Is there anything even called a ‘real Zimbabwean’?

We need to finally confront uncomfortable truths we prefer to ignore.

The recent spectacle of state-aligned trolls and high-ranking propagandists questioning Doug Coltart’s nationality is not merely a localized case of political harassment.

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It is a symptom of a much deeper and more dangerous pathology within the Zimbabwean body politic.

When a human rights lawyer is assaulted during a public hearing on the Constitution of Zimbabwe Amendment (No. 3) Bill and the response from the state is not an investigation into the violence but a frantic interrogation of his “authenticity,” we have moved beyond politics into the realm of the absurd.

This obsession with “who belongs” is a tired, xenophobic weapon used by a ruling elite that has run out of ideas and is terrified of any voice that speaks truth to power.

It is a desperate attempt to gatekeep a nation that has never been a monolith and has always been defined by the very movement and migration that the state now seeks to criminalize in the public imagination.

If we are to follow the exclusionary logic of ZANU-PF to its logical conclusion, we must ask the uncomfortable question.

Who among us can truly lay claim to being an “authentic Zimbabwean” if the benchmark is a lack of foreign descent?

This land we call Zimbabwe is not a static enclosure of “pure” people who sprouted from the granite of the Matobo Hills.

It is a crossroads of history.

It is a tapestry of people who have been in a state of constant flux for over a millennium.

To suggest that one person is “more Zimbabwean” than another because of the color of their skin or the origin of their grandfather is to deny the very history that built this civilization.

The irony is that the very people shouting the loudest about “sons of the soil” are often the descendants of those who crossed the Limpopo or the Zambezi just a few generations ago.

Look at the history of the migrations that shaped this plateau.

The ancestors of those who have come to be known as the Shona people were themselves part of the great Bantu migrations, moving from the north and west centuries ago.

Crucially, they were not arriving in an empty land.

They moved into territory already inhabited by the San and Khoisan peoples, who were the true original inhabitants of this region.

These indigenous groups were displaced and pushed to the margins by the incoming Bantu waves.

Does that make them “foreigners” in the eyes of a radical purist?

Then came the upheaval of the Mfecane in the 19th century.

Mzilikazi and his followers fled the Zulu kingdom in present-day South Africa to establish the Ndebele state.

By the logic currently being weaponized against critics of the regime, the entire Ndebele nation would be classified as South African interlopers.

This is the intellectual bankruptcy of the “authenticity” argument.

It falls apart the moment it is applied to the very people who use it.

I speak from a place of deep personal connection to this paradox.

I am a Zimbabwean.

I was born here, as was my father.

Yet, my father’s father was a man from KwaZulu Natal in South Africa who trekked north during the time of the Pioneer Column.

My original surname is Mpofana, which means “young eland” in Zulu, but it was later Shonalized by local district commissioners to Mbofana.

In the eyes of the state’s digital attack dogs like “Tinoedza Zvimwe,” does my Zulu heritage make my critique of governance less valid?

Does the fact that my grandfather’s feet once walked the soil of Natal mean that I have no stake in the constitutional future of the country where I have spent my entire life?

This is the trap that the ruling party sets for us.

They want us to believe that our rights are tied to a bloodline rather than a birthright.

They want to create a hierarchy of citizenship where those who agree with the regime are “true” patriots and those who dissent are “foreign agents.”

The controversy over Doug Coltart is a calculated distraction.

The regime and its mouthpieces do not want to talk about the physical assault on activists at the Harare public hearings.

They do not want to discuss the legal gymnastics involved in Section 328(7) of the Constitution, which they are trying to bypass to extend the President’s time in office.

Instead, they want the public to argue about whether a white lawyer with a foreign-sounding name has the right to speak.

This is the classic playbook of the “patriotic” state.

When you cannot win a legal or moral argument, you attack the messenger’s identity.

You turn the conversation into a racial or tribal litmus test.

You invoke the ghost of Rhodes or the specter of “foreign interference” to avoid answering for the corruption and the erosion of democratic institutions that are the real threats to Zimbabwe’s sovereignty.

There is no such thing as a “real Zimbabwean” that exists outside of the social and legal construct of the state.

We are a nation of migrants, refugees, conquerors, and settlers.

We are Shona, Ndebele, Manyika, Tonga, Kalanga, Venda, and many others.

We are the descendants of Zulu warriors and South African trekkers.

We are the children of white farmers and black laborers.

What binds us together is not a mythological purity of blood but our shared commitment to the 2013 Constitution.

This document, which the government is so eager to dismantle, was a negotiated peace that recognized the diversity of our origins.

It explicitly protects the citizenship of those born in Zimbabwe, regardless of where their parents came from.

It was a rejection of the narrow, bigoted definition of national identity that caused so much pain in our past.

When we allow the state to define “authenticity,” we are handing them a weapon they will eventually use on everyone.

Today the target is Doug Coltart because he is white and vocal—notwithstanding the fact that his ancestors first came to Africa in the 1600s

Tomorrow it will be the Shangaan person whose ancestry is traced back to South Africa.

The day after, it will be the Sena person whose family came from Mozambique or Malawi.

For the Ndebele people, being labeled a “foreigner” isn’t a future threat—it was the precursor to Gukurahundi.

This is the nature of exclusionary nationalism.

It always needs a new enemy.

It always needs someone to “other” to maintain its grip on power.

The “Son of the Soil” rhetoric is a mirage.

It is a political tool for survival, not a quest for historical truth.

It is used to justify the exclusion of the diaspora from questioning and to silence the voices of those who demand accountability from the comfort of their Zimbabwean homes.

The definition of a true Zimbabwean should be found in the struggle for justice and the defense of the law.

A true Zimbabwean is someone who stands up against the manipulation of the Constitution to benefit an individual or a party.

A true Zimbabwean is someone who refuses to be intimidated by state-sponsored violence.

It does not matter if your name is Coltart or Mbofana.

It does not matter if your ancestors arrived in 1890 or 1090.

If you are here now, and you are fighting for the dignity and rights of every citizen, you are as “authentic” as they come.

The state’s attempt to use nationality as a muzzle is a sign of their own weakness.

They know that the arguments against the term-limit extensions are sound, so they have to resort to name-calling and identity politics.

We must reject this divisive narrative with the contempt it deserves.

We should not be asking whether Doug Coltart is “really” Zimbabwean.

We should be asking why the police have not arrested the thugs who beat him.

We should be asking why the government is so desperate to stay in power that it is willing to tear up the supreme law of the land.

Our identity as a people is not found in our DNA but in our collective will to build a country that works for everyone.

If we allow ourselves to be divided by these fake controversies over “foreign descent,” we are doing the regime’s work for them.

We are a nation of travelers who found a home.

Let us not allow those who have mismanaged that home to decide who has the right to speak about its future.

The eland may have come from the south, but it now grazes on Zimbabwean soil.

That is the only reality that matters.

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