Tendai Ruben Mbofana
Today marks 46 years since the Union Jack was lowered and the Zimbabwean flag rose to the cheers of a nation finally breathing the air of self-determination.
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For those who stood in the stadium in 1980, including my dear late father, or watched from the dusty streets of townships across the country, the promise was clear.
It was a promise of land, dignity, and a seat at the table of governance.
However, as the sun rises on another anniversary of that historic day, the celebrations feel increasingly hollow for the majority of citizens.
We are forced to ask a painful and uncomfortable question.
Have we truly broken the chains of colonial oppression, or have we merely changed the hands that hold the whip?
When we look back at the mechanisms used by the Rhodesian regime to subjugate black people and compare them to the lived reality of Zimbabweans in 2026, the parallels are not just striking—they are devastating.
The foundation of colonial cruelty was the systematic theft of land.
The Land Apportionment Act of 1930 was the definitive tool of disenfranchisement, pushing the black majority into crowded, arid Tribal Trust Lands while the minority enjoyed the literal fruits of the country’s most fertile soil.
Today, decades after a chaotic land reform program that was supposed to rectify this injustice, the majority of Zimbabweans remain trapped in those same peripheral areas or on subdivided plots that lack the support required for productivity.
Meanwhile, a new class of “settler” has emerged.
This time, it is not a foreign colonial office but a domestic ruling elite and their well-connected business associates.
We see communities being displaced from their ancestral homes to make way for massive mining ventures, often involving Chinese investors who operate with a degree of impunity that would make a colonial commissioner blush.
From the lithium fields to the diamond mines, the displacement of the rural poor continues unabated.
The people are treated as obstacles to profit rather than the rightful owners of the national heritage.
In the Rhodesian era, political silencing was enforced through the Law and Order Maintenance Act.
It was a piece of legislation designed to criminalize dissent and ensure that any voice challenging the status quo was met with the full force of a captured state.
Fast-forward to 2026, and we find ourselves under the suffocating shadow of the so-called Patriotic Act and the Maintenance of Peace and Order Act.
These are not merely administrative laws designed for the orderly management of a modern state.
They are the modern manifestations of that same colonial urge to control the populace, functioning as the spiritual and legal successors to the Rhodesian Law and Order Maintenance Act.
By rebranding dissent as unpatriotic and peaceful assembly as a threat to national security, the current establishment has perfected the art of using the statute book as a weapon of war against its own people.
These laws exist to insulate an unaccountable elite from the consequences of their failures, ensuring that the cry for justice is met not with reform, but with the cold efficiency of a prison cell.
In the hands of the regime, the Patriotic Act has transformed the very concept of national loyalty into a mandatory devotion to the ruling party, effectively criminalizing the exposure of state-sponsored corruption or human rights abuses.
It is a psychological cage that forces the citizen to choose between their conscience and their liberty, mimicking the colonial strategy of equating the struggle for dignity with foreign subversion.
Meanwhile, the Maintenance of Peace and Order Act ensures that the public square remains a private playground for the powerful, where permission to gather is a gift granted only to the praise-singers.
Together, these legislative instruments represent a deliberate reversal of the 1980 promise, proving that while the color of the administration has changed, the foundational desire to treat the citizen as a dangerous subject to be managed remains the guiding principle of those in power.
We witness a judiciary that often appears captured, where opposing voices are routinely arrested on frivolous charges and denied bail for months on end in clear violation of constitutional rights.
The weaponization of the law has turned the courts into theaters of persecution.
When the legal system fails to intimidate, the regime resorts to the same thuggish tactics used by the colonial police—utilizing traditional leaders to coerce villagers and deploying state-sponsored actors to physically assault perceived opponents.
The horrific massacres of the past, from Gukurahundi to the post-election violence of 2008 and 2018, serve as a constant, brutal reminder that the state views its own citizens as an enemy to be conquered.
The dream of “one man, one vote” was the rallying cry of the liberation struggle.
It was the ultimate symbol of the transition from subject to citizen.
Yet, for many Zimbabweans, the ballot box has become a site of recurring trauma rather than transformation.
Elections are repeatedly flagged by international observers, including the 2023 SADC mission, for failing to meet the basic standards of fairness and transparency.
The opposition is not treated as a legitimate competitor in a democratic space but as a foreign-funded enemy of the state to be crushed.
In rural areas, the distribution of food aid and agricultural inputs is often weaponized, with those suspected of supporting the opposition being left to starve.
This is a form of social engineering that mirrors the colonial strategy of rewarding “loyal” chiefs while punishing those who sought freedom.
Even urban populations, who have consistently voted for change for over twenty-six years, find their cities intentionally marginalized, with budgets choked and infrastructure left to rot as a form of collective punishment.
Social segregation in the old days was defined by the color of one’s skin.
Today, it is defined by the depth of one’s connections to the corridors of power.
We are living in a society that is effectively partitioned between a tiny, hyper-wealthy elite and an 80 percent majority that languishes in grinding poverty.
While a small clique of politicians and their associates flaunt luxury vehicles and multi-million dollar mansions, the rest of the nation struggles to put a single meal on the table.
According to current 2026 data, nearly half the population lives in extreme poverty, and over 76 percent of those who are “employed” are actually scraping a living in the informal sector.
These are not just numbers.
They represent a collapse of the social contract.
Our hospitals have become waiting rooms for the afterlife, devoid of basic medicines and functional equipment, while the elite fly to foreign capitals for the simplest medical procedures.
Our education system, once the envy of the continent, is now a shadow of its former self, with children in rural schools sitting on floorboards while the children of the powerful attend exclusive institutions abroad.
Are we not embarrassed when we drive on potholed road networks constructed by those we branded colonists, yet we have failed to maintain, let alone upgrade, them?
The most bitter irony of our 46 years of independence is the blatant looting of national resources.
In the colonial era, the wealth was siphoned off to London or Salisbury.
Today, it is siphoned into private offshore accounts and hidden behind complex networks of shell companies.
The gold, the diamonds, and the vast mineral wealth that should be funding our schools and hospitals are instead enriching a handful of individuals who have mastered the art of kleptocracy.
They claim to be the guardians of the revolution, yet they are the ones who have betrayed its most fundamental ideals.
They wrap themselves in the flag to hide the blood on their hands and the stolen riches in their pockets.
Yet those who actually held the gun and endured enemy bullets and bombs during the liberation struggle continue to wallow in abject poverty today, expected to survive on handouts from those who are pillaging the economy.
When we weigh these realities, we find that the structure of oppression has remained remarkably resilient.
The shape has shifted, the name has changed, and the color of the oppressor is now the same as the oppressed, but the experience for the common Zimbabwean is tragically familiar.
We did not fight a war of liberation simply to replace a white master with a black one.
We fought for a system where every person is equal before the law, where the resources of the land benefit the many rather than the few, and where the right to choose our leaders is sacred.
Until we achieve that, our independence remains a decorative facade.
The struggle for true freedom, the kind that can be felt in the stomach and seen in the mirror, is far from over.
As we mark this day, let us not be distracted by the parades and the speeches.
Let us instead commit ourselves to the unfinished business of 1980—the creation of a Zimbabwe that truly belongs to all its people, not just those with the power to steal it.
Are we to continue another decade as silent spectators to our own dispossession?
- 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