By Charles T.M.J. Dube

ON Heroes’ Day, we celebrate the lives of those who died for our liberation.
Likewise, real heroes are only those who died in action for the betterment of this nation, and more so, those who died in the pursuance of our liberation struggle or for the betterment of Zimbabwe after the armed struggle.
In this celebration, we join hands with our comrades who likewise also participated in these heroic acts whose names are guaranteed on the role of honour, provided they do not deviate from the objectives of the struggle.
The objectives of the struggle are very clear.
The fight was for the right of the indigenous people to, ‘govern or mis-govern their own affairs’ as Kwame Nkrumah would put it.
It was also to uplift the living standards of present and future generations.
Those who took up the struggle and will, unto death, defend these two causes will die heroes, wherever they are buried, provided they do not violate the principle of pain, endurance and sacrifice that drove them into the struggle in the first place.
Such pain and suffering must be predicated on a clear roadmap to the attainment of better freedoms and living standards for present and future generations.
In fighting for better living standards for the here and now, we must also take into account our children and many generations after us.
In economics this is referred to as user costs, that is, the opportunity costs of harnessing finite national resources now and not for future generations.
We cannot afford to be careless about our future generations’ future in the quest to appease and please the current generation.
Thousands of our nationals died in neighbouring countries.
Many died in prisons and at the war front, civilians and combatants alike, all in the pursuit of our freedom.
They gave up their lives for our freedom.
These were selfless people who were prepared to die for your freedom.
The only way we can celebrate their sacrifice is by living our lives in ways that do not compromise the objectives they died for.
This we can only achieve by committing to building our country and continent.
We have indicated that we are prone to pursuing a parallel agenda to the people’s cause.
That is a human weakness and, like we indicated on this subject before, we are all vulnerable, given that even Christ, before the commencement of his mission and in the Garden of Gethsemane, went through similar thought processes.
It is greed, corruption, self-interests and self-preservation that can only spoil the noble objectives for which our comrades died.
We must have the national interest in whatever we do.
We cannot afford to participate in the looting of our natural resources with aliens.
We must fight for the protection and defence of what is good for our people and not just ourselves and our immediate families.
That is all the sacrifice that is being demanded of us in honour of those who died for this country.
And yet there will always be contradictions.
We must understand here the principle of permanent revolution.
If you are Christian like me, you will understand this principle better as there is a perennial war between the forces of light and darkness.
Likewise, there will always be a struggle between the forces of negation and progress.
In the natural Marxian theory of change, there will be contradictions that will lead to movement from a thesis to an antithesis and eventually to a synthesis.
Unfortunately, in a post-colonial economy, the struggle is not about moving from where you are as it takes the form of forces that will be trying to drag you back to a neo-colonial state.
The only healthy contradictions are those about how to get us to the future.
In this, it is important to be clear on how to define our real enemies.
Those who fight over how to ascend to an agreed common agenda cannot be demonised as enemies.
It is only those who want to move us back to servitude under neo-colonial arrangements who should clearly be understood as such.
There was a cause for the liberation struggle.
Likewise, even your erstwhile enemy will not fight you without a cause. There has to be a cause, whether founded or not.
When NATO invaded Libya and Iraq, there was a cause – justified or otherwise.
In the pursuit of our economic and political revolution, there too must be a cause.
The difference though is that our cause must be love-driven.
Our fights therefore must not be without a cause.
Like I intimated, in service, there will always be pain and that pain has humbling effects on those who genuinely serve and lead in the struggle.
If we are humble enough, we will continually re-examine our causes to see if they are love-driven.
We have common interests as Zimbabweans.
Let our contradictions be over how to achieve these common interests more than the pursuit or preservation of power for parallel agendas which run contrary to the objectives of the struggle for independence.
A hero is one who will, up to the time of his death, not deviate from the path of serving national interests whether I agree with him or not, while a traitor will remain one who works against his national interests knowingly or unknowingly.
Charles T.M.J. Dube is a development economist with interests in Policy Studies and International Development.