President Emmerson Mnangagwa is expected to make his heroes day address today amid rising tension in the country owing to heightened pressure from citizens for the ruling government to end human rights abuses.

Trending under the hashtag #ZimbabweanLivesMatter, citizens have once again found a voice to speak out against alleged abduction and detention of government critics.

The social media noise has yielded massive results with regional bodies including African Union committing to look into the issue while South African President Cyril Ramaphosa has since appointed a special envoy team to visit Zimbabwe for a fact finding mission.

While the world has been awakened to rights abuses in Zimbabwe, Mnangagwa and his administration appear unshaken as they continue to dismiss the reports.

In his address a week ago, Mnangagwa threatened to flash out what he termed dark forces, in reference to opposition activists.

As he makes his second address in under a week, will Mnangagwa continue with his vindictive path of threatening to deal with those opposed to his administration.

While he makes his heroes day address, citizens are expecting him to chat a new path for the country and act as a statesman and a leader who should be seeking to build bridges.

“As a leader of the country, we don’t expect Mnangagwa to continue ignoring citizens however minority they are, there is currently noise about rights abuses and instead of government committing to investigate, they are being defensive and it doesn’t work, he should at least show commitment to look into it, all this labeling of citizens as enemies of the state should never come from the head of state,” said one Harare resident Tobias Magwaza.