security sector governance in Zimbabwe today, and to assessing the challenges of tomorrow. Such an approach is essential if we are to establish a framework for genuine national dialogue on the subject. The safety and security of citizens, the state and the sovereignty of Zimbabwe are a critical national issue and need to be addressed as such. On this journey it is high time we moved beyond ‘the statement of the problem’ and began to tackle the real challenges we face. But in order to do this we must be able to establish a genuine national dialogue and that requires us to put national interests above purely partisan politics and disputation. The challenges are real and the consequences of continued neglect will be very serious. This short paper is offered in support of the challenge facing all citizens of Zimbabwe to urgently consider and discuss the critical questions of national safety and security policy and to engage each other, and the state, in a genuine national dialogue aimed at the elaboration of a consensus-based and people-centered security sector transformation process. What is the security sector? If you wish to answer this question you first need to define security. Traditional notions of security, and still the dominant concept of security across many societies including our own in Zimbabwe, may be defined as being narrowly focused on the security of territory (boundaries and borders) and the state (the ruling political authority). Historically this concept of security emerged alongside the development of more complex social and economic human settlements, accompanied by centralized and more powerful political governance structures, for example the feudal states in Europe or the Zulu kingdom. These systems raised taxes in various ways and mobilized military formations to defend or conquer territory and sustain the authority of the feudal lord or the king. Nation states consolidated this framework, sustaining the traditional concept of security and developing ever more powerful capacity to defend and seize territory and support the political authority. Colonial states were simply an imperial expression of this same security concept. Citizen safety and security, if it was ever an objective in the past, was always subservient to the interests of the ruling authority and the security of that authority and its territory. Over many decades, political action and struggle by citizens across the globe sought to extend and in some cases transform this concept of security to include citizen safety and security. In our own context, the nationalist movement had three basic demands. The first two (independence and majority rule) were inter-related political objectives, whilst the third (freedom) was a transformational goal. Freedom 3