Dec 26, 2025
0 National Other Politics

Remembering Cde Tongo

Today we remember Josiah Magama Tongogara, who died on 26 December 1979 at just 41 years old, yet left behind a legacy far greater than his years.

As Commander of ZANLA, Tongogara was a fearless strategist and disciplined organiser who helped transform a liberation movement into a formidable fighting force. By his early forties, he had already shaped the military direction of the struggle and positioned Zimbabwe firmly on the road to independence.

He died only days after the Lancaster House Agreement, at the very moment when the freedom he fought for had been secured on paper. Tongogara did not live to see Independence Day, but his sacrifice ensured it would come. His life proves that history is often changed not by long lives, but by decisive ones.

Continue reading
Dec 26, 2025
0 National Other

The Alpha Media Holdings US$50 Salary Reckoning and the Zimpapers Digital Pivot Signal the End of Industrial Journalism in Zimbabwe

I have followed, with keen interest rather than shock, the public discussion around the disclosure that Alpha Media Holdings (AMH) Zimbabwe paid only US$50 of a January 2025 salary in December 2025. To me, this was not a scandal in the narrow sense. It was a long-delayed signal finally becoming visible. The warning lights have been flashing for years. What collapsed here is not journalism as a public good, but the industrial revenue architecture that once sustained it.

Traditional journalism was built on scarcity. Printing presses were capital-intensive. Distribution was controlled. Advertising channels were few. Newsrooms were unquestioned gatekeepers. That entire ecosystem has been dismantled, not by ideology, but by technology. Today, anyone with a smartphone and a modest laptop has access to production capacity that once belonged only to institutions. Productivity has been compressed into pocket-sized devices. Distribution is no longer owned by publishers but by platforms. Attention, not circulation, has become the currency – and attention obeys algorithmic logic, not editorial tradition. More …

Continue reading
Dec 25, 2025
0 Development International Other Politics

2025: The Year Africa Read the Balance of Power Clearly

As 2025 draws to a close, one conclusion stands with increasing clarity: the global centre of gravity has shifted, not through rupture or spectacle, but through the steady accumulation of deliberate choices made across the Global South. Africa, in particular, has spent this year doing something both quiet and consequential – comparing partners by outcomes rather than promises. In that comparison, the contrast between U.S. and Chinese foreign policy has hardened into a practical judgment about relevance.

This was the year multipolarity ceased to be theoretical. It became operational.

For much of the post-Cold War era, U.S. engagement with Africa rested on a familiar architecture: aid conditionality; security cooperation; values-driven diplomacy. In 2025, that architecture showed unmistakable strain. Policy remained episodic, filtered through domestic political cycles, and increasingly securitised. Engagement was reactive – responding to instability, coups, or geopolitical anxiety – rather than anchored in long-term economic transformation. Trade initiatives lacked scale. Infrastructure financing remained tentative. Sanctions continued to substitute for strategy. More …

Continue reading
Dec 24, 2025
0 Development Economics National Other Politics

Zimbabwe’s 2025 Year-End Audit: Receipts, Not Noise

At the close of 2025, Zimbabweans find themselves at a vantage point that demands a moment of quiet, honest reflection. To truly understand the state of the nation, one must ignore the transient noise of social media and instead look at the receipts – the tangible, measurable evidence of a country in transition. These are not the kind of receipts that fade; they are the kind you can drive on, harvest from, and calculate in the hard language of macroeconomics. This is the year-end audit of a nation that, despite immense external pressure, has chosen the revolutionary act of building over the convenient act of complaining. The story of 2025 is a narrative that holds even when you remove party colors and demand evidence, because the strongest defense of the Second Republic is found in independent corroboration. More …

Continue reading
Dec 24, 2025
0 Development International National Other Politics

From Silk to Steel: Sino-Zimbabwean Solidarity

The archaeological silence of the Great Zimbabwe monument has long been broken by a profound discovery: fragments of Chinese porcelain embedded within its ancient stone walls. This ceramic record is not merely a relic of antiquity but a material archive of a sophisticated maritime interchange that predates modern diplomacy by centuries. Today, this historical synergy has evolved into a robust strategic partnership that defines the vanguard of South-South cooperation.

A Civilisational Dialogue

The presence of these artefacts serves as a definitive rebuttal to historical narratives of African isolation. Instead, they position the Great Zimbabwe Empire as a pivotal node in a global network of commerce and culture. Reflecting on this enduring legacy, the Chinese Ambassador to Zimbabwe, Zhou Ding, recently underscored the depth of this connection:

“The discovery of Chinese porcelain at Great Zimbabwe also serves as significant archaeological evidence of deep historical ties between China and Africa. These artefacts highlight Great Zimbabwe’s role as a sophisticated African civilization engaged in long-distance trade and offer a concrete record of the dynamic interactions between China and Zimbabwe centuries ago.” More …

Continue reading
Dec 23, 2025
0 Other Politics

Political Branding 101: Why Chamisa Cannot Claim Ownership of the CCC

It is frankly embarrassing to see a lawyer of Thabani Mpofu’s standing publicly lamenting what is nothing more than Nelson Chamisa’s own strategic failure. This is the predictable consequence of poor political judgment.

Chamisa’s ameaturish mistake was collapsing an institution into himself. He deliberately personalised the CCC, fusing its identity to his face instead of building it as an autonomous, people-owned political brand. Having now distanced himself from that institution, he cannot credibly claim exclusive rights over its symbols, imagery, or political identity. It’s that simple. More …

Continue reading
Dec 21, 2025
0 Other Politics

The Making of a De Facto One-Party State

It is no longer far-fetched to argue that Zimbabwe is steadily moving toward a de facto single-party state. The voting patterns are becoming too clear and too consistent to ignore.

In the Nkulumane parliamentary by-election, ZANU PF candidate Freedom Murechu recorded a decisive victory, polling 3 416 votes. Even if the votes of all the other candidates were added together and then multiplied by two, they would still fall short of his total.

Such margins are not accidental. Repeated outcomes of this nature point to a clear and deliberate expression of the political will of the Zimbabwean electorate.

Continue reading
Dec 21, 2025
0 Other Politics

When Popularity Becomes Treason – The Coming War on Fadzayi Mahere

The undeniable reality is this: Fadzayi Mahere has overtaken Nelson Chamisa in both social media and in the public arena, and that places a target squarely on her back. This is precisely the moment when Chamisa’s loyal attack dogs – the bootlickers and political opportunists like Ostallos and Promise – begin to circle. The whisper campaigns are already festering in WhatsApp trenches, led by these figures who have perfected feigned loyalty. More …

Continue reading
Dec 20, 2025
0 Development Economics National Other Politics

How 2025 Broke Zimbabwe’s “Twitter Economics”

When historians eventually analyse the structural evolution of Zimbabwe, 2025 will likely be recorded as the definitive point of inflection. It was the year the specific gravity of reality finally crushed the buoyancy of digital hysteria. It was the year the economic debate did not merely break down, but was rendered obsolete by a government that simply performed beyond the capacity of its detractors to comprehend. For the better part of a decade, we have suffered a plague of “Twitter Economics” – a phenomenon where political sentiment masquerades as financial literacy. But in 2025, the Second Republic didn’t just govern; it outpaced the rhetoric, executing its mandate with such granular focus that attacking the economy as a proxy for political warfare became a futile, intellectually bankrupt exercise.

Throughout the year, we witnessed the peak of undisciplined commentary: a landscape where Zimbabwe was plagued by a surplus of opinions and a deficit of data. On social media, every movement of the exchange rate was weaponised: treated not as a standard market variable but as a portent of Armageddon. The digital opposition complex operated on a simple, flawed heuristic: if the government does it, it must be failing. They painted a picture of a nation in freefall, predicting a return to 2008 with repetitive monotony. However, economics is a science of measurement, not a contest of feelings. When one stripped away the vitriol and looked at the ZIMSTAT ledgers, the collapse narrative disintegrated against a wall of hard data. More …

Continue reading
Dec 20, 2025
0 National Other Politics

Unity Is a Discipline, Not a Slogan – December 22, Our Annual Reminder

Every year, the 22nd of December arrives quietly, almost like a pause in the national calendar as we are all preparing for the December 25 and 26th holidays – a moment when Zimbabwe is invited to remember that the most difficult victories are not won on the battlefield, but in the heart of a nation learning to live as one. National Unity Day exists because we once discovered, painfully, that political independence is not the same thing as national cohesion. Every patriot across the length and breadth of our Great Zimbabwe honours a sacred covenant. The signing of the 1987 Unity Accord was not merely a political handshake; it was a deliberate act to end a season of internal conflict and to pull the country back from the edge. It was a miraculous stitching together of the very soul of our nation.

To speak honestly about the Unity Accord is to admit what made it necessary. The early years after Independence were marked by deep mistrust, insecurity, dissident violence, and heavy-handed responses. It was a period whose scars did not follow neat political boundaries, and whose pain still sits in family stories, unmarked graves, and silences passed down like inheritance. For seven long years, brothers who had shared the trenches of the Second Chimurenga found themselves on opposing sides of a tragic divide. The risk was total – the disintegration of the state and the reversal of our revolutionary gains. More …

Continue reading
« Older EntriesNewer Entries »