Books

Winnie Chisi in her drought-striken maize field A shallow well in the sun-sapped sand bed of what was Dewure River this time yesteryear is the emergency sanctuary for drought-hit villagers.Dewure, the largest river in Gutu, has not been spared the searing temperatures which have left lifeless trail across the country this cropping season.The improvised water source, adjacent to the bridge, gets one wondering: If El Nino does this in a green tree what has has it already done in the dry.Sadly, there are limits to the human capacity for improvisation. In the nearby Mahaka village under Chief Nyamandi can only hope for a hand from someplace.Cattle are literally grazing sand and when they succumb to the debilitating impact of the drought, some parts have to be discarded."Cattle are ...

Demolition site (The Herald)Demolition has lately been the default mode of Harare City Council machinery. This time churches are the local authority’s next target.Council last week announced that it was razing to dust church buildings which encroach on its land if denominations did not heed a 48-hour ultimatum to vacate the illegal structures.Harare City director of works Phillip Pfukwa announced the measure in reference to more than 100 churches in the capital that are occupying land without the blessing of the city fathers.A local daily reported that at least 68 churches in Dzivarasekwa, 27 in Kuwadzana and several more in Waterfalls could be craned down if council makes good its ultimatum.While council demolishes just about any form of structure on the pretext of restoring or...

Add captionBook: People Get Ready Authors: Robert W. McChesney and John Nichols Publisher: Nation Books (2016)ISBN: 978-1-56858-522-2 Set fire to the earth and redeem the gold: It is hard to think of a deeper intersection between capitalism and science fiction than this mutual template.In science fiction, conquest by fire could mean civilisation running down to ground zero under an alien invasion.It could equally be a dispatch of robots in the service of a few rogue scientists rounding up and wiping out lives and livelihoods.In the latter scenario, the conspirators would be hunched over running programmes, engineering annihilation from the control room, and looking to preside over a post-apocalyptic world.According to Robert W. McChesney and John Nichols, if you know where to look...

Mathias Mhere Zimbabwe’s recording artists traditionally reserve the best wine for the festive season but gospel trio, Rev T.T Chivaviro, Mathias Mhere and Blessing Shumba, has opened the cellar in the first quarter of the year. The highly regarded artists have allowed music lovers an early treat with exciting new albums released in recent weeks.Chivaviro, Mhere and Shumba are currently among the foremost exponents of the genre, having been variously nominated for prestigious accolades this year, walking away with at least a gong each.The musical triumvirate also enjoys crossover appeal as competitive songs like “Ebenezer” and “Chimwe neChimwe” peaked at Number 1 on national charts for the greater part of 2015.And now they have unofficially extended the festive mood with a wholes...

NUST Library and Information Science students and staffThe library, one of the foremost cultural sites, is ceding its influence to digital technology as visits edge downward in different parts of the world.In Zimbabwe, lukewarm attendance has seen libraries morphing into other ventures such as Internet cafes, and giving up space to unrelated businesses like boutiques.A steep decline in recreational reading, attributed to the increasing penetration of mobile technology, is considered a death-knell to the brick-and-mortar data repository.Tertiary libraries have held, being indispensable from the business of the mother institutions but researchers also worry that students’ reading is now mainly exam-oriented.Another worrying trend is the shortage of local content in many libraries...

Add captionZimbabwean literature’s millennial strivings are occasionally seen as tending to experimentation, although the majority of cases can be put down to importation and repetition. Either case, this reflects a consciousness by new writers of the need to create something new and daring, something to distinguish them from former generations and guarantee posterity.Others, captivated by the peaks of the Zimbabwean canon, are grouped in the name of the patriarchs, although history is seldom kind to artists propelled by group waves, imitation and affirmative action.Dambudzo Marechera, perhaps Zimbabwean literature’s foremost export, is a definitive example of struggling with tradition, an ironic accomplishment in that it raises him into a new cult fetish and ignites another cycle of imita...

Add captionWhen the muses refuse to smile on a poet, he runs out of inspiration but when a woman refuses to smile on him, a creative current carries him along. If not for this irony of deprivation, Dante, John Keats and Thomas Hardy may never have attained half their stature, and poetry would have been poorer for the equilibrium. John Eppel’s impassioned reminisces for lost love in “Textures” make for a Zimbabwean version of the deprivation theory. “Textures,” the dual effort by highly regarded poets Togara Muzanenhamo and John Eppel is a league apart for its classical forms, musical cadences and cosmopolitan depth of field. Zimbabwean poetry, often politically themed, thrives on immediacy, rejects classical forms, branding them synonymous with colonial tradition, utilises the canon of c...

The CharambasFebruary may be the month of love on the secular calendar, but pastors went against convention this year, not so much for Christian reasons but for carnal interests.  Pastors seemed bent on a new mission to promote divorce, with several Christian ministers admitting to infidelity and walking out of their marriages. Contemporary Christian musician Israel Houghton, Bishop Andrew Wutawunashe, Prophet Passion Java and Pastor Chris Oyakhilome are among the influential leaders whose divorces have been topical this month but a longer list goes back into the recent past. Unfortunately for pastors, their work sets them on a pedestal where their failings seldom escape scrutiny, but divorce is much more widespread to the point of becoming the new normal. Lately, articles on the upsurg...

Health-themed singing and high octane dancing suggest a resilient community, raring to cross over from the shadow of disaster to the sunny side of life. Chants about child nutrition, water, sanitation and hygiene erupt from the stage, drawing familiar responses from the crowd during a United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF) tour of the area. This is Chingwizi two years on, on the alert against disease and desperately anticipating helping hands to survive poverty worsened by new stress factors like drought. Health care infrastructure is an immediate concern but a make-do facility with tents for the maternity ward and the out patients department (OPD) serves the 2, 400 households, now home in Mwenezi’s Nuanetsi Range following the destruction of their homes by floods in 2014. New structure...

Industrial attachment is largely acknowledged as the integrative faculty between higher education and the real world.Attachment is the work-based study phase usually undertaken towards the end of a diploma or degree programme to familiarise students with the work environment. It is designed to inject fresh talent into companies, sharpen the technical edge for the skills set students learn in theory at college or university, and provide a navigable interface between students and the industrial setting.Recently however, the ideals have been defeated by the inadequacy of attachment openings and departure from convention by companies which are being affected by economic challenges and unprecedented professional downgrade.These problems have encouraged compromise placements, whereby students ta...