SYSTEMS ON TRIAL

One Company’s Balance Sheet Is Holding Up the Republic. Here’s Why That Should Terrify Us.

Last week on Wednesday, the Zimbabwe Revenue Authority gave Econet Wireless an award for customs and excise compliance at a Taxpayer Appreciation Day marking the agency’s 25th anniversary. The ceremony is not the interesting part. The interesting part is what it reveals about the relationship between one company and the state. In the fiscal year ended February 2024, Econet paid ZWL3.8 trillion to the government … Continue reading One Company’s Balance Sheet Is Holding Up the Republic. Here’s Why That Should Terrify Us.

Unknown's avatarKumbirai Thierry Nhamo5 Comments
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
REALITY BITES

Tendai Ruben Mbofana is Confusing Etymology for Ideology

Every language has a graveyard of words that used to mean something specific and now mean whatever the room decides they mean. My dear mentor Tendai has just built an entire column on the false idea that words are haunted forever by wherever they were born, and that failing to research a phrase’s family tree before you say it is some kind of moral failure. … Continue reading Tendai Ruben Mbofana is Confusing Etymology for Ideology

Unknown's avatarKumbirai Thierry Nhamo26 Comments
Politics

Brett Muvet and Hopewell Chin’ono Have Pure Delusions About How Governments In Exile Work

Okay I guess I am going to be that guy. We all know that Brett Holley, a Zimbabwean activist who calls himself Brett MuVet launched a political party/movement last week calling it Varanda VeZimbabwe. He dropped a launch video akin to what can be a manifesto. He discussed his aspirations and some other details of this new part. Most importantly,  he pointed put his intention … Continue reading Brett Muvet and Hopewell Chin’ono Have Pure Delusions About How Governments In Exile Work

Unknown's avatarKumbirai Thierry Nhamo29 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 Nhamo49 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
Politics

“Be Fruitful and Multiply”: ZANU PF’s Bizarre War on Family Planning

Mabel Chinomona holds two titles that do not, on their face, obviously combine into a mandate on reproductive health. She is the president of Zimbabwe’s Senate and, separately, the Secretary for Women’s Affairs within the ruling ZANU PF party’s Women’s League, a wing of the party apparatus that traces its own history back to 1977. It was in the latter capacity, speaking at a Women’s … Continue reading “Be Fruitful and Multiply”: ZANU PF’s Bizarre War on Family Planning

Unknown's avatarKumbirai Thierry Nhamo14 Comments
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