AS the world commemorated Human Rights Day this week, Zimbabwe stands at crossroads — once again forced to confront its uncomfortable truth.
Our constitutional promises are nothing more than paper-deep, hollowed out by a state that continues to use colonial repressive laws, 45 years after independence.
This year’s commemorations come under the banner “Our Everyday Essentials”, a global reminder that human rights are not lofty ideals but the very basics that allow societies to breathe freedom, justice, dignity and equality.
Yet here at home, these essentials have become contested terrain.
Just this year, two journalists, including myself, were arrested for doing what the Constitution explicitly protects: informing the public.
Lawyers have been unequivocal that these arrests violated not only Sections 61 and 62 of our Constitution but also the African Charter on Human and Peoples’ Rights, the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights and the Universal Declaration of Human Rights.
It is an irony of historic proportions that a nation birthed out of a liberation struggle for rights and dignity is now consuming its own freedoms with alarming appetite.
From shrinking civic space to weaponised laws such as the Criminal Law (Codification and Reform) Act and the Private Voluntary Organisations Amendment Act, Zimbabwe has drifted even further from its reformist pretences.
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We are a democracy in name but not in practice — a truth reflected starkly in global assessments that now classify us as “not free”.
But Zimbabwe is not alone in this regression. The world is witnessing a dangerous backslide. Human rights are under siege — from Pyongyang to Gaza, and from Dar es Salaam to Moscow. What is happening in some of the most powerful nations reminds the world that even long-standing democracies can falter.
Conflicts rage in the Middle East, Sudan and Ukraine with catastrophic humanitarian tolls. Journalists are being jailed, attacked and silenced across the globe at a rate unseen in years.
Yet, Zimbabwe cannot hide behind global turmoil.
Our history is too bloody, our wounds too deep and our promises too sacred. What has changed is only the vocabulary of those in power.
Human Rights Day is not a ceremonial date — it is a mirror. And the reflection staring back at us is uncomfortable: a nation still afraid of its own citizens, still unwilling to let dissent live, still policing thought and punishing speech.
But it is also an urgent and uncompromising call.
Zimbabwe must recommit to constitutionalism, end the criminalisation of journalism, protect civic space and uphold the dignity of every citizen.
Human rights are not favours granted by the state. They are essential, universal and inalienable.
If we fail to defend them now, we risk losing the last fragments of the freedom our forebears fought for.
