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A specific day to celebrate and think about our heroes each year is not intended to forget them the rest of the year, since we need to be emulating them every day if our country is to progress, but is rather intended to concentrate our minds and our celebrations.

There have been changes since the first Heroes Day after independence, when the day concentrated almost solely on those who had struggled and died during the long nationalist struggle and those who had fought and died in the Liberation War, and that was right as we had just emerged victorious from those two decades.

Since then we have extended the range of the hero. There have been those who made immense contributions to our post-independence Zimbabwe, and who have been declared liberation, provincial or national heroes as a result.

President Mnangagwa has been pushing the recognition of heroes back, into the original resistance to colonial conquest and the First Chimurenga, by making those who were involved more than just names in dusty history books, but living people who decided to take action and resist the invasion of their country for the profit of people like Cecil Rhodes.

So we have Mbuya Nehanda, who played a critical role in the First Chimurenga, and General Mtshane Khumalo who had a couple of years earlier been the most successful commander of local forces when the British South Africa Company decided to conquer the Ndebele kingdom and he destroyed the substantial advance guard at the Battle of Pupu. There are many others from the 1890s who need to be honoured.

We also have those who struggled during the years of the most severe oppression, often through the labour movement as they battled to moderate the severe oppression of the black worker or battled to get at least some extra land, even if bad land, for the growing population doomed to subsist on the native reserves.

The concept of heroism is not just the leadership or those who made the most spectacular actions, but the many who refused to be browbeaten in colonial days, or be seduced into a life of despair or libertine excesses in more modern times.

Instead they have got on with what they need to do, building Zimbabwe brick by brick to quote President Mnangagwa by living productive lives and by looking after their families and generally living a decent life despite all the temptations and pressures.

It was the same in the days of the nationalist struggle and the Liberation War. A few set the course at the beginning, but were joined by so many as the years passed and who were inspired to do something. We perhaps need to remember that many of the young men and women who crossed the border to volunteer to fight had gone through what was then a major privilege of high school. 

But they rejected the option intended for them by the settler regime of being the clerks and junior operatives and “boss boys” of that regime and instead wanted full freedom without seeing the final victory. 

Then there were all those hundreds of thousands who even after 70 years and more of colonialism, and who had been born and brought up in a country where it was made quite clear that they were unfit for a better life, who rejected that social order and who risked their life, liberty and meagre property to aid the liberation forces.

Zanla and Zipra would not have been able to operate effectively and eventually victoriously unless they had received total backing from that vast army of unsung heroes who fed them, hid them when necessary and offered total support. 

That support had been built up among people who wanted to see a victory, and while the initial stages of the armed struggle produced their share of heroes, it was not until there was that sea of support for the forces to swim in that the regime was finally defeated.

And the people suffered. A majority of the dead from the Liberation War were civilians, some “killed in crossfire” as the regime callously put it, often deliberated targeted as “trouble makers” in extra-judicial killings, and some bombed in the refugee camps where they had been forced to flee. 

Plus there were those who actually went through the courts and were executed under the draconian laws of the regime. 

And we must never forget the vast numbers rounded up and forced to submit to the total squalor of what were inaccurately called protected villages, where entire families were squashed into a few square metres without sanitation behind the wire many kilometres from their fields.

It was not all solid backing of the liberation movements. The regime put up a lot of posters promising to pay what were by contemporary standards high sums for information, more than a year’s pay for many, and some did submit. 

But what might startle those who in this modern age are ready to accept cash from outsiders to undermine their country, or indulge in corrupt behaviour to cheat their fellow citizens, is how few submitted. 

The liberation forces could not have fought effectively, let alone won, if any but a tiny minority had sold out.

And this general heroism needs to be remembered and emulated today. We talk about the epidemic of drug and substance abuse, especially among the young, but there are many who resist the social pressure to “just have a try”, and instead concentrate on building a decent life. We have to help those who have fallen by the wayside get back on the road, but we must also remember that there is a road because so many carried on.

We have corruption, which is being beaten back now to almost insignificant levels, but we need to remember that we still have a functioning country because so many refused to be tempted and did their duty. The corrupt businesspeople hit the headlines, but the majority who run honest businesses offering good service are the ones who build our country.

So when we remember the extraordinary heroism on Heroes Day, we also need to remember the “ordinary” heroism of the so many who despite all life’s problems strive day after day for a better country, and a better world. Without them the extraordinary are just making a gesture. With a whole country we change the world.