IN the coming week we commemorate and celebrate our gallant sons and daughters of the soil.
On Heroes Day we will celebrate both the living and departed who served and continue to serve the country diligently.
It is a day we must revere.
And we must celebrate beyond this day; every day must be a celebration of our heroes.
Our detractors often hold the mistaken view that the Third Chimurenga, which saw us reclaiming our land and the ongoing economic empowerment programme are some spontaneous explosions without a historical past.
They see these programmes as some violent process against a saintly people driven by a ‘mad’ leadership.
Because some of us have chosen not to celebrate and continue with the struggle but go into bed with our erstwhile colonisers, they propagate the notion that there were no other voices that demanded land and a fruitful life for the owners of the land.
They conveniently forget that whole generations perished and gave up so much so that we could be today.
Our achievements today, our capabilities, our skills, which some of us use to the detriment of our people, we gained directly as a result of the efforts of those we have ‘forgotten’.
The departed and living veterans of the struggle from various spheres are a constituency that the West would like us to forget.
But we will never forget.
We remember and celebrate characters like Chief Rekayi Tangwena.
Years of colonial power had mentally conditioned many to accept that our own estrangement from our land and our resources was a divine truth.
But leaders such as Chief Tangwena saw through the colonial hypocrisy and began fighting back through resisting evictions from ancestral lands that had been going on for decades and had become a norm.
The witty little man, but with a giant spirit, from Kaerezi engaged the colonial power.
While fear drove some as far away as possible from the struggle old men such as Chief Tangwena did not cower and that makes him a cultural icon.
Men like Herbert Chitepo and Robert Mugabe had it going for them.
They were learned, had good jobs, they could have lived a rosy life, without grief, but these men were not content with their own joy.
They left it all, walked away, came back home, to grief.
These men wanted everyone, wanted their people to also lead and live respectable lives.
Thus they gave up what they had achieved through their own strong will and unbreakable spirits.
And came back home to serve their people and they did not cringe, did not back away from the horrors they experienced at the hands of the colonisers.
Heroes Day is more than a holiday.
It cannot just be a day to take a break from the daily grind.
It cannot just be a day to get inebriated.
It is a day for self-introspection, a day for reflection.
Do you know who you are, where you have come from, where you are going, what you will leave for future generations?
Do you know on whose shoulder you stand and on whose back you ride?
Do you give a thought to the life snuffed so that yours could shine bright?
The gallant sons and daughters of the soil laid down their lives not for glory and they sought no accolades.
What drove them was a desire to dislodge a cruel system that inhibited you and I from realising our full potential.
As much as they thought about us, as much as they desired us to live and lead happy and fruitful lives so must we remember them, remember their gallant deeds.
Please be safe, do not drink and drive.