By Dr Lloyd Gideon Makonese, Lecturer & Public Health and Health Systems Expert.

Across many countries, the condition of war veterans and older people has become an uncomfortable mirror of national priorities.

Public ceremonies continue to honour sacrifice and resilience, yet daily realities often tell a quieter story of declining health, eroded incomes, and social invisibility.

Independence, while politically secured, risks becoming culturally hollow when those who embody its cost and continuity are left to navigate ageing and illness without sustained support.

If independence is meant to be lived rather than merely remembered, how seriously do nations measure its success by the wellbeing of those who carried it?

In increasingly polarised public discourse, calls to recognise and care for war veterans are sometimes dismissed as political loyalty or ideological capture. This framing narrows debate and discourages ethical reflection, reducing human need to partisan symbolism.

Care for veterans is not an endorsement of any current administration; it is an acknowledgement that war leaves long-term physical, psychological, and social consequences that persist long after political transitions. When compassion is mistaken for compliance, what space remains for societies to speak honestly about shared responsibility?

Older people, including veterans, occupy a unique social position as living repositories of memory, language, and moral order. In many African contexts, elders have historically been custodians of conflict resolution, land stewardship, and communal ethics.

Their marginalisation is therefore not only a welfare issue but a rupture in cultural transmission. When elders struggle to meet basic needs or are excluded from public life, what knowledge and values quietly disappear with them?

The philosophy of Ubuntu, often celebrated as a defining African ethic, offers a lens through which this neglect appears particularly stark. Ubuntu is not abstract kindness; it is enacted through everyday practices of mutual care, recognition, and obligation.

Communities still demonstrate this instinctively through shared mourning, informal caregiving, and collective support in times of crisis.

Yet when formal systems fail to reflect these values, the burden shifts disproportionately onto families already under strain. If Ubuntu thrives informally, why does it falter when translated into public institutions?

Internationally, the treatment of veterans and older people is widely understood as a measure of national maturity. In several countries, veterans’ health and social needs are addressed through dedicated structures, long-term planning, and public accountability, even amid fiscal and political challenges.

Similarly, social protection for older people is debated as a policy choice rather than an act of charity.

If others treat ageing and post-conflict care as predictable governance issues, why do some societies still frame them as exceptional or optional?

Within the southern African region, demographic ageing, economic precarity, and historical patterns of informal labour have exposed gaps in pension coverage and healthcare access.

Non-contributory pensions in parts of the region reflect an acceptance that old age itself generates vulnerability regardless of employment history.

Where such mechanisms are weak or eroded, older people experience poverty not as misfortune but as a structural outcome.

When later-life hardship becomes normalised, whose responsibility is it to question that normality?

In Zimbabwe, these regional dynamics intersect with prolonged economic instability and a health system under pressure.

Many older people face interrupted treatment for chronic conditions, limited mobility, and declining purchasing power that undermines nutrition and medication adherence.

War veterans, meanwhile, often carry compounded burdens of injury, trauma, and ageing, with support that can be uneven or difficult to access.

When praise is public but care is inconsistent, how do those affected interpret the nation’s gratitude?

Rural contexts add further complexity. Distance from services, transport costs, and administrative barriers amplify vulnerability for older people and veterans living outside urban centres.

At the same time, these individuals often remain central to rural social organisation, mediating disputes, sustaining kinship networks, and anchoring community identity.

When rural elders are left unsupported, what happens to the social cohesion that development strategies quietly rely upon?

At a leadership level, commitments to dignity, inclusion, and development are frequently articulated in national visions and regional frameworks.

Yet the lived experience of older people and veterans is where such commitments are tested most visibly.

Long queues, delayed benefits, and fragmented care reveal the gap between policy language and daily life. If dignity is a stated value, how is it recognised in the ordinary encounters between ageing citizens and the systems meant to serve them?

Ultimately, the wellbeing of war veterans and older people is not a marginal concern but a societal audit.

It reflects how a nation understands obligation across generations and how it balances economic ambition with moral continuity.

Independence is sustained not only through growth and infrastructure but through the assurance that those who built and preserved the nation will not be abandoned in its later chapters. If the past is honoured only in words, what kind of future is being quietly shaped?