From Honour To Betrayal? Zimbabweans Question Legacy On Heroes & Defence Forces Day

By Staff Reporter

On August 11 and 12, 2025, Zimbabwe will commemorate the 45th anniversary of Heroes Day and Defence Forces Day, an annual event meant to honour the men and women who sacrificed their lives in the liberation struggle, fighting to free the nation from colonial rule.

The official ceremonies, marked with speeches, parades, and solemn tributes, are designed to remind the nation of the courage and sacrifice of those who fought for majority rule. Yet, for many war veterans and ordinary citizens, the day has become less about pride and more about pain, a reminder of promises made but never kept.

For some, the irony is bitter. They fought and suffered to dismantle white minority rule, only to feel betrayed under a black-majority government that, they say, has plunged the nation into unprecedented poverty, misgovernance, and corruption.

Speaking to The Post on Sunday in Makoni District, a group of war veterans expressed raw anger at the current administration, which they believe has worsened the plight of the liberation heroes under the late Robert Gabriel Mugabe’s rule, and even more so after his ouster in the 2017 coup, the plight of war veterans has steadily worsened. In recent years, this reporter has noted an intriguing development: an ever-growing list of war veterans being subjected to audits and ordered to update their details in the official register.

The trend has not gone unnoticed in political circles. Former legislator Temba Mliswa once raised the matter in Parliament, questioning the sudden and unexplained increase in numbers.

One veteran, with an artificial limb, recounted how he lost his right leg during the Nyadzonya attack. His question was cutting, “Can we really celebrate? Yes, we drove away the white oppressor, only to be replaced by the black oppressor.”

The veterans voiced doubts about the official history of the liberation struggle itself. Some questioned whether the war had truly been a unified fight against white colonialists or whether it had been, at least in part, a bitter contest between black political movements with different ideologies, even involving ethnic tensions, such as the long-suspected targeting of Ndebele communities.

Farie Kapepa, in a recent article published by the Zimbabwe Independent, captured this sentiment, “Forty-five years on, the true heroes,  those who have survived oppression and neglect by their own government, poverty, disease, and the trauma of battle, are still being fed promises of a better Zimbabwe, first under the First Republic, and now under the Second Republic. I wonder if anyone in the higher echelons remembers that Comrade Sadat, who survived the Chitepo assassination in Zambia, is still alive but forgotten. There are so many ‘Sadats’ out there, forgotten, impoverished, in their own rich country.”

This sense of abandonment is compounded by what many see as grossly uneven benefits from the very independence they fought for. The much-celebrated land redistribution programme, for instance, disproportionately benefited politically connected elites, a small section of war veterans, and government officials. Ordinary veterans and citizens, despite years of applications for farming land, remain empty-handed.

Senior Government officials took more that one farm each, when they preached one man one farm, exposed after the published divorce of Mugabe’s daughter, Bona Mugabe to Simba Chikore. A list of farms shocked many Zimbabweans who up to date, haven’t received an offer later.

Some war veterans have been offered land, a reallocation proposal was made, and to this date, nothing has materialized, they continue to wallow in poverty, their families are left with pieces of paper and rich background of their family member, father or mother being a war veteran who survived bullets with deep scars on their bodies as a reminder of the struggle.

Even the government’s current borehole drilling and housing schemes, spearheaded by Paul Tungwarara, are viewed by some as politically motivated, designed to counter outspoken critics like war veteran Blessed Runesu Geza, whose sharp criticisms of the government have unsettled ZANU-PF.

“As we speak,” one veteran said, “there are now two camps, one led by Andrea Mathibela and the other by Christopher Mutsvangwa. But for the past 13 years under his leadership, what has changed?”

The veterans in Makoni did not hold back. They spoke openly, without fear of their names being published, about a liberation legacy they feel has been hijacked.

“The honest heroes and the rest of us continue to harvest baskets full of thorns,” one said, “while the cowards regale themselves in opulence. For the real heroes and the rest of the citizenry, independence is not a celebration, it is a commemoration of broken promises, war scars, and shattered futures.”

As the bugles sound and the flag flies high this August, the rift between official speeches and the lived reality of the people they are meant to honour will remain glaring. For many, the question will not be how far Zimbabwe has come, but how far it has fallen.

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