The unique colonial experience of Zimbabwe continues to have a profound discursive impact upon questions of citizenship, nationhood and belonging: the residual impact of the Rhodesian settler state will remain significant for generations. Zimbabwe inherited institutions, particularly in the security sphere, wherein reform was very likely inevitable. How the reform occurred, though, was not. Questions abound as to just what constituted belonging, loyalty and service for Zimbabweans, and the specific valence of institutional legacies in determining these virtues.