Books

Ngugi WaThiongo Africa is a site of conflicting narratives. In recent times, contradictions have orbited around the development question.There is growing optimism that Africa is rising, with statistics pointing to the continent as the fastest growing region.The “Africa Rising” narrative has brokered unusual consensus between Pan-Africanists and global media echo chambers.Africa has posted upbeat figures over the recent years, essentially good news for a continent traditionally assigned to the backyard of civilisation.The narrative is deemed a dragnet for much-needed investment. It also signifies a time of defrocking stereotypes and self-actualising.However, dissent is swelling against the “Africa Rising” narrative, not so much from pessimism but realism; not rejection but consolidation.Whi...

Add captionZimbabwean literature is enduring an austere patch which has been widely attributed to the performance of the economy.Books no longer constitute a household phenomenon, with lack of disposable income cited as the missing link.Although Zimbabweans do not exactly recoil from alternative pastimes, literature has become a blacklisted luxury – a sure way of reverting to literacy without literature.Over the world, production of literature far preponderates demand. Forbes estimates that between 600,000 and 1,000,000 books published every year in the US alone. On average, each title sells 250 copies. By now, most Zimbabweans have automated the claim that they cannot buy books when they should be buying mealie-meal, although it is doubtful that basic necessities are all that everyone eve...

Kwame Nkrumah delivers Independence speechA grand design for better days runs the thread of Pan-Africanist literature.Pan-Africanism has been up the podium from the outset of the 20th century, chanting down imperialism, propagating cohesion and charting the course to a better Africa.Tragically, the vision remains a file too large to retrieve. As if disunity is not bad enough, inequality continues to short-circuit the African renaissance.With the people’s struggle indefinitely deferred and the vastly downscaled, it is pertinent once again to zoom into Pan-Africanist fundamentals and impediments, and to touch base, breach fortifications and perform again.Most of those who are fronting the African Renaissance on the intellectual and political podiums today have lost grip of the urgency of the...

Ignatius Mabasa (Photo Credit: The Herald)Poetry has been long pigeonholed as a tradition past its prime. Impassioned obituaries are often directed at the genre whose mojo has vastly diminished in recent decades.As far as reception is concerned, the observations cannot be written off alarmist not least because poetry no longer commands a significant following outside classes and poetry slams.Publishers are disinvesting interest in single-author poetry anthologies, to double-exert themselves where their bread is assured, chiefly fiction and academic products.I visited every stand during the recent book fairs in Bulawayo, Harare and Mutare and took meticulous note of the freshly pressed titles.It was sad to note that no one seems to lose sleep over the perpetuity of poetry and that the few e...

Perfection of means and confusion of ends, the tragedy of modernity identified by Albert Einstein, is fermenting across contemporary art.The mainstream art of our time is provoking more reception than ever, thanks to wide-scale streaming protocols, but it is alarmingly bankrupt of ethical value.Its mojo inheres not so much in matters of universal significance as it does in artificial allurements which are detached from the essence of life.Purposelessness, eroticism and despondency are staking their claim as the dominant expressions in this contagion of decadence where sensuality assails sensibility.It is pertinent to underscore the influence of art as a cultural vehicle before we can understand the dangers portended by its perversion.Art has a dual bearing on society as a portrait and a pr...

Wole SoyinkaThe mainstay of African literature is nationalist sentiment. From the outset, the continent’s creative canon has assumed an overtly patriotic tenor, varying between durable writing and political ear candy.While this undercurrent hasbeenlong directed against colonial injustice, there is need to locate new frontiers, chiefly inequality within Africa, which is by farthe biggest problem of our day.Writers must foreground on their taskbars the reconfiguration of Africa into a more habitable space for the poor who saddle the brunt of uneven development, misappropriation of resources and municipal dysfunction. The poetics of justice must conjure up seared consciences in a continent where the rich fare sumptuously like Arab oil barons while the poor are haunted by the fear of tomorrow....

Dambudzo Marechera (Photo Credit: The Guardian)Zimbabwe’s hardcore novelist Dambudzo Marechera is the object of routine post-mortems. Locating an ideological compartment for the lost generation writer seems twice as impossible as finding a needle in a tonne of haystack.However, there is something of heroic allure in Marechera’s refusal to be confined in the mediocrity, hypocrisy, subservience and irrationality which often constitute the four wheels of conventional bandwagons.Notwithstanding the allusiveness which runs the thread of his prose, Marechera’s work is firewalled by a stubborn determination not to cede his intellectual autonomy.The varied applications on his literary taskbar engage external frames of reference but influence is invoked not so much to submerge as to buttress his ou...

 Book: The Facebook EffectAuthor: David Kirkpatrick Publisher: Simon and Schuster (2010)ISBN: 978-1-4391-0211-4Hands up whose planet is not the browser.Chances are you will also be signed up for this global netizenship on our next count.For better, for worse, the world has been reconfigured around the Internet.Hard times squeeze other industries to fatten Silicon Valley, now the interface and foremost industrial estate of the global village.And the social network is, no doubt, the web-wide metropolis.Predictably, not everyone is impressed with the mass migration to virtual space. For the less impressed the social network is more phatic than social and the digital revolution more delusional than revolutionary.Ironically, they have to pin up their scepticism to the digital public square if i...

Add captionBook: The Cult of the Amateur Author: Andrew Keen Publisher: Currency (2007)The digitally enabled democratisation of information and creative content has been widely lauded as progressive. Most current discussions loosely converge around such catch-phrases as Web 2.0 revolution, ICTs and digitisation.One is either in the loop or finding their way in. To be outside is to be branded a laggard as the cosmic ferment substitutes citizens with netizens.The democratic merits of the revolution are seldom in question. For most, it is the high point of democracy as Web 2.0 protocols level the arena and empower netizens to acquire, deliberate and share information and opinion.Outside the civic domain, web-based platforms have revolutionised the reception of creative content.Access to conte...

SUPERSTAR: Oliver MtukudziBook: The Brand IdeologyAuthor: Oscar HabeenzuPublisher: The BehaviourReport.com (2013)Zimbabwe has not been spared by the cosmic juggernaut of globalisation.While indigenous culture has long been identified as a casualty of this phenomenon, homegrown brands are also desperately clutching at their life rafts.Others have ceded their stakes in the face of formidable competition from outside. Cyber arteries are spreading out against traditionalprotocols at the peril of the old order.The global village is configured such that regions of higher concentration diffuse trends to vassals and surrogates.Zimbabwe must be move from being a perennial dumpsite.  To this end, homegrown brands must emerge with the dominant agenda, products, ideas, art, fashion and values.Efforts ...