Books

"Maonero/ Umbono" Presents a History of Visual Arts in Zimbabwe Madmen and introverts: Zim’s visual artists “Mawonero” is Shona for “perspective,” while “umbono” is the Ndebele equivalent. Insider perspectives on Zimbabwean art by Raphael Chikukwa, Doreen Sibanda, Zvikomborero Mandangu, Tashinga Matindike-Gondo and Farai Chabata make up the new publication. Book: Mawonero/Umbono Edited by Ignatius Mabasa Publisher: Kerber Verlag (2015) ISBN: 978-3-86678-937-1 Zimbabwe’s earliest patriarchs were masters of art. The keynote symbols of our national identity are drawn from their visual heritage. San rock art prefaces the compendium of local history, while the Zimbabwe Bird, a soapstone legend of the Hu...

Harare municipal police arresting a vendor (Photo: Zimbabwe News)Harare vendors have been at the crossroads in recent months but they have lately scaled the term up to a literal dimension. The peddlers, frequently on the run as Harare Metropolitan Police is out to confiscate their wares, have resorted to using the intersection of Chinhoyi Street and Jason Moyo Avenue as their refuge. In this deathly show of audacity, a group of fugitive vendors stand in the way of traffic, oblivious of hooting vehicles, to hold off baton-wielding municipal cops. With traffic at a standstill, and breaths held as an undercurrent of jeopardy courses through the vicinity, the metro police officers finally disperse. The municipal storm receded, vendors return to their street corners, pavements and verandas, sp...

Registrar-General Tobaiwa (Photo: The Chronicle)Registar General Tobaiwa Mudede flared up an interesting debate last year when he branded birth control drugs a form of Western conspiracy to keep Africa underdeveloped. Mudede attributed the upsurge of cancer, hypertension, induced obesity and other maladies among women to the use of family planning drugs. He protested that population control was unfairly targeted at developing countries by Western capitalists bent on protecting their capitalist tentacles by curtailing growth and security in their economic vassals. Sadly, for a debate of such implications, responses to Mudede’s remarks were polemical in one direction, with several people accusing the registrar general of losing his theatre sense and reading his personal scruples into the ...

A tree grows on top of Matapi flats (Photo: The Herald)Mbare merits distinction as the principal home of Harare vendors, emerging music talent, flagship radio, one of the most popular stadia and the nerve centre of countrywide bus tours.These features, along with a century of cultural strivings, give Mbare a cosmopolitan resume, making it one of the most famous suburbs in the country, and for some, a legend synonymous with Harare itself.After all, the capital city derived its name from the high-density suburb, and the contemporary interpretation of “Harare” as the hive of nocturnal hustlers is perhaps best represented by Mbare.  However, Mbare is a case of fronting a radiant face while the body is sick, if deplorable living conditions in the suburb are anything to go by.A recent visit by F...

Finance Minister Patrick ChinamasaThe value of knowledge, chiefly its facility to maximise the human potential, is geographically agnostic. Knowledge is the foremost resource for any economy, and failure to access, utilise and regenerate it is often the difference between power and poverty. Fareed Zakaria's 2015 book, "In Defense of a Liberal Education," assigns the future to gamechangers who can synthesise, process and convert knowledge to power. It will take the optimal utilisation of knowledge for Zimbabwe's start-up generation to build the country into an economic powerhouse. Like most amply endowed developing countries, we are just pages away from prosperity. Tragically, the Ministry of Finance made knowledge an elite preserve when it gazetted 40 percent import duty on books on S...

Charles Mungoshi (Photo: goodreads.com)Book: The Milkman Doesn’t Only Deliver Milk Author: Charles Mungoshi Publisher: Baobab Book (1998)ISBN: 1-77909-006-4Poetry is the most obscure stroke on Charles Mungoshi’s life-size canvas. The accomplished artist’s poetry anthology, “The Milkman Doesn’t Only Deliver Milk,” has not matched his prose and drama in popular reception.However, one may say poetry runs the thread of the Mungoshi’s rendering of the human condition across genres.The conversations of dislocation in his novels are the work of an elevated poetic consciousness.His only poetry anthology, therefore, can well be the “director’s cut” to enable a peek into the materials which feed beauty and potency into his prose. Not that the anthology does not stand on its own but it might be just...

Vigil Car Wash employees at workBlessing Mubaiwa was frustrated with the hassle it took to have his car washed. The time it took to drive to a downtown carwash and wait for the job to be done just never seemed to fit into his schedule.   Mubaiwa wanted the car wash to come to his own house for his convenience and to allow him to burn less fuel. When he saw that no one was up to the task, he took matters into his own hands and developed a mobile car wash. Vigil Mobile Car Wash, Mubaiwa’s answer to the hassle of traditional car washing, is based on a mobile application from which motorists can order a wash and get the job done in their own backyards or office lots. Car washing as an offline service requires designated space and the mushrooming of illegal car washes by street corners in the C...

Oscar Habeenzu  Zimbabwe's reading culture is in steep decline. Research indicates that motivation for reading is mainly exam-oriented. Schools have been implicated in the conspiracy to phase out creative writing. “When a pupil holds a book, the fundamental question they ask themselves is whether it is in the syllabus,” African Languages academic Godwin Makaudze said in an address to Zimbabwe International Book Fair (ZIBF)  Indaba earlier this year. “If not, then it is not worth spending time on. For many, there seems to be no incentive in reading for leisure,” Makaudze said. The digital migration of readers and low income have also pushed the book further into obscurity. The regress in reception is disappointing for a country rated the most literate in Africa. Previously, the respon...

Stitchie (Photo: groovinradiony.com)When dancehall singjay Stitchie became a candidate for baptism, he read a new meaning into his stage name instead of dropping it.The unlikely candidate reasoned that while the comic stagecraft of his days in the world had left people in stitches, the post-conversion Stitchie would stitch people's lives back to God.Instead of vacating the dancehall, a novel tendency of reggae he had helped to establish in the 1980s, Stitchie simply weighed spiritual energy into his workflow, becoming the first major exponent of gospel reggae.It might have been the maintainance of these trademarks across Jordan which forced some to conclude that Stitchie was on a publicity tangent which would soon fizzle out.After all, similar commitments by his showbiz peers, notably Ninj...