Category: SYSTEMS ON TRIAL

Politics, SYSTEMS ON TRIAL

A Government That Cannot Follow Its Own Plan Has No Business Enforcing One

Zimbabwe has a problem with informal work. It also has a problem with pretending that its policies are solutions. This year, the government adopted the National Informal Economy Formalisation Strategy. The strategy recognizes what successive governments have often preferred to ignore: Informal work is not a temporary nuisance or an obstacle to urban order. It is a central part of Zimbabwe’s economy. The strategy calls … Continue reading A Government That Cannot Follow Its Own Plan Has No Business Enforcing One

Unknown's avatarKumbirai Thierry Nhamo13 Comments
SYSTEMS ON TRIAL

When the Sky Breaks Twice in Three Years

The soil has not yet forgiven the heat of 2024. In the dry lands of Buhera and the low-slung valleys of Matabeleland, the earth remembers how the maize stalks curled and browned before the cobs could form. It remembers the dust storms that stripped the topsoil away, and the cattle that dropped dead beside empty boreholes. That disaster was supposed to be the exception. Now … Continue reading When the Sky Breaks Twice in Three Years

Unknown's avatarKumbirai Thierry Nhamo7 Comments
SYSTEMS ON TRIAL

Who Is Brett Holley?: Inside Zimbabwe’s Newest and Whitest Political Experiment

A white man has just launched a political party in Zimbabwe, and he wants you to know it is not about him. That at least, is the pitch. Brett Holley is a Zimbabwean businessman and social media personality better known by his public persona, Brett “Muvet”. He has spent recent years building an online following as a political commentator. This past week he announced the … Continue reading Who Is Brett Holley?: Inside Zimbabwe’s Newest and Whitest Political Experiment

Unknown's avatarKumbirai Thierry Nhamo48 Comments
SYSTEMS ON TRIAL

Raising the Health Bar in Addis: Zimbabwe’s Tall Order for the Workforce Agenda

In Addis Ababa last week, health ministers from across the continent gathered under the vaulted diplomacy of the African Union’s home city for the seventy-sixth session of the World Health Organization’s Regional Committee for Africa, and the language coming out of the plenary halls was, as it usually is at these gatherings, expansive. Delegates from forty-seven member states spent the opening days endorsing the Africa … Continue reading Raising the Health Bar in Addis: Zimbabwe’s Tall Order for the Workforce Agenda

Unknown's avatarKumbirai Thierry Nhamo1 Comment
SYSTEMS ON TRIAL

Analysis: Glacial Collapse Turns Nepal-Tibet Border into a Graveyard

The water did not fall from the sky. That is the detail investigators keep returning to as they try to explain how a stretch of the Himalayas that had seen no significant rainfall turned, in the space of a few minutes on Wednesday morning, into one of the deadliest disaster zones in the region’s recent history. What began at 8:37 a.m. local time as a … Continue reading Analysis: Glacial Collapse Turns Nepal-Tibet Border into a Graveyard

Unknown's avatarKumbirai Thierry Nhamo13 Comments
SYSTEMS ON TRIAL

Ratko Mladić and the Long Shadows of the Balkans

Ratko Mladić died today in a prison hospital in The Hague, at 84, and with him went one of the last living figures who could stand, in a single body, for the violence that tore Yugoslavia apart three decades ago. The former Bosnian Serb general had been serving a life sentence for genocide, war crimes and crimes against humanity stemming from the 1992 to 1995 … Continue reading Ratko Mladić and the Long Shadows of the Balkans

Unknown's avatarKumbirai Thierry Nhamo17 Comments
REALITY BITES, SYSTEMS ON TRIAL

When a New Currency Asks Old Questions

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Kumbirai Thierry Nhamo

Kumbirai Thierry Nhamo is a social justice activist, writer and blogger.

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The arrival of a new currency is always a public event, but it is rarely only about economics. The ZiG entered Zimbabwe’s daily life with a mixture of curiosity, caution and quiet fatigue. People lined up at banks. Others waited to see if shop prices would move. Most simply kept using whatever currency they trusted. A new note in a wallet can feel hopeful. It can also feel like an echo of things the country would rather forget.

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REALITY BITES, SYSTEMS ON TRIAL

Dollars, Data, and the New Taxman

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Kumbirai Thierry Nhamo

Kumbirai Thierry Nhamo is a social justice activist, writer and blogger.


Zimbabwe’s latest fiscal idea arrives with a simple promise: from January 2026, banks and mobile money operators will withhold fifteen percent on payments made to offshore digital platforms. It is meant to close a gap. The argument is that subscription fees and platform commissions stream out of the country without passing through the tax net, and the Treasury sees an opportunity to capture what has long slipped by.

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SYSTEMS ON TRIAL

No, President Mnangagwa Was Not ‘Elected’ To Chair COMESA

There is a special art to sounding grand when saying something quite ordinary. It’s an art Zimbabwean state media has perfected. The latest performance arrived neatly packaged in a ZBC headline declaring that President Emmerson Mnangagwa “has been elected” the incoming Chairperson of the Common Market for Eastern and Southern Africa (COMESA). The sentence feels triumphant. “Elected.” It rolls off the tongue like a diplomatic … Continue reading No, President Mnangagwa Was Not ‘Elected’ To Chair COMESA

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