Online Reporter
AS Zimbabwe prepares to gather in Maphisa for the 46th Independence Day celebrations on April 18, the nation stands at a profound intersection of memory and renewal.
The choice of Matabeleland South as the host province is itself a statement, one that reflects the Second Republic’s deliberate policy of decentralisation, ensuring that the fruits of independence are not merely abstract symbols but tangible realities felt in every corner of the land.
Yet beneath the celebratory banners and the stirring anthems lies a deeper question: What does it truly mean to tell the Zimbabwean story?
For too long, the narratives that have shaped our national consciousness have been fragmented, colonial monuments standing in granite silence alongside indigenous shrines that have whispered truths across millennia. The Matobo Hills, that ancient landscape of balancing rocks and sacred caves, encapsulates this complexity more powerfully than any other place.
It is here, in the shadow of Cecil John Rhodes’ grave at World’s View, that a different kind of historical ledger exists — one recorded not in bronze plaques, but in the spiritual geography of the indigenous peoples, in the shrines of Mwali/Mwari/Umdali, and in the unmarked graves of African soldiers who died in wars not of their making.
This year’s theme, “Zimbabwe at 46: Unity in Action and Development in Motion, Towards Vision 2030,” captures a governing philosophy that recognises the profound truth that independence cannot be celebrated in abstract. When President Mnangagwa announced that Maphisa would host the national celebrations, he did so with the understanding that development must be felt where people live.
The legacy projects taking shape across Matabeleland South are a testament to this vision. The Joshua Mqabuko Nyongolo Nkomo Vocational Training Centre rises not merely as infrastructure but as a promise to the youth.
The upgrading of science laboratories in schools across the province, the modernisation of Kezi Rural Hospital, the facelifts at historic institutions like Manama High and Minda Mission — these are the architecture of a nation that refuses to leave any community behind.
In a significant departure from the past, the Second Republic has taught us that infrastructure alone does not make a nation. The deeper work of nation-building requires confronting the complexities of our past with honesty and courage.
The graves of Rhodes, Coghlan and Jameson speak to ambitions of empire that were eventually overcome. The M.O.T.H. Memorial Shrine, with its roll call of African soldiers who served a foreign crown in distant wars, complicates any simple narrative of coloniser and colonised.
There are stories that colonialism sought to bury. These stories are the truths that true independence must restore.
The challenge before us, as we mark 46 years of independence, is to tell a Zimbabwean story that honours all its strands.
Not a story that ignores the graves of Rhodes — they exist, and their presence reminds us of what was overcome. Not a story that erases the African soldiers who died in the World Wars. Their sacrifice, however, complicated, is part of our journey. And not a story that subordinates our spiritual heritage to a centralised colonial narrative.
As the 46th Independence Day dawns, let the celebrations at Maphisa be not merely a commemoration of what was won in 1980, but a re-commitment to the unfinished work of telling the true Zimbabwean story.
