Zimbabwe belongs to all of us

Let it be said without fear, without soft language, and without the usual self-censorship that has paralysed public discourse in Zimbabwe: this country has been hijacked by political patronage, tribal manipulation, and a predatory elite that survives by keeping ordinary citizens divided, desperate, and dependent.  

Zimbabwe does not belong to Shona or Ndebele, nor to any ethnic grouping that politicians conveniently invoke during elections and abandon immediately after, it belongs to all of us, yet is governed as though citizenship is conditional and dignity must be earned through loyalty. 

We have constructed a political economy where survival is no longer linked to productivity or innovation, but to obedience, praise-singing, and proximity to power.  

Runners, bootlickers, and professional loyalists orbit ministers, party heavyweights, and so-called mbingas, not because they lack talent or ambition, but because the system punishes independence and rewards submission.  

This is not governance; it is feudalism repackaged for the modern age. It has turned grown men and women into beggars, stripped them of dignity, and taught an entire generation that merit is irrelevant without political alignment. 

The unspoken, but widely understood truth is brutal: if you do not belong to the ruling political networks, if you are not connected, not loud enough in your loyalty, not ethnically or regionally convenient, then you are excluded from land, tenders, jobs, protection, and opportunity.  

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This is how inequality is deliberately engineered. This is how silence is bought.  

This is how power sustains itself while the majority struggle to survive in an economy designed to break them. 

Tribalism has been cynically weaponised as a political tool, not because leaders believe in it, but because it is effective in distracting the masses. 

Shona versus Ndebele rhetoric is resurrected whenever accountability is demanded, whenever corruption is exposed, whenever citizens begin to ask why the same political faces recycle power while hospitals collapse, schools decay, and the currency disintegrates.  

Ethnic division is not an accident in Zimbabwe, it is strategy. 

Classism then completes the cycle of exclusion.  

The politically connected accumulate obscene wealth in plain sight while preaching patience and patriotism to the poor.  

Youths with ideas are told to wait. Graduates are told to volunteer.  

Vendors are chased from the streets.  

Meanwhile, those who have mastered the art of loyalty extraction accumulate farms, contracts, fuel allocations, and state protection.  

This is not economic hardship by chance; it is economic violence by design. 

No Zimbabwean is more Zimbabwean than another.  

Yet our politics is built on hierarchy, who matters, who belongs, who can speak, who must endure.  

Citizenship has been turned into a privilege instead of a right.  

Elections come and go, but the structure remains unchanged because power is not contested on ideas, but inherited through networks of patronage and fear. 

The tragedy is that Zimbabwe is not poor in resources, intellect, or labour,  it is poor in ethical leadership.  

Our greatest enemy is not sanctions, not outsiders, but a political culture that feeds on desperation, suppresses dissent, and substitutes nationalism with loyalty to individuals.  

A nation cannot be built on slogans while its people are starving for dignity. 

The spirit of ubuntu has been hollowed out and replaced with political obedience.  

Umuntu ngumuntu ngabantu has no meaning in a system where humanity is conditional and survival is politicised.  

Until Zimbabweans refuse to be divided by tribe, bribed by proximity, or silenced by fear, this cycle will persist. 

Zimbabwe belongs to all of us, not to political parties, not to ethnic majorities, not to powerful families.  

And until that truth is reflected in how power, resources, and opportunity are distributed, this country will remain trapped in a permanent crisis of its own making.