Why Queen Elizabeth High School Must Be Renamed?

by Princess Eugiene Majuru

Fellow Zimbabweans, Distinguished elders, educators, parents, and young people,I stand before you today not out of anger, but out of historical responsibility.

More than forty years after independence, we must still ask ourselves a difficult but necessary question: Why do colonial names still dominate our schools, our streets, and our minds?

Queen Elizabeth High School is one such example.

Let us be honest with ourselves.

Queen Elizabeth was not part of our liberation story.

She did not walk our soil in resistance.

She did not bleed for this land.

Her name represents an empire that colonised, dispossessed, and dehumanised our ancestors.

So why, in independent Zimbabwe, do our children still rise every morning to wear a uniform bearing the name of a colonial monarch?

This is not a neutral issue.

Names are not decorations.

Names are power. Names are memories.

Names are education.

When a school is named after a British queen, it silently teaches our children that greatness comes from elsewhere — that authority is foreign, that excellence wears a colonial face.

That is a lie we must urgently correct.Why Mbuya NehandaI propose that Queen Elizabeth High School be renamed Mbuya Nehanda High School.

Mbuya Nehanda was not merely a historical figure — she was a spiritual force, a revolutionary leader, and a mother of resistance.

She stood against the British Empire when defeat meant death.

She was executed for refusing to surrender her land, her people, and her sovereignty.

Her final words — “Mapfupa angu achamuka” — were not poetry.

They were prophecies.

And indeed, her bones rose in the Second Chimurenga, in 1980, and they must continue to rise in our institutions, our classrooms, and our national consciousness.

What greater lesson can a school teach than courage?

What better role model for our girls and boys than a woman who chose dignity over submission?

Decolonising Education Is Not Erasing History

Some will say renaming erases history.

I say the opposite: retaining colonial names erases African history every day.We are not calling for the destruction of archives.

We are calling for the restoration of balance — for the centring of African heroes in African spaces.

Britain can keep Queen Elizabeth.

Zimbabwe must honour Mbuya Nehanda.

A Call to ActionAs a nation, we must move beyond symbolic independence to mental and cultural liberation.

I call upon:

– The Ministry of Primary and Secondary Education

– School authorities and alumni

– Parents, students, and cultural leaders

Let us have the courage to complete the work our ancestors began.

Let us ensure that when a Zimbabwean child asks, “Who was Mbuya Nehanda?” the answer is not found only in textbooks, but written boldly on the gates of our schools.

Conclusion

This is not about hatred of the past.

It is about love for ourselves.An independent nation must name its institutions after its own heroes.

A liberated people must see themselves reflected in places of learning.

It is time.

Queen Elizabeth High School must become Mbuya Nehanda High School.

I thank you.

Princess Eugene Majuru, Princess of Harare Highlight Zimbabwe #DecolonizeAfrica #DecolonizeHistory #DecolonizeTheMind