

We tell ourselves that “they don’t make them like him anymore,” a lie we use to justify our own paralysis.

The truth is that they do make them like him; the courage Geza displayed wasn’t a biological anomaly of the 1940s generation.

It was a choice.

And it is a choice that remains available to every Zimbabwean who watches the economy crumble, the hospitals fail, and the youth vanish into the diaspora.

Mourning Geza allows us to outsource our bravery.

We treat his life like a cinematic masterpiece—something to be watched, critiqued, and admired from a safe distance—rather than a blueprint for our own civic existence.

As we look at the headlines announcing his passing, we must realize that Geza’s final message was a mirror, not a speech.

He saw a nation that had become addicted to its own victimhood, a people who had traded their birthright for the meager peace of silence.

He understood that the “peace” we boast of is often just the quietness of the graveyard.

When he urged us to stand up for ourselves, he was reminding us that no hero—no matter how loud their nickname or how decorated their chest—can save a people who refuse to participate in their own liberation.

He died a fugitive not because he was a criminal, but because he was a reminder of what an unbought conscience looks like in a marketplace of souls.

If we truly want to honor Cde Blessed Geza, we must stop the performative weeping.

We must stop pretending that his death is the tragedy; the real tragedy is the fact that his call to action remains unanswered.

Standing up for oneself is an exhausting, terrifying, and often lonely endeavor.

It is much simpler to attend a funeral, wear a somber expression, and return to the safety of our cynicism.

But if we bury the man without resurrecting his spirit, we are merely burying the last bits of our own dignity.

Let us be honest enough to admit that we are afraid of his legacy.

We are afraid because to truly heed his call would mean moving beyond the safety of the mourning period and into the uncertainty of the struggle.

Until we find the courage to be as “explosive” in our demand for justice as he was in his final days, our tributes are nothing more than noise.

Rest, Cde Geza, but may your memory haunt us until we finally decide that your noble war is worth winning.

● Tendai Ruben Mbofana is a social justice advocate and writer. To directly receive his articles please join his WhatsApp Channel on: https://whatsapp.com/channel/0029VaqprWCIyPtRnKpkHe08

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