An opinion piece by Edgar Gabarinocheka
In the early 2000s I was a commerce teacher at Mtapa High School in Gweru. It was the norm — almost ritual — that when I switched on the radio and heard Matthias Xavier’s Tormented Soul blaring through the airwaves, we all knew what it meant. A national hero had fallen. Lessons slowed. Conversations hushed. Even the restless boys at the back of the classroom sensed that the country was mourning someone officially important.
I remember it playing when Mahachi died — yes, that yeh iyeh yeeh song. Back then, national hero status appeared to follow a script everyone understood. Liberation war credentials. Party loyalty. Sacrifice. Recognition. Burial at Heroes Acre. The music would play, the speeches would flow, and the nation would nod in agreement.
But today, I find myself asking a question that refuses to sit quietly:
What exactly is a national hero?
Is a hero defined by history — or by proximity to power?
In many African societies, heroism predates the modern state. Before ministries and politburos, heroes were remembered by communities, not committees. They were hunters who protected villages, mothers who preserved clans through famine, warriors who resisted conquest. Their recognition was organic; it emerged from collective memory, not press statements.
Yet the post-colonial African state inherited something else: the authority to officially declare memory. The state became not only a government but a curator of remembrance — deciding who belongs in bronze and who fades into silence.
Zimbabwe is not alone in this. Across the continent, liberation movements that became governments also became custodians of heroism. The liberator and the ruler merged into one figure. And therein lies the dilemma.
Because liberation fighters were once rebels.
They challenged authority. They organised outside the law. They held opinions dangerous to the establishment of their time. Had conformity been the condition for heroism, independence itself would never have been born.
So one must ask: Are liberation war heroes allowed to have opinions after independence?
Can a former freedom fighter disagree with the government of the day and remain a hero?
Can he form a political party?
Can she contest elections against those she once fought beside?
Or does heroism expire the moment loyalty shifts?
If hero status depends on staying in the good books of the current administration, then perhaps we are not speaking about heroes at all — but about honours for obedience.
History, after all, is stubborn. A man does not cease crossing the Zambezi because he later crosses swords with politicians. A woman does not stop being imprisoned by a colonial regime because she later criticises a cabinet minister. The past does not rewrite itself simply because the present feels uncomfortable.
Yet in our politics, memory sometimes behaves like a chalkboard wiped clean after disagreement.
One day a figure is praised as a pillar of the revolution. The next, he is described as misguided, rogue, or irrelevant. The question arises: Is history immediately deleted when one disagrees with elite politicians?
Globally, nations wrestle with similar tensions. In France, revolutionaries argued among themselves yet remain figures of history. In South Africa, liberation icons have openly criticised governments without losing their place in national memory. In the United States, founding fathers disagreed fiercely, formed rival parties, and contested power — yet remain foundational figures.
Heroism elsewhere seems capable of surviving disagreement.
Why then must ours appear so fragile?
Perhaps the deeper issue is criteria.
Is there a written standard for national hero status?
Is it sacrifice? Leadership? Moral example? Popular support? Historical impact?
Or is it a decision whispered behind closed doors, revealed only when the obituary arrives?
A nation that cannot clearly explain its heroes risks teaching its children that recognition depends less on contribution and more on alignment.
And that is a dangerous lesson.
Because heroes, by nature, are inconvenient people. They question. They challenge. They refuse silence. The liberation struggle itself was an act of dissent against authority. To deny dissent now is to deny the very spirit that produced independence.
Maybe the real question is not who qualifies as a national hero.
Maybe the question is whether heroism belongs to the state at all.
Can a government own memory?
Or does memory belong to the people who lived through history and continue to interpret it?
As I think back to that classroom in Mtapa, with radios crackling and Xavier’s mournful voice filling the corridors, I realise something: the music did not create heroes. It merely announced them.
The real verdict had already been written — not in government files, but in the collective conscience of the nation.
And conscience, unlike politics, does not change with cabinet reshuffles.
So again I ask:
What is a national hero — and who truly decides?
