#​This​Flag

Monday, April 19, 2016 seemed a day like any other. Until it wasn’t. I was sitting in my office at church after work wondering how I was going to cover my daughters’ school fees. The Bible and the Zimbabwean flag on my desk were staring at me. I thought back across the history of Zimbabwe.

A few months earlier, the Zimbabwean bank reserve had suffered a liquidity crisis. It had run out of US dollars and began printing bond notes. Zimbabweans had been disgruntled with the regime for decades due to entrenched corruption, expensive basic commodities, and a 90 percent unemployment rate (see: PRINCIPLE: Focus on basic needs). Reacting to the crisis, the government announced plans to introduce a new local currency, which would only further harm an economically strained population that had lost the value of its savings in a similar currency shuffle less than a decade earlier.

In light of this crisis, not only could I not afford to pay my daughters' school fees, but I was also facing the real possibility of not being able to put food on the table for them. I could no longer tolerate what our country had become and I wanted to let everyone know that I had enough! (see: PRINCIPLE: Anger works best when you have the moral high ground) I propped my phone on the Bible, I embraced the flag, and began recording a video that I later uploaded to my Twitter account, reminiscing about the meaning of the colours of the Zimbabwean flag.

#ThisFlag’s “movement moment” arrived when people were ready to take this battle off of the Internet and into the streets.

As kids we were taught that our flag represented a promise of prosperity through agricultural production (green), the wealth of minerals (yellow), the struggle for independence (red), the dignity of the black population (black), and peace (white). Yet, the state was compromising literally everything that this flag represented.

Thousands of people began sharing the video and re-posting it on other social media platforms like YouTube and Facebook. It resonated with Zimbabweans’ pains and hopes, and with ordinary citizen’s frustrations and aspirations. People were not only engaging with the video because it spoke to their truth, but more so because they wanted to reclaim their history. Over decades, the original meaning of the Zimbabwean flag had been lost, turned into a symbol used and abused by a ruling elite to accuse dissidents of betrayal or disloyalty. But people wanted to reclaim the promise of the flag and make prosperity in Zimbabwe a reality (see: PRINCIPLE: Recapture the flag).

Even though we knew that everyone who’d previously tried to oppose the regime had either gone missing or gotten hurt, two friends and I put together a plan to turn the viral excitement around the video into action. Fear was widespread due to state repression, so our first mission was to slowly yet steadily break the silence. We first asked people to take selfies with the Zimbabwean flag and post it on their social media accounts with the words “Hatichada, Hatichatya” (meaning, “we’ve had enough; we’re not afraid” in Shona) using the #ThisFlag hashtag. We ourselves then pledged to post a video every day (see: PRINCIPLE: Build strength through repetition), until Africa Day. We wanted to encourage people to imagine the impossible, and to think of challenging the regime as their individual moral duty (see: PRINCIPLE: We are all leaders).

At the time street protest was illegal, so the selfie action became a way for protestors to gather online and build their courage. Now, it was time to bring this virtual euphoria into the real world. Beginning with subtle acts of disobedience (see: PRINCIPLE: If protest is made illegal, make daily life a protest), people started carrying the Zimbabwean flag with them everywhere — to schools, streets, even to supermarkets. #ThisFlag’s “movement moment” arrived when people were ready to take this battle off of the Internet and into the streets (see: PRINCIPLE: Create online-offline synergy).

On May 25, the last day of the video pledge and Africa Day, the movement began taking on the regime’s institutions (see: PRINCIPLE: Escalate strategically). We challenged the President of the Reserve Bank to a public debate, and to our utmost surprise he accepted the challenge. More than a thousand people showed up at the debate, marking the first large-scale physical gathering of the movement. Since the people were technically invited by a government official, the police could not crack down on the gathering (see: PRINCIPLE: Use the law, don’t be afraid of it). After that, one action led to another until our movement called for a general strike on July 6, 2016. Street protest was still illegal, but nine million people across Zimbabwe remained at home, causing a total national shutdown.

In November 2017, widespread action and protests led by multiple youth groups and movements that had erupted in the wake of #ThisFlag brought an end to Robert Mugabe’s 37 years of iron-fist rule.

#ThisFlag is not me, Evan Mawarire; it is every person who took on the responsibility to act in their individual capacity. #ThisFlag is a movement by and for every Zimbabwean individual, every Zimbabwean organization, and every Zimbabwean party and union that is fighting for freedom and a dignified life. We won an important victory in November 2017, but our broader goals are yet to be achieved (see: THEORY: Palace coup) and our struggle continues.