claim no easy victories”. I wonder what he, or perhaps Thomas Sankara, would say if they could visit Zimbabwe today. Closer to home what are our fallen heroes and heroines saying about our conduct and adherence to our liberation ideals? Among the negative aspects of our liberation legacy are our continued acceptance of the use of violence to achieve political goals and our inability to develop a national vision and national institutions, which can serve all the people of Zimbabwe irrespective of their political party loyalties. At the more technical level, and specifically with regard to state security performance and provision, a range of serious challenges confront us. Aside from very obvious deficiencies in basic citizen safety and security services such as policing or access to justice and more broadly regarding access to shelter, water and public utilities, employment and social services (health and education) all of which impact directly on citizen safety and security, we have two major strategic challenges to address. The first concerns the urgent need for a comprehensive assessment of national security policy involving both state security and broader human security questions. We have failed to undertake a range of routine policy review processes, which are common in most modern democracies, including defence, police, justice, prisons and intelligence reviews as part of a broader threat assessment process which allows policies to be critiqued, renewed and refined and enable innovation, modernization and meaningful policy development to take place. Such reviews as have taken place in these sectors have been purely internal, but these internal processes are profoundly inadequate precisely because they are internal. External stakeholder participation backed by evidence-based knowledge (research and external evaluation) enable new and alternative perspectives to be engaged. In this regard the introduction of human security perspectives and policies is long overdue. The second major strategic challenge involves the absence in Zimbabwe of any longer term vision or strategy to address forthcoming safety and security threats. Our security focus in recent years has been primarily reactive and inward looking, most especially with regard to political and social contestation in parochial and partisan terms. Meanwhile storms are approaching for which we have no plans. A basic threat assessment in Zimbabwe today, looking forward to threats over the next decade, would have to include the following dangers for which we have made no preparations: • Climate change and resulting livelihoods threats; • Specific water resource shortfalls throughout sub-Saharan Africa; • The impending threat of small arms in Zimbabwe and the resulting impact on crime, resource conflict and political violence; • Increasing levels of poverty and unemployment and their impact on safety and security; 17