Zimbabwe Declares Inaugural Munhumutapa Day, Rebrands Investment Fund

Tendai Ruben Mbofana Today marks the inaugural “Munhumutapa Day,” a national public holiday declared by President Emmerson Mnangagwa to fall on his own September 15 birthday. To directly receive my articles please join my WhatsApp Channel on: https://whatsapp.com/channel/0029VaqprWCIyPtRnKpkHe08 Across state media, a carefully curated narrative is being deployed, casting the president as the modern incarnation of the Munhumutapa—a living bridge to Zimbabwe’s glorious past. Or, as prominent Zimbabwean theatre guru, film producer, and social justice activist Daves Guzha corrected me this morning: Mwenemutapa. The sovereign wealth fund has been rebranded as the Mutapa Investment Fund, and state rhetoric increasingly leans on the imagery of a revived pre-colonial empire to project political legitimacy and uninterrupted sovereignty. Supporters of this royal transformation—led by self-styled Pan-Africanists like Joshua Maponga—frame the move as an essential act of decolonization. Their argument sounds compelling on the surface: Western imperialism destroyed our Indigenous state systems and forced alien democratic institutions upon us. Consequently, they contend that the Western government system should have been completely dismantled at independence in 1980 to restore our ancestral kingdoms, rather than embracing Western democracy. Yet this ideological defense relies on a glaring historical fabrication: the Mwenemutapa Empire collapsed on the Zimbabwean plateau in the 1690s—a full two centuries before British colonial forces marched into the territory. This 200-year historical void completely undermines the “decolonization” narrative and demands an uncomfortable question. Who decided which pre-colonial kingdom gets to be resurrected to define a 21 st -century republic, and why were the kingdoms actually defeated by colonial powers erased from the equation? When British imperialists occupied the land in 1890, they did not overthrow the Mwenemutapa. That empire had long lost its dominance on the plateau, driven into the Zambezi valley by the Rozvi Empire under Changamire Dombo. For over a century, the Rozvi established a formidable state that constructed intricate stone polities, unified vast territories, and successfully kept foreign powers at bay. When the Rozvi state weakened in the 19 th century, it was succeeded by the Ndebele Kingdom under Mzilikazi and later Lobengula. It was King Lobengula’s state centered at Bulawayo that directly confronted, negotiated with, and was ultimately destroyed by Cecil John Rhodes’ British South Africa Company. If the goal were truly to “restore the indigenous governance structures destroyed by colonization,” logic dictates that the nation would look to the Ndebele Kingdom or the Rozvi state—the actual sovereign entities dismantled by European invasion. Instead, the self-appointed guardians of Pan-Africanism and their political patrons perform a massive historical leapfrog. They jump backward past two hundred years of living, documented history to exhume a 17 th -century feudal empire. This selection is neither accidental nor an innocent celebration of heritage; it is a calculated political maneuver. The Rozvi and Ndebele states represent complex histories of regional power shifts, ethnic integration, and direct anti-colonial resistance. But the Mwenemutapa title serves a far more calculated purpose. First, it relies on a deliberate historical fabrication that ignores both geography and chronology. The Great Zimbabwe state was centered in the southern highveld and peaked between the 13 th and 15 th centuries. In contrast, the Mwenemutapa empire emerged later as a distinct polity hundreds of kilometers to the north in the Zambezi Valley. Second, it weaponizes the myth that the Mwenemutapa were the ones who constructed Great Zimbabwe, framing them as Karanga ancestors centered in Masvingo who ruled over a vast superpower stretching into modern-day Zambia and Mozambique. By directly linking Mnangagwa—