Books

Prof. Cornel West Religion and politics have a long pending case at the divorce court. Those for separation cite issues of compatibility.A militant coterie of this number has gone so far as to push for the ejection of every last vestige of religion from state and society.For them, politics is public and normatively rational while religion is private and inherently irrational.However, their proposition has turned out to be no easy sell as religion proves to be no push-over.Maybe religion and politics cannot be detached because of the proximate setting of the problems they seek to resolve.Religion is mankind’s response to the problem of existence while politics is mankind’s response to the problem of co-existence.Religion is the moral control centre for other spheres of human endeavour p...

Michio Kaku's The Future of the MindBook: The Future of the MindAuthor: Michio KakuPublisher: Doubleday (2014)ISBN: 978-0-385-53083-5If there is a short circuit in the wiring of genius, it is its incapacity to understand itself.The human mind is the perhaps most fascinating example of this contradiction.It seems as though the smarter the mind is, the farther it is from generating its own anatomy. The contradiction borders on the odds of a physician healing himself, or the oddity of a hound chasing its tail.In the latter case, the faster the tracker goes, the harder the target becomes. Likewise, human ingenuity seems to be inversely correlated to introspection.While the complexity of the mind might be the force behind staggering accomplishments, discoveries and creations, it may als...

Takesure Zamah Ncube performs with Joyous Celebration They have kept us posted with mellow jams, but popular credit has been long time coming for Zimbabwean gospel music’s trending acts. We look at recent arrivals and persistent pilgrims on the Christian entertainment circuit, and the journeys that took them to acclaim. More than just torching up ephemeral sparks of genius, the featured musicians have demonstrated both calibre and enduring quality. Takesure Zamar Ncube The Worship Addicts frontman is past rehabilitation. With six full-length albums, two compilations and a DVD between 2011 and 2015, the addict is still singing under the influence, and without signs of slowing down.“I envision major changes in Christian entertainment. I see the church embracing worship in deeper and more con...

Mazwi shopkeeper Tafadzwa MakuraImagine a world where anyone can wake up a published author. Mazwi Online Shop promises just that – and to abolish several other publishing protocols. Forget about a publisher sitting on your manuscript – you can be now your own agent, editor, publisher, vendor and cheerleader from an integrative vendor dashboard. Mazwi, an e-book marketplace for local publishers and independent authors founded by young technoprenuer Tafadzwa Makura in 2012, was developed to democratise the public space for anyone to be heard.The disruptive start-up stands out of Zimbabwe’s hive of technological start-ups as a forward-thinking, make-it-happen e-commerce response to a cultural problem. A growing number of previously unpublished authors are scrambling for vendor dashboards on ...

Talent Chiwenga preaching along First StreetIf Harare is a site of spiritual contest, as its contrasting tendencies suggest, then First Street may well be the foremost stronghold of God’s militants. Hundreds converge at the corner of First Street and Speke Avenue every week day between 11AM and 8PM for marathon sermons by a varied line-up of open-air preachers. Mugomba, as the place is popularly known for its depressed location, means different things to different individuals. Some show up occassionally for spiritual sustenance, others linger awhile out of "wonderlust," and still more for biblical answers to the economic downturn. While the Mugomba arena is exclusively dedicated to sermons, the area just a few steps away hosts raging theological debates on a daily basis. Some of the ...

The Hunger Games Trilogy Many rivers, thirsty children, burning streets.“The Hunger Games” trilogy is an allegory of our time.In the highly regarded set, featuring “The Hunger Games,” “Catching Fire,” and “Mockingjay,” Suzanne Collins cuts away from the moody complexes, which are the materials for young adult fiction, to a frighteningly real world, our own.The set merits a monumental rating, not just for the captivating style sheet but also the allegorical precision with which Collins courses her scalpel through a hemorrhaging planet.The arena of the hunger games calls to mind a collage of trouble spots where extreme poverty, oppression and conflict are all the rage.The cross-fading of airbrushed television personae with the devastation of war presents unsettling juxtapositions.Collins say...

Ravi Zacharias's Sense and Sensuality Imagination courses through the cultural frequency of the generation.In our day, the idea of the absolute freedom of the artist has gone universal and art is being increasingly detached from moral inhibitions.Ironically, what comes across as the expression of artistic freedom is often a trade-off between creative autonomy and the established groupthink.Although freedom is the meme across the creative industries, artists still worry about how they can locate their workflow within the groupthink of the day.Ben Jonson once said that the principal function of literature is to inform people in the best interest of living.Such an idea would be detected as anathema in the present context.The attention now is not so much on the social function or ethical value...

Bob Marley's ZimbabweIf environment is a significant factor in the creative process, which situation could be best favoured by the muses? If bends in the road of life are sometimes resolved as masterpieces in the arena of art, does class have a bearing on creativity? Whose workflow merits lasting reception: the activist, the isolate, the socialite, the scholar, the mystic, or the sidewalk hustler?Is convention or defiance the best course for genius; poverty or luxury the optimal setting for creativity; or is art, as life in miniature, the alternation of all seasons?Does it signal a stake for class in the arena if young Bob Marley drinks water for supper, inadvertently stoking up defiance to chant down Babylon, Charles Dickens’ blacking factory shifts prefigure life-like portraits of inequa...

Rabison Shumba Rabison Shumba credits social media as a bouncing board for the creative energy captured in new poetry anthology "Dzinonyandura: Svinga Renduri." The varied collection, featuring 16 mostly new poets, is an inadvertent outcome of Shumba's "a poem a day challenge" on Facebook early last year. A sustained response to the challenge facilitated the creation of the page 263 Nhetembo as a central platform for the takers to share their work and appraise each other. The poems harvested from months of activity on the page became "Svinga Renduri," a significant statement by the cultural tendency of Zimbabwe's digiterati. Erroneously, the "obituaries" for Zimbabwe’s reading culture often tag the social network as one of the killer phenomena, observing that as the world revolves fast...

Beyond Rebellion Book: Beyond Rebellion Author: Oscar Habeenzu Publisher: iNduku Publishing Group (2013)ISBN: 989-0-7974-5680-8“Beyond Rebellion” is an unsettling case against a morally adrift generation.The inordinate promotion of sexual expressions in music, movies, magazines, social media and peer influence is more disempowering than is generally acknowledged.Zimbabwe's sex-captive society is culturally inverted in that the lower nature predominates the creative capacity. "Beyond Rebellion," Oscar Habeenzu's insanely prophetic  book, takes discussions on depraved youth culture to the next logical segment.With trending reports indicting the current generation as the lowest in terms of moral sensibility, Habeenzu vitally explores the possibility of converting that rebellion into creative ...