Zimbabweans, We Are on Our Own. But Is That Necessarily a Bad Thing?

I have been wrestling with an uncomfortable thought about Zimbabwe. Have we become so good at surviving that we have forgotten how to demand better?

Our grandparents risked everything fighting colonial rule. They sacrificed their lives for freedom. Yet here we are, generations later, still struggling for the dignity that freedom was supposed to bring. We are a peace-loving people. We don’t want war or bloodshed. But have we become so afraid of confrontation that even standing up peacefully for our rights feels impossible?

When resilience becomes acceptance

Zimbabweans can survive almost anything. Tinoita plan kusvika plan yacho yaneta: we will keep making plans until the plan itself gets tired. When jobs disappear, we hustle. When salaries fail us, we improvise. When opportunities dry up, we leave the country. Our resilience is remarkable. But at what point does resilience become acceptance of the unacceptable?

At what point does resilience become acceptance of the unacceptable?

While ordinary Zimbabweans struggle to survive, the political and economic elite continue to thrive. And the international community? Let’s not fool ourselves. Countries protect their interests. Zimbabwe has gold, platinum, lithium and resources the world needs. A country can be stable for investors while its citizens are quietly drowning.

Who is looking out for the ordinary Zimbabwean?

So who is looking out for the ordinary Zimbabwean? The mother selling tomatoes at four in the morning? The unemployed graduate? The pensioner who has nothing to show for a lifetime of work? The parent abroad raising someone else’s children just to feed their own?

The wealthy have options. The politically connected have opportunities. And those of us in the diaspora have somewhere else to turn. But what about those who have nowhere to go?

Maybe we are not cowards. Maybe we are exhausted.

I am not advocating violence. Zimbabwe has seen enough bloodshed. But perhaps years of fear, hardship and disappointment have convinced us that collective action is pointless. Maybe we are not cowards. Maybe we are exhausted. And when everyone is fighting to survive another day, who has the strength left to fight for a better tomorrow?

Zimbabweans, we are on our own. No foreign government, political messiah or powerful individual is guaranteed to rescue us. Perhaps our next liberation struggle is not about taking up arms, but about finding our collective voice again: organising peacefully, demanding accountability and refusing to normalise suffering.

More questions than hope

I don’t have all the answers. Right now, I have more questions than hope. But I keep wondering: what good is owning a country if its people cannot enjoy the fruits of belonging to it?

Perhaps being on our own isn’t the tragedy. Perhaps the real tragedy is knowing we are on our own, and still refusing to stand together.

About the author

Pat Ricia is a Zimbabwean writer and entrepreneur based in the UK, writing about faith, purpose, womanhood and intentional living. Read her story.