Despite a challenging economic environment, severe shortages and a violent colonial history, Zimbabwe has managed to retain its magical charm and resourcefulness.
Admired by Pan-Africanists for his anti-imperialist rhetoric but loathed at home for his authoritarian tendencies, Robert Mugabe was a man full of contradictions. TINASHE L. CHIMEDZA reflects on the controversial life of Zimbabwe’s longest-serving leader.
TINASHE L. CHIMEDZA explains why the November 2017 military coup in Zimbabwe and the ouster of Robert Mugabe failed to deliver democracy and sound financial management to a country that has yet to overcome the debilitating effects of authoritarianism and hyperinflation.
What has emerged since that “military-assisted transition” is a Zimbabwe that is now policed by the military. Democratic-constitutional institutions have been subverted and the rule of law has been shredded. The dominant political class has become a network of very powerful military elites, or what can be referred to as military-nationalists.
It is safe to say that Mtukudzi was one of a group of African musicians – alongside the likes of Masekela – who were adopted by Kenyans as one of their own, invited back time and again for representing something which was at once soothing and liberating, always reminding their audiences that Africa was still one. By ISAAC OTIDI AMUKE
One year after the “coup” that led to the resignation of former president Robert Mugabe and a momentary wind of change, the new Zimbabwe seems to be a mirror image of its former self, reflects NOVUYO TSHUMA
On the morning of Sunday the 26th of August as I walk along Addis Ababa Rd in the Lusaka suburb of Rhodespark, I hear sirens and see about eight motorcycles and the blue lights that shout Political Leadership Traveling. There are police all along the street. I greet one and she replies in a friendly […]
The immigration official at Harare’s Robert Mugabe International Airport looked up after examining my passport, his face expressionless. “Why have you come to Zimbabwe?” “To celebrate,” I replied. “What will you be celebrating?” “Zimbabwe’s liberation,” I said, holding my breath. Journalists without visas have not been welcome in Zimbabwe for most of Robert Mugabe’s autocratic reign. […]
In my lifetime I have so far missed two critical turning points in the country of my birth, Zimbabwe. The first event was Independence Day on 18 April 1980 which marked the beginning of our freedom from colonialism. Legend and a few grainy video clips and images show that the day was full of ecstatic […]
18 November 2017. A day that polarised Zimbabweans. The majority of Harareans heeded the call to march for Robert Gabriel Mugabe to resign after 37 years in power. People who had never attended a single political gathering came out from the suburbs, the ghettos, everywhere. “I had to play my part in putting paid to […]
On 10 November, I flew into a country whose citizens were doing the best they could to survive in the economically and emotionally bankrupt nation that Zimbabwe had become during the last half of President Robert Mugabe’s 37 years of governing. It was no secret that the First Lady, the so-called Doctor Amai Grace Mugabe, […]
As a former student of the Thabo Mbeki African Leadership Institute, I have had the opportunity to ask the former president and patron of the institution, Thabo Mbeki, questions on the ‘Zimbabwean Issue’ at a Q&A session. It is a topic in which he was lambasted for what was termed as ‘quiet diplomacy’ during his […]
My identity straddles African borders. I was born in Zambia to a Zimbabwean mother and a South Africa father. Of the three countries, I carry South African citizenship. On social occasions I have often been at loggerheads with my compatriots who self-identify as pan-African. There are, you see, African politicians they will not brook criticism […]
Zimbabwe has a new president thanks to what its military chiefs called an “intervention” to “weed out criminals” that were negatively affecting the work of the President. The actions of the army generals ended up leading to a popularly, if not emotionally, supported removal of President Mugabe, the man they had initially pledged to be […]
I was born in 1988, eight years after Zimbabwe’s independence from British colonial rule. I am thus considered a “Born Free” — meaning one born after the liberation war. For a long time, particularly over the last two decades and the fraught turmoil we have endured as Zimbabweans, the term has been used to denigrate […]
Africans a-liberate Zimbabwe I’n’I a-liberate Zimbabwe. So sang the late, great, Jamaican reggae star, Bob Marley in 1979, just a year before the country was finally won its independence from white rule. Today, with Robert Mugabe forced to resign as President after being fired by his party and with Zimbabwe about to inaugurate a new […]
I was twelve years old when the first invasions of white-owned farms by Zimbabwe’s war veterans were announced on television. The year was 2000. What followed, a decade in which we experienced the spiralling of the Zim dollar and the subsequent food shortages, electricity and water rationing, as well as political violence, was a kind […]
The man whom Western leaders love to hate may be nearing his end. But those presidents and prime ministers in Europe and North America should go easy on the celebrations, hold back on the cheers. Robert Mugabe’s spirit will live on well after he has gone, inspiring supporters from Kenya to South Africa. Far from marking […]
