Heroes Day: A Tale Of Two Tents

Heroes day was born at Okahandja, raised there and kept its roots firmly planted – until the government came along, adopted it, renamed it and promptly sent it on a national tour from which it has never returned.

It reminds me of those travelling circuses that leave their hometown, dazzle crowds across the land, and eventually forget why they even existed in the first place.

Just to be clear, I’m not talking about the heroes themselves. I’m talking about the day. Sit down!

So now we have two versions: there’s the national Heroes Day – a sort of travelling roadshow that refuses to pitch its tent in the one town where everyone expects it – and then there’s the old day, now renamed Herero Day, the Okahandja original, which has stood the test of time for over a century. It’s a permanent fixture, an unbroken ritual, an institution that has outlasted governments, budgets and political slogans.

Yes, it was always ‘Eyuva roZombangane’.

That, my friends, is the saga of our two Heroes Days. One is grassroots, defiant and planted in living memory. The other is an official affair with a large budget but no fixed address, wandering around the country like a lost tourist who misplaced his map.

Maybe you will understand it if put it this way: one Heroes Day went to public school and the other went to private school with government grants.

This makes me wonder how they even decide the destination. Is it wherever political unity needs urgent CPR? Or whichever region feels restless before an election? Or maybe it’s just whichever venue promises the juiciest subsistence and travel allowances. Don’t argue with me, just sit down.

The irony is hard to miss. This national holiday is supposed to unite us, yet it’s built on avoidance. It’s meant to bring us together, but it tiptoes around Okahandja as if afraid of a head-on collision with history.

Picture it: the official motorcade rolling into town on 26 August, bumping into the Red Flag procession. Imagine women dressed in colonial-era uniforms, in sweeping Victorian gowns.

What a showdown that would be. Two Heroes Days staring each other down like parents fighting over whose child is the ‘real’ hero.

“Mine fought harder and died first.”

“Yes, but mine fought later and better.”

So, the government version remains a mystery. One year it’s at Katima Mulilo, the next at Keetmanshoop. It’s like a farewell tour that never ends. Same speeches, same monuments, same liberation-struggle soundtrack.

Meanwhile, Okahandja continues its own show with quiet dignity, proving that real memory doesn’t need a stage or state sponsorship.

The other thing that beats the Zorba out of my system is this: no matter where the travelling circus pitches its tent, every single speech begins by solemnly reading the names of those buried at Okahandja, as if those graves were the fountain of all freedom. Yet the actual convoy will drive past Okahandja faster than a minister late for a fuel allowance.

They tip their hats to the ancestors in words, but when it comes to showing up at the graves themselves, suddenly it’s a case of “let’s not go there”. It’s almost like watching a madman sprinting away from his own shadow, terrified it might catch him.

Now, truth be told, the Okahandja gathering has its own problems and is fading in some ways. That’s, however, another story on its own. Don’t get excited. Sit down!

The official Heroes Day, on the other hand, keeps chasing legitimacy. It’s like a cover band pretending they wrote the original song. Sure, the crowd claps, but everyone knows who composed the tune. That shadow, the one cast from Okahandja, never really goes away.

History has a way of circling back, though. One day, when votes are slipping and discontent is rising in the centre, Heroes Day will ‘come home’ to Okahandja.

The government will stage it as a grand reconciliation, a national healing, a historic reunion. But let’s not kid ourselves. It will be purely transactional, a one-night-stand situationship.

Once the last ballot is counted, the roadshow will vanish again, leaving Okahandja with its own heroes and its own history, untouched, unbothered and un-co-opted. Until the next election cycle, of course.

And remember, you are reading a newspaper column, not sitting at a political rally. Sit down!

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