Renaming colonial infrastructure without constructing our own is an undeniable admission of failure

We were meant to do better not merely recycling what we inherited.


The proposed renaming of over 60 schools across Harare is not an act of revolutionary liberation; it is a public confession of developmental bankruptcy.

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For a government to exhaust its energy stripping names off buildings it did not construct, while failing to lay a single brick for new institutions of equal or greater caliber, is the ultimate hallmark of a failed leadership that has run out of both vision and cement.

History is written in stone and mortar, and there is an undeniable, universal logic to infrastructure: the one who builds the house gets to name the rooms.

When the colonial regime built these schools, they named them after their own heroes because they were the architects and the funders of that specific legacy.

Whether we look back at that era with fondness or reprehension is irrelevant to the mechanical reality of ownership.

If a Zimbabwean citizen were to migrate to Spain today and fund the construction of a state-of-the-art medical center, there would be nothing inherently wrong with naming it after a personal hero—perhaps their late mother, Anastasia Takazvida Mbofana.

It would be their right as the creator.

If, forty years later, the Spanish government—having failed to build a single hospital of its own—decided to peel off that name and replace it with a local politician’s name, the world would rightly view it as a pathetic, state-sanctioned theft of legacy.

This is the exact crisis of identity currently playing out in Zimbabwe.

Every time a sign is changed from Prince Edward to Murenga Boys, or from Enterprise Road to ED Mnangagwa Road, the government is issuing a silent, humiliating admission: they are admitting they have not built a road significant enough or a school prestigious enough to carry those names on their own merits.

They are choosing to “squat” in the prestige of colonial infrastructure because they lack the capacity to create a modern equivalent.

What link does the current leadership have to the engineering or the grit that carved out Enterprise Road?

They did not design it, they did not fund it, and they have barely maintained it.

To slap a modern leader’s name on a colonial-era artery is not an honor; it is a hollow branding exercise on inherited property.

True sovereignty is not found in a bucket of paint or a new letterhead; it is found in the ability to surpass the predecessor.

If the government truly wanted to honor our own heroes like Sally Mugabe or the liberation icon Murenga, the logical and honorable path would be to construct entirely new, world-class infrastructure that makes the colonial legacy look like a footnote.

Why not construct a grand, totally new hospital and name it Parirenyatwa, rather than simply renaming Andrew Fleming?

Until you build your own, you are simply a tenant in someone else’s history.

The irony is that the very Western nations we claim to be “decolonizing” from do not suffer from this specific insecurity.

Mature, confident nations do not fear their history—they own it as a permanent ledger of where they have been.

Britain was a Roman colony for nearly four hundred years, yet the British do not try to “de-Romanize” their map to prove they are free.

They drive on roads like the Fosse Way, which still carries its ancient designation, and they live in cities like Manchester and Colchester, where the very names are direct linguistic markers of the Roman military occupation.

They don’t rename Hadrian’s Wall to “King Alfred’s Wall” because they have the civilizational confidence to recognize that the Romans built it.

They prove their freedom not by erasing Roman names, but by building a modern empire and a global financial hub that surpassed anything the Romans could have imagined.

Similarly, the French live in cities like Fréjus, which is a contraction of Forum Julii—named directly after their conqueror, Julius Caesar.

They keep the name because Caesar founded the city.

They understand that history is a fact, not a whiteboard to be erased whenever a new administration feels politically insecure.

In Zimbabwe, we are witnessing the opposite of that confidence.

We are witnessing a leadership that believes it can change the future by editing the past.

But names do not educate children, and letterheads do not fix potholes.

A school’s reputation is built over decades of academic excellence and institutional discipline.

Changing the name of Queen Elizabeth School to Sally Mugabe doesn’t improve the pass rate or the facilities; it merely attempts to hijack the school’s established prestige to serve a political narrative.

It is a cosmetic mask for developmental stagnation.

If this government were truly successful, they would have built twenty new “Prince Edwards” across the country by now, each named after a different liberation hero.

The fact that they must instead target the original Prince Edward proves that they are still living in the shadow of 1898.

Colonial heritage is a legacy of our country, whether we like it or not.

It is the bedrock upon which the present was built, and it should be kept intact as a record of our journey.

To erase these names is to attempt a collective amnesia that fools no one.

True decolonization is not the destruction of the old, but the creation of the new.

It is the ability to look at a colonial building and say, “You built this, but we have built something better.”

As long as the government continues to prioritize signage over substance, they are signaling to the world that they are incapable of the latter.

We must stop obsessing over the names on the old buildings and start asking why we haven’t built anything worthy of our own heroes.

Honor is earned through creation, not through the rebranding of a predecessor’s work.

Let the colonial names stand as a testament to the past, and let the current leadership finally pick up a trowel and build a future that is actually theirs to name.

- 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