Tendai Ruben Mbofana
The political theater surrounding the ruling party’s attempt to hijack Zimbabwe’s pre-colonial history has reached a dangerous level of historical revisionism.
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This trajectory demands an urgent and uncompromising counter-narrative.
Recently, ZANU-PF youth leaders proposed that Munhumutapa Day be recognized as an official national public holiday—an event already deliberately anchored around the birthday of President Emmerson Mnangagwa.
These calls are being framed under the pretext of celebrating historical legacy, heritage, and national pride, while simultaneously honoring the President as a modern-day leader whose policies supposedly reflect the vision of the ancient empire.
Party loyalists insist the day is meant to promote youth empowerment and economic advancement, yet this patriotic rhetoric merely disguises a transparent exercise in political sycophancy.
Elevating it to an official state holiday is not merely an exercise in political patronage; it is a profound insult to our collective heritage.
Celebrating our pre-colonial legacy is undoubtedly a noble pursuit.
Yet, institutionalizing a national holiday bound to the birthday of a sitting president weaponizes the memory of a great civilization.
Ultimately, it bends centuries of sovereign history simply to flatter an incumbent leader’s ego.
If Zimbabwe were ever to officially recognize a national day dedicated to the Munhumutapa Empire, that day must belong to the history of the empire itself.
Not to the natal day of a ruling party politician who possesses no verified ancestral or historical link to the Mutapa dynasty.
Conflating the birthday of President Mnangagwa with the legacy of Nyatsimba Mutota, the founder of the Mutapa Kingdom, is a cheapening of memory.
It reduces a vast epoch of indigenous statehood, sophisticated diplomacy, and regional trade to a glorified partisan birthday bash.
Genuine commemoration requires historical integrity.
If a day were ever set aside to commemorate the Mutapa Empire, the date must have proven relevance to the actual history of the empire itself.
An authentic national holiday would be anchored in significant historical milestones of indigenous statecraft and resistance.
For example, a legitimate commemoration could mark March 16, honoring the 1561 stance taken by Mwenemutapa Negomo Chirisamhuru to protect the sovereignty of his court against foreign religious and political subversion.
Alternatively, the nation could commemorate November, marking the 1693 joint military campaign when Mwenemutapa Nyakunembire allied with Changamire Dombo to expel foreign forces from the plateau and restore indigenous control.
The date could even honor the final anti-colonial stand led by Mwenemutapa Chioko Dambamupute in 1902, whose death ended centuries of royal resistance against foreign occupation.
Tethering the empire’s legacy to September 15, simply because a sitting president was born on that day, completely ignores these genuine historical milestones.
It is nothing short of a transparent attempt at self-serving opportunism.
Moreover, the ruling party’s narrative relies on a convenient and deeply flawed historical distortion: the idea that the ancient Mutapa Empire encompasses the entire geographical and cultural reality of modern-day Zimbabwe.
Historically, the Mutapa state never covered the whole of our contemporary nation.
At its height, its domain was concentrated primarily in the northern and eastern regions—stretching across areas like Dande, Mazowe, and Mt. Darwin, and reaching eastwards into parts of modern-day Mozambique.
It was a formidable kingdom, but it was not, and never was, the sole architect of the land between the Zambezi and the Limpopo.
To suggest that the Mutapa Empire alone represents the lineage of modern Zimbabwe is to deliberately erase the distinct, powerful polities that shaped our history before the arrival of European colonialism.
The Mutapa state was ultimately eclipsed and dismantled by the Rozvi Kingdom, founded by the military genius Changamire Dombo, whose warriors decisively expelled Portuguese influence from the interior and established dominance over the central and southern plateaus.
Decades later, the Rozvi hegemony gave way to the Ndebele Kingdom established by King Mzilikazi, a sovereign state that dominated the southwestern territories until its eventual conquest by British colonial forces.
If we are to be sincere and authentic about honoring Zimbabwe’s pre-colonial heritage, national recognition cannot be a selective exercise tailored for state propaganda.
True national unity requires that we also establish a Changamire Dombo or Rozvi Day, and a King Mzilikazi or Ndebele Day—each anchored on historically verified dates that honor the foundational contributions of those respective kingdoms.
By selectively exalting one regional empire while ignoring others, and then tethering that chosen empire to a sitting president, the state risks deepening historical fractures rather than healing them.
Distorting history to glorify a sitting leader is a dangerous path, setting a precedent where national identity is rewritten with every change of administration.
What makes this current maneuver even more egregious is that even the late ousted ruler Robert Mugabe, despite his 37-year authoritarian grip on the nation, refrained from such outright historical desecration.
Throughout his decades in power, Mugabe’s birthday on February 21 was celebrated by his party as the 21st February Movement and framed around youth affairs.
It was only after his removal from power in 2017 that the date was formalized as the Robert Gabriel Mugabe National Youth Day.
Love him or hate him, Mugabe never attempted to hijack the sacrosanct pre-colonial legacy of the nation by declaring his birthday to be “Sekuru Kaguvi Day” or “Mbuya Nehanda Day.”
He maintained a clear line between his personal persona and the foundational ancestral figures of our resistance.
The current administration’s attempt to claim the title of Munhumutapa for political aggrandizement is a dangerous precedent.
One is forced to ask: why is the party afraid of celebrating its leader’s birthday on its own merits?
Is he not honorable and respectable enough?
History belongs to the nation, to the ancestors who lived it, and to the generations who inherit it—it is not the personal real estate of any political party or individual.
The rich, diverse history of Zimbabwe—from Mutapa to Rozvi, from Ndebele to the modern liberation struggle—deserves solemn, accurate, and inclusive reverence.
Using our history as a political backdrop for partisan birthday celebrations is an act of historical vandalism that every Zimbabwean must reject.
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