The State of Peace in Zimbabwe: A Nation in Crisis
According to the 2025 State of Peace in Zimbabwe report by ZimRights, over 71% of citizens have suffered political or social violence in the past year. This alarming figure highlights a deep-rooted crisis that has left the nation in turmoil. The report serves as a stark reminder of the challenges facing Zimbabwe and the urgent need for change.
Two significant issues have emerged in recent reporting — severe waves of violence that seem to defy logic outside the context of election seasons, and the rise of new forms of looting through the airline ticketing system. While these issues may appear unrelated, they are interconnected, revealing a government that has lost its way or, worse, its sense of direction.
The failure of the government to protect its citizens from physical harm and from the actions of powerful individuals who have turned public assets into personal fiefdoms is deeply concerning. Without those entrusted with our lives raising their antennas to gauge the dangers that stalk us, we are nothing but an abandoned lot. We are no different from animals roaming in no man’s land.
It becomes even more disheartening when officials sent to confront looters join the looting party. This raises serious questions about the type of creatures we have become.
Zimbabwe stands at a dangerous crossroads. As reported in this edition, the country is torn between the violence that silences its citizens and the corruption that empties its vaults. Both forces, working in unholy alliance, have reduced the nation to a theatre of fear and deprivation.
This statistic is not just a number to collect and craft policy around. It is a scar on the conscience of a nation that once fought for dignity, not domination. It tells of a country that has normalised brutality as a tool of governance, and silence as a form of survival.
How can a people prosper under such conditions? How can development take root where fear has become policy? Zimbabwe’s powerful continue to promise peace, yet deploy intimidation; they preach patriotism, yet plunder the Treasury. The regime must end this double life. I mean the violence in the streets and the looting in boardrooms.
The ZimRights report exposes deep rot. It states that only 17.9% of citizens trust law enforcement. The police, once protectors of the people, are now seen as agents of repression or negligence. That mistrust has spread across every institution. Churches, traditional leaders, and NGOs now do the work the government should be doing — mediating conflicts and calming communities. But remember, when faith in the state collapses, society fractures.
This culture of violence is not accidental. It is inherited. From the Gukurahundi massacres to the violent elections that have punctuated every decade since independence, Zimbabwe’s rulers have used coercion to protect privilege. As ZimRights rightly notes, the colonial architecture of oppression was never dismantled. We moved in in 1980 and repurposed it. In my view, today’s violence is yesterday’s machinery, redeployed.
The cost has been devastating. A nation born out of the promise of liberation is now chained by its own liberators. The dream of freedom has become a nightmare of fear, surveillance, and political intolerance. Citizens speak in whispers. Civil society walks on eggshells. And investors, both local and foreign, flee a country where order and policy can vanish overnight.
But violence is not the only weapon killing Zimbabwe. We are also in the grip of shocking corruption, practised so openly it feels like people are selling bananas. The economy has become a vast sieve, draining billions while the nation starves. Over US$1.5 billion in gold is smuggled out every year. Another US$2 billion vanishes through illicit financial flows. Add billions more lost through poor tax administration, arbitrary regulations, and punitive treatment of business.
The result is an economy rich in resources but bankrupt in morality. The same state that unleashes police on peaceful citizens cannot police cartels siphoning national wealth. As the auditor-general’s reports show, every ministry leaks, and every parastatal bleeds. Every promise of reform dissolves into impunity.
Now even tourism, a supposed bright spot, is bleeding. As we reveal this week, 72% of travel agencies operate outside official billing systems, rerouting foreign payments offshore. Millions of dollars are disappearing while the government watches. That is not negligence. It sounds like complicity.
The state cannot claim to build peace while tolerating corruption. It cannot talk of patriotism while its own agents sabotage the economy. Violence and looting are two sides of the same coin. The first crushes dissent, the other finances decadence.
Zimbabwe needs accountability. Leaders who speak of peace must prove it by punishing those who break it. Politicians who parade as patriots must account for the money vanishing under their watch.
If the regime continues to rule by fear and theft, it will preside over a country drained not only of money but of faith, talent, and hope. The youth already vote with their feet. Peace will never thrive in a climate of injustice. Prosperity will never come from a system that rewards plunder. It is time to stop the violence, and to seal the sieve.
Until then, Zimbabwe will remain a wounded nation: bleeding in silence, ruled by fear, and robbed by those sworn to protect it.