Opinion / Columnist
Zimbabwe's liberation was the greatest farce of all time
2 hrs ago | Views
The truth can be a bitter pill to swallow, but it needs to be taken if we are to heal our nation.
Zimbabwe's liberation struggle, celebrated as a triumph over colonial oppression when independence was won in 1980, has long been held up as a beacon of hope for a nation yearning for justice, equality, and self-determination.
The sacrifices of countless men and women who fought against white minority rule under Ian Smith's Rhodesian government were meant to dismantle an exploitative system and usher in an era where the land and its riches would benefit all Zimbabweans.
Yet, as the decades have unfolded, a stark and bitter truth has emerged: Zimbabwe's liberation was not a victory for the people but a grand farce, a sleight of hand that saw one privileged minority replaced with another.
The ideals of the struggle - land for the landless, wealth for the impoverished, and voices for the silenced - were betrayed by a small cabal of leaders, most notably Robert Mugabe and Emmerson Mnangagwa, who turned the people's movement into a vehicle for their own enrichment and power.
Today, over 80% of Zimbabweans languish in abject poverty, their country's vast mineral resources looted by an elite that clings to the same oppressive, segregatory governance structures of the colonial era, silencing dissent with violence and arrests, as seen in the recent targeting of journalists like Blessed Mhlanga.
This is not liberation; it is a cruel masquerade.
To directly receive articles from Tendai Ruben Mbofana, please join his WhatsApp Channel on: https://whatsapp.com/channel/0029VaqprWCIyPtRnKpkHe08
The liberation war, waged through the 1960s and 1970s, was a brutal and protracted affair.
Guerrilla fighters from the Zimbabwe African National Liberation Army (ZANLA) and the Zimbabwe People's Revolutionary Army (ZIPRA) endured unimaginable hardships - hunger, disease, and death in the bush - while ordinary citizens supported them with food, shelter, and intelligence, risking their lives against a Rhodesian regime backed by sophisticated military might.
The promise was clear: independence would bring an end to the colonial system that concentrated land and wealth in the hands of a white minority, less than 1% of the population, while relegating the black majority to subsistence living.
Yet, when the Union Jack was lowered and the Zimbabwean flag raised on April 18, 1980, the leaders who emerged victorious - Mugabe chief among them - did not dismantle this system.
Instead, they repurposed it, slotting themselves into the roles once occupied by white colonialists, creating a black privileged minority that mirrored its predecessor in greed and exclusion.
Mugabe, once hailed as a revolutionary hero, quickly revealed his true intentions.
In the early years of independence, there were glimmers of progress-education expanded, with literacy rates soaring to over 90% by the 1990s, a figure that briefly made Zimbabwe the envy of the continent.
But beneath this veneer, the consolidation of power was underway.
The Gukurahundi massacres of 1983-1987, where Mugabe's North Korean-trained Fifth Brigade slaughtered an estimated 20,000 Ndebele civilians in Matabeleland and the Midlands, laid bare the regime's willingness to use violence to suppress dissent and consolidate control.
Mnangagwa, then Minister of State Security, oversaw the Central Intelligence Organization's role in providing intelligence to the brigade, implicating him in this genocide despite his later denials.
This was not an aberration but a blueprint: the liberation struggle's promise of unity and justice was sacrificed for the sake of a ruling elite's dominance, a pattern that would repeat over decades.
The land question, central to the liberation narrative, became the most glaring symbol of this betrayal.
By 1980, white farmers owned 70% of Zimbabwe's arable land, a legacy of colonial theft.
The Lancaster House Agreement, which paved the way for independence, delayed significant land reform for a decade, but when Mugabe finally acted in the late 1990s, it was not to empower the landless masses.
The chaotic farm invasions of 2000, ostensibly led by "war veterans," saw prime agricultural land seized not by ordinary Zimbabweans but by ZANU-PF loyalists, military chiefs, and Mugabe's inner circle.
Is it any wonder that Mugabe's daughter, Bona, was reported to own a staggering 21 farms?
Research from the Zimbabwe Land Reform Observatory shows that by 2010, over 60% of redistributed land went to political elites, with many recipients lacking farming expertise.
Production plummeted - maize output dropped from 2 million tons in 1998 to less than 500,000 tons by 2008 - triggering food shortages and hyperinflation that peaked at 79.6 billion percent per month in November 2008.
The people who had fought for land were left empty-handed, while Mugabe and his cronies amassed multiple farms, their wealth growing as the nation starved.
Zimbabwe's mineral wealth tells a similar story of plunder masked as liberation.
The country sits atop vast reserves - diamonds in Marange, gold in the Midlands, lithium in Bikita, and platinum in the Great Dyke - resources that could have lifted millions out of poverty.
Yet, Transparency International ranks Zimbabwe 158 out of 180 countries on its 2024 Corruption Perceptions Index, a testament to the systemic looting that has drained these riches.
At a 21 out of 100 mark, Zimbabwe is the most corrupt country in the southern African region.
In 2016, Mugabe himself admitted that $15 billion in diamond revenue had "disappeared" from state coffers, a figure echoed by parliamentary investigations that implicated high-ranking government and military officials in the Marange fields' exploitation.
Global Witness documented how companies linked to the Zimbabwean military and ZANU-PF siphoned off profits, with little trickling down to the population.
Today, despite being one of the world's top lithium producers - a critical mineral for renewable energy - over 80% of Zimbabweans live below the poverty line, according to World Bank data from 2023.
The liberation promise of economic empowerment has been hollowed out, replaced by a kleptocracy that thrives on the same extractive logic as the colonial regime.
This betrayal is not just economic but political, rooted in the preservation of colonial governance structures.
The Rhodesian system relied on centralized authority, a powerful executive, and a security apparatus designed to suppress the majority.
Mugabe and Mnangagwa kept these intact, wielding them to entrench their rule.
The fact that the Lancaster House Constitution was amended over 20 times under Mugabe to expand presidential powers mirrors the unchecked authority once held by colonial administrators.
The current 2013 Constitution has already been amended twice, and in both instances, to consolidate power in the president and not in the people.
If plans by a faction of the ruling ZANU-PF party go through, then the third amendment will be to extend Mnangagwa's term in office beyond the constitutional two five-year limit.
The electoral commission, packed with loyalists, rubber-stamps electoral fraud.
Zimbabwe's 2023 elections, widely condemned by international observers as rigged, saw Mnangagwa secure another term despite economic collapse and widespread discontent.
Meanwhile, the security forces, including the army and police, remain tools of repression, a direct inheritance from Rhodesian tactics.
The 2008 election violence, where over 200 opposition supporters were killed, and the 2018 post-election shootings in Harare, where six protesters died, underscore how liberation's victors adopted the oppressor's playbook.
Dissent, a cornerstone of any free society, has been systematically crushed, exposing the farce for what it is.
Journalists, activists, and ordinary citizens who speak out face arrest, torture, or worse.
Hopewell Chin'ono, an award-winning journalist, has been arrested multiple times since 2020 for exposing corruption, his bail repeatedly denied on spurious charges.
Blessed Mhlanga, a reporter critical of Mnangagwa's regime, was detained yesterday ostensibly for interviewing Blessed Gze, a war veteran and ZANU-PF senior official who has, of late, been very critical of Mnangagwa.
Mhlanga's arrest signals that the clampdown on free expression persists.
Human Rights Watch reported over 70 abductions of activists in 2022 alone, many by suspected state agents, a tactic echoing the Rhodesian Special Branch's silencing of black nationalists.
Activists like Farai Maguwu, Obert Masarure, Job Sikhala, and Jacob Ngarivhume have faced relentless persecution and arrest for their courageous efforts to challenge injustice, corruption, and human rights abuses.
Farai Maguwu, a prominent figure in the Centre for Natural Resource Governance (CNRG), has been targeted for exposing the exploitation of Zimbabwe's diamond fields, enduring harassment and detention for his advocacy.
Obert Masarure, leader of the Amalgamated Rural Teachers' Union (ARTUZ), has been repeatedly arrested and held in pre-trial detention, including a 27-day stint, on charges such as obstructing justice - widely seen as retaliation for his vocal criticism of poor working conditions and government policies.
Job Sikhala, a outspoken opposition politician and lawyer, has been arrested over 65 times since 1999, with his most recent ordeal beginning in June 2022, when he was detained for nearly 600 days in Chikurubi Maximum Prison on charges of obstructing justice and inciting violence tied to his defense of murdered activist Moreblessing Ali.
Similarly, Jacob Ngarivhume, head of Transform Zimbabwe, was imprisoned for eight months after a 2020 conviction for inciting protests against corruption, only to be acquitted on appeal in December 2023, highlighting the misuse of the legal system.
These cases reflect a broader pattern under President Mnangagwa's administration, where dissent is met with arbitrary arrests, prolonged detentions, and a weaponized judiciary, aimed at silencing voices demanding accountability and democratic reform.
The liberation struggle's call for a voice for the voiceless has been drowned out by the same violence it sought to end, wielded now by those who claim its legacy.
The consequences of this hijacking are stark.
Zimbabwe's GDP per capita, adjusted for inflation, has stagnated at around $1,200 since 2000, a far cry from the $2,000 it reached in the late 1990s, per World Bank figures.
Unemployment hovers at 90% in the formal sector, forcing millions into a precarious informal economy.
Children die of preventable diseases - UNICEF data shows a maternal mortality rate of 458 per 100,000 live births in 2021 - while hospitals lack basic supplies.
Meanwhile, those close to power flaunt their wealth; some readily being photographed with the latest luxury cars worth millions, a stark contrast to the 7 million Zimbabweans - half the population - relying on food aid, according to the World Food Programme.
The liberation elite live in mansions in Harare's Borrowdale suburb, once a preserve of white Rhodesians, while rural villagers trek miles for water.
The system of segregation persists, only the faces have changed.
Zimbabwe's liberation was a farce not because the struggle lacked nobility, but because its fruits were stolen by a few who draped themselves in its rhetoric.
Mugabe, who ruled for 37 years until his ouster in 2017, and Mnangagwa, who succeeded him, did not liberate the people but shackled them to a new tyranny.
The mineral riches that should have built schools and hospitals line the pockets of a black elite, just as they once enriched white settlers.
The violence that crushed colonial resistance now crushes Zimbabwean dissent.
The land that was fought for remains out of reach for most, hoarded by those who sing liberation songs loudest.
Over 80% of the population suffers not because the country lacks resources, but because its leaders lack shame.
The greatest tragedy is that the blood of the liberation war's martyrs watered a tree whose fruit they will never taste - a tree tended by a cabal that mocks their sacrifice with every stolen dollar and silenced voice.
© Tendai Ruben Mbofana is a social justice advocate and writer. Please feel free to WhatsApp or Call: +263715667700 | +263782283975, or email: mbofana.tendairuben73@gmail.com, or visit website: https://mbofanatendairuben.news.blog/
Zimbabwe's liberation struggle, celebrated as a triumph over colonial oppression when independence was won in 1980, has long been held up as a beacon of hope for a nation yearning for justice, equality, and self-determination.
The sacrifices of countless men and women who fought against white minority rule under Ian Smith's Rhodesian government were meant to dismantle an exploitative system and usher in an era where the land and its riches would benefit all Zimbabweans.
Yet, as the decades have unfolded, a stark and bitter truth has emerged: Zimbabwe's liberation was not a victory for the people but a grand farce, a sleight of hand that saw one privileged minority replaced with another.
The ideals of the struggle - land for the landless, wealth for the impoverished, and voices for the silenced - were betrayed by a small cabal of leaders, most notably Robert Mugabe and Emmerson Mnangagwa, who turned the people's movement into a vehicle for their own enrichment and power.
Today, over 80% of Zimbabweans languish in abject poverty, their country's vast mineral resources looted by an elite that clings to the same oppressive, segregatory governance structures of the colonial era, silencing dissent with violence and arrests, as seen in the recent targeting of journalists like Blessed Mhlanga.
This is not liberation; it is a cruel masquerade.
To directly receive articles from Tendai Ruben Mbofana, please join his WhatsApp Channel on: https://whatsapp.com/channel/0029VaqprWCIyPtRnKpkHe08
The liberation war, waged through the 1960s and 1970s, was a brutal and protracted affair.
Guerrilla fighters from the Zimbabwe African National Liberation Army (ZANLA) and the Zimbabwe People's Revolutionary Army (ZIPRA) endured unimaginable hardships - hunger, disease, and death in the bush - while ordinary citizens supported them with food, shelter, and intelligence, risking their lives against a Rhodesian regime backed by sophisticated military might.
The promise was clear: independence would bring an end to the colonial system that concentrated land and wealth in the hands of a white minority, less than 1% of the population, while relegating the black majority to subsistence living.
Yet, when the Union Jack was lowered and the Zimbabwean flag raised on April 18, 1980, the leaders who emerged victorious - Mugabe chief among them - did not dismantle this system.
Instead, they repurposed it, slotting themselves into the roles once occupied by white colonialists, creating a black privileged minority that mirrored its predecessor in greed and exclusion.
Mugabe, once hailed as a revolutionary hero, quickly revealed his true intentions.
In the early years of independence, there were glimmers of progress-education expanded, with literacy rates soaring to over 90% by the 1990s, a figure that briefly made Zimbabwe the envy of the continent.
But beneath this veneer, the consolidation of power was underway.
The Gukurahundi massacres of 1983-1987, where Mugabe's North Korean-trained Fifth Brigade slaughtered an estimated 20,000 Ndebele civilians in Matabeleland and the Midlands, laid bare the regime's willingness to use violence to suppress dissent and consolidate control.
Mnangagwa, then Minister of State Security, oversaw the Central Intelligence Organization's role in providing intelligence to the brigade, implicating him in this genocide despite his later denials.
This was not an aberration but a blueprint: the liberation struggle's promise of unity and justice was sacrificed for the sake of a ruling elite's dominance, a pattern that would repeat over decades.
The land question, central to the liberation narrative, became the most glaring symbol of this betrayal.
By 1980, white farmers owned 70% of Zimbabwe's arable land, a legacy of colonial theft.
The Lancaster House Agreement, which paved the way for independence, delayed significant land reform for a decade, but when Mugabe finally acted in the late 1990s, it was not to empower the landless masses.
The chaotic farm invasions of 2000, ostensibly led by "war veterans," saw prime agricultural land seized not by ordinary Zimbabweans but by ZANU-PF loyalists, military chiefs, and Mugabe's inner circle.
Is it any wonder that Mugabe's daughter, Bona, was reported to own a staggering 21 farms?
Research from the Zimbabwe Land Reform Observatory shows that by 2010, over 60% of redistributed land went to political elites, with many recipients lacking farming expertise.
Production plummeted - maize output dropped from 2 million tons in 1998 to less than 500,000 tons by 2008 - triggering food shortages and hyperinflation that peaked at 79.6 billion percent per month in November 2008.
The people who had fought for land were left empty-handed, while Mugabe and his cronies amassed multiple farms, their wealth growing as the nation starved.
Zimbabwe's mineral wealth tells a similar story of plunder masked as liberation.
The country sits atop vast reserves - diamonds in Marange, gold in the Midlands, lithium in Bikita, and platinum in the Great Dyke - resources that could have lifted millions out of poverty.
Yet, Transparency International ranks Zimbabwe 158 out of 180 countries on its 2024 Corruption Perceptions Index, a testament to the systemic looting that has drained these riches.
At a 21 out of 100 mark, Zimbabwe is the most corrupt country in the southern African region.
In 2016, Mugabe himself admitted that $15 billion in diamond revenue had "disappeared" from state coffers, a figure echoed by parliamentary investigations that implicated high-ranking government and military officials in the Marange fields' exploitation.
Global Witness documented how companies linked to the Zimbabwean military and ZANU-PF siphoned off profits, with little trickling down to the population.
Today, despite being one of the world's top lithium producers - a critical mineral for renewable energy - over 80% of Zimbabweans live below the poverty line, according to World Bank data from 2023.
The liberation promise of economic empowerment has been hollowed out, replaced by a kleptocracy that thrives on the same extractive logic as the colonial regime.
This betrayal is not just economic but political, rooted in the preservation of colonial governance structures.
Mugabe and Mnangagwa kept these intact, wielding them to entrench their rule.
The fact that the Lancaster House Constitution was amended over 20 times under Mugabe to expand presidential powers mirrors the unchecked authority once held by colonial administrators.
The current 2013 Constitution has already been amended twice, and in both instances, to consolidate power in the president and not in the people.
If plans by a faction of the ruling ZANU-PF party go through, then the third amendment will be to extend Mnangagwa's term in office beyond the constitutional two five-year limit.
The electoral commission, packed with loyalists, rubber-stamps electoral fraud.
Zimbabwe's 2023 elections, widely condemned by international observers as rigged, saw Mnangagwa secure another term despite economic collapse and widespread discontent.
Meanwhile, the security forces, including the army and police, remain tools of repression, a direct inheritance from Rhodesian tactics.
The 2008 election violence, where over 200 opposition supporters were killed, and the 2018 post-election shootings in Harare, where six protesters died, underscore how liberation's victors adopted the oppressor's playbook.
Dissent, a cornerstone of any free society, has been systematically crushed, exposing the farce for what it is.
Journalists, activists, and ordinary citizens who speak out face arrest, torture, or worse.
Hopewell Chin'ono, an award-winning journalist, has been arrested multiple times since 2020 for exposing corruption, his bail repeatedly denied on spurious charges.
Blessed Mhlanga, a reporter critical of Mnangagwa's regime, was detained yesterday ostensibly for interviewing Blessed Gze, a war veteran and ZANU-PF senior official who has, of late, been very critical of Mnangagwa.
Mhlanga's arrest signals that the clampdown on free expression persists.
Human Rights Watch reported over 70 abductions of activists in 2022 alone, many by suspected state agents, a tactic echoing the Rhodesian Special Branch's silencing of black nationalists.
Activists like Farai Maguwu, Obert Masarure, Job Sikhala, and Jacob Ngarivhume have faced relentless persecution and arrest for their courageous efforts to challenge injustice, corruption, and human rights abuses.
Farai Maguwu, a prominent figure in the Centre for Natural Resource Governance (CNRG), has been targeted for exposing the exploitation of Zimbabwe's diamond fields, enduring harassment and detention for his advocacy.
Obert Masarure, leader of the Amalgamated Rural Teachers' Union (ARTUZ), has been repeatedly arrested and held in pre-trial detention, including a 27-day stint, on charges such as obstructing justice - widely seen as retaliation for his vocal criticism of poor working conditions and government policies.
Job Sikhala, a outspoken opposition politician and lawyer, has been arrested over 65 times since 1999, with his most recent ordeal beginning in June 2022, when he was detained for nearly 600 days in Chikurubi Maximum Prison on charges of obstructing justice and inciting violence tied to his defense of murdered activist Moreblessing Ali.
Similarly, Jacob Ngarivhume, head of Transform Zimbabwe, was imprisoned for eight months after a 2020 conviction for inciting protests against corruption, only to be acquitted on appeal in December 2023, highlighting the misuse of the legal system.
These cases reflect a broader pattern under President Mnangagwa's administration, where dissent is met with arbitrary arrests, prolonged detentions, and a weaponized judiciary, aimed at silencing voices demanding accountability and democratic reform.
The liberation struggle's call for a voice for the voiceless has been drowned out by the same violence it sought to end, wielded now by those who claim its legacy.
The consequences of this hijacking are stark.
Zimbabwe's GDP per capita, adjusted for inflation, has stagnated at around $1,200 since 2000, a far cry from the $2,000 it reached in the late 1990s, per World Bank figures.
Unemployment hovers at 90% in the formal sector, forcing millions into a precarious informal economy.
Children die of preventable diseases - UNICEF data shows a maternal mortality rate of 458 per 100,000 live births in 2021 - while hospitals lack basic supplies.
Meanwhile, those close to power flaunt their wealth; some readily being photographed with the latest luxury cars worth millions, a stark contrast to the 7 million Zimbabweans - half the population - relying on food aid, according to the World Food Programme.
The liberation elite live in mansions in Harare's Borrowdale suburb, once a preserve of white Rhodesians, while rural villagers trek miles for water.
The system of segregation persists, only the faces have changed.
Zimbabwe's liberation was a farce not because the struggle lacked nobility, but because its fruits were stolen by a few who draped themselves in its rhetoric.
Mugabe, who ruled for 37 years until his ouster in 2017, and Mnangagwa, who succeeded him, did not liberate the people but shackled them to a new tyranny.
The mineral riches that should have built schools and hospitals line the pockets of a black elite, just as they once enriched white settlers.
The violence that crushed colonial resistance now crushes Zimbabwean dissent.
The land that was fought for remains out of reach for most, hoarded by those who sing liberation songs loudest.
Over 80% of the population suffers not because the country lacks resources, but because its leaders lack shame.
The greatest tragedy is that the blood of the liberation war's martyrs watered a tree whose fruit they will never taste - a tree tended by a cabal that mocks their sacrifice with every stolen dollar and silenced voice.
© Tendai Ruben Mbofana is a social justice advocate and writer. Please feel free to WhatsApp or Call: +263715667700 | +263782283975, or email: mbofana.tendairuben73@gmail.com, or visit website: https://mbofanatendairuben.news.blog/
Source - Tendai Ruben Mbofana
All articles and letters published on Bulawayo24 have been independently written by members of Bulawayo24's community. The views of users published on Bulawayo24 are therefore their own and do not necessarily represent the views of Bulawayo24. Bulawayo24 editors also reserve the right to edit or delete any and all comments received.
