Who Owns the Future When the Youth Are Just Campaign Props?

Tired of being the glossy smile on a political poster, the ‘youth’ they name-drop when it’s time to chase votes or donors or dreams that were never built for us. I am tired of being the opening act at your summits, the dance troupe at your national celebrations, the one who reads the prepared speech about “hope” while you sip whisky and rehearse betrayal in the comfort of your bulletproof sedans. You wheel us out like ornaments, like cultural seasoning, and then stuff us back into unemployment, depression, or exile once the cameras are off.

They say “the youth are the future,” but they treat us like collateral. Like silence. Like props that forget they’re made of fire.

Because what is the future, if not stolen minutes wrapped in the language of patience? What is the future, if not a trick mirror used to delay our rage? We are always told to wait. Wait for your time. Wait until you’re older. Wait until you have experience. But experience in what? In betrayal? In complicity? In the fine art of auctioning dreams to the highest foreign bidder?

Let me say it plain: we are not the future—you are the past pretending it still has relevance.

You do not own tomorrow because you cannot even hold today without choking it. You pave roads only where cameras roll. You build schools without desks, clinics without medicine, jobs without wages, and then hand us t-shirts with your face on them as if your face will pay our rent. You give us rallies instead of rights, speeches instead of action, and hashtags instead of healing. But we are not fooled. We know a cage when it has WiFi. We know manipulation even when it’s dipped in youth programs and branded laptops that don’t switch on.

You want us docile. Educated just enough to follow orders, not to question orders. Employed just enough to be dependent, not to be dangerous. Inspired just enough to dream, but not so much that we become ungovernable. You want our creativity, not our critique. Our presence, not our power.

You say we are “the leaders of tomorrow” but you have turned leadership into a mausoleum. Into a shrine of recycled surnames and ancient loyalties. You do not step aside; you cement yourselves in place and call it “stability.” But stability for whom? For the landlord, maybe. For the looter. For the dealer in offshore accounts and fake development deals. But for us? The young? Stability looks like rot. Looks like queues. Looks like police tear gas and empty shelves and degrees that open no doors. It looks like leaving. Like selling your last name for a visa. Like taking photos at the airport because it might be the last time you breathe this air without choking.

You made exile a rite of passage and called it opportunity.

And you expect us to thank you for it?

You say we are ungrateful, but how can we be grateful for being denied the most basic of dignities? How can we clap while you auction the country like stolen cattle at a midnight sale? How can we praise a government that sees youth not as citizens, but as problems to manage, voices to mute, fists to break?

Do not call us apathetic when every protest is met with riot shields and bullets. Do not call us entitled when all we’ve asked for is the right to live a life that doesn’t feel like punishment. Do not tell us to go vote when the vote is a funeral for our hopes, when the ballot box is a coffin in national colours, when elections are decided before we even step into the queue.

You call us disruptive. You say we’re impatient.

Damn right we are.

Because the house is on fire. Because your time is up. Because the youth are not a waiting room—we are a wildfire. We are not sitting quietly for our turn. We are demanding what should have never been taken in the first place.

This is not about ambition. It is about survival. It is about reclaiming the right to name ourselves, to dream without asking for permission, to rebuild this country in our image—not yours. You do not own this land. You do not own our breath. You do not own the future.

We are not asking. We are declaring.

And let me speak now to my peers, to my generation—those who carry hope in one hand and rage in the other. We must stop dancing for their approval. Stop begging for crumbs from tables built with stolen wood. Stop confusing recognition with power. They will platform you, yes. But only as long as you entertain. The moment you question, they will pull the plug. They want your poetry, not your policy. Your style, not your substance.

We are not mascots.

We are architects.

And if the old house cannot be reformed, then we will build a new one. We will organize, strategize, occupy, and create. We will write manifestos in graffiti. We will teach each other the laws they hope we never understand. We will build apps and movements and cooperatives and resistance with the same hands they thought were only good for clapping and coding.

We will not wait to be invited.

We will not ask to be heard.

We will speak until the walls shake.

Because this country will not change by inspiration alone. It will change by interruption. And we, the youth, were born to interrupt.

We do not want to be included in a broken system. We want to dismantle it. We do not want to be the next corrupt minister or the next rich elite who forgets the township after the mansion is built. We want new blueprints. New ethics. New definitions of power. We want democracy that breathes. We want justice that feels like more than a speech. We want healing that doesn’t come with a price tag.

You had your chance. You had your era. And what did you do with it? You buried comrades in shallow graves and dreams in offshore accounts. You inherited freedom and turned it into debt. You turned slogans into scams. Heroes into hollow statues. You forgot that revolution is not a ceremony. It is a commitment. And you broke it.

But we are not broken.

We are rising. We are learning. We are unlearning. We are not perfect, but we are present. And we are not interested in inheriting your silence. We want a country that speaks back to us in our own language. That sees us. That believes in us not as props, but as protagonists.

We want a Zimbabwe that is not allergic to youth power. Not hostile to young women who lead. Not dismissive of disabled youth. Not suspicious of the youth who dare to live fully. We want a Zimbabwe that reflects all of us, not just the version you find convenient during election season.

So to every elder who still thinks they can sit on our necks while preaching legacy—be warned.

We are not your legacy. We are your reckoning.

We will no longer write essays begging for a future. We will write histories where we take it. We will no longer compete for scraps. We will write new recipes. New currencies. New contracts with each other that are not bound by political bloodlines or tribal inheritance or foreign instructions.

The youth are not lazy. We are exhausted. The youth are not lost. We are locked out. The youth are not indifferent. We are injured. And we are healing into something dangerous.

Something you cannot co-opt.

So don’t you dare try to tame us with grants and photo ops. Don’t you dare speak our language only in election years. Don’t you dare offer us positions in the same house that burned our fathers.

We want more than visibility. We want power. Not the power to oppress, but the power to transform. And we are ready.

This is not a request. It is a warning.

Do not mistake our poetry for politeness. Do not confuse our organizing for play. We are not props. We are not plot devices in your tired drama. We are the new authors. And the story we are writing now—it doesn’t need your permission.