This study examines the construction of a new political order in Zimbabwe through the prism of veterans of the war of liberation. My previous work, Zimbabwe's Guerrilla War: Peasant Voices, focused exclusively on rural people's experiences of the guerrilla war. I remained curious about the guerrillas because I knew them only through the accounts of rural people in which they figured as both benefactors and brutal bullies. My interest was further piqued by what seemed a puzzle. On the one hand, the image of the guerrillas in the Zimbabwe media, especially from 1988 when their voices first became prominent in the public arena, was of “forgotten and neglected heroes” of the liberation war. On the other hand, political actors, including the regime and the former guerrillas themselves, consistently invoked their war credentials to legitimate their claims. How, I wondered, could a regime which based its legitimacy on the war of liberation treat the liberators so scandalously?

The puzzle of revered but neglected ex-combatants, this study will argue, was a manifestation of internal politics. The veterans' lament that they were ignored and forgotten war heroes was both an important symbolic resource and a strategy to seek privileged access to state resources. Moreover, veterans' claims to have been forgotten concealed how those who belonged to the ruling party had already benefited, often at the expense of guerrilla veterans of a minority party.