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@Jamwanda2 On Saturday From a writer, critic, traveller, doctor I am reading selected letters of Anton Chekhov, the Russian writer, critic, traveller and medical doctor. The letters span a big chunk of his life, reflecting all the four roles rolled into one. This gives this epistolary collection quite some depth and breath on the close […]

@Jamwanda2 0n Saturday Becoming a political cliché Gustave Flaubert of the 19th Century licentious novel, Madame Bovary, said this of language: “Language is indeed a machine that continually amplifies emotion.” Nowadays we speak of the expressive force of language, including celebrating vocabulary and diction that confounds conventional usage. Come to think of it, good writers […]

@JAMWANDA2 ON SATURDAY The war which never ended There is a narrative reigning in opposition circles. It says all stories related to the Liberation Struggle are stale and sterile, indeed some self-titillation by a dying generation seeking to cheat time and extort past glory against present failures. This is hardly surprising. After Tsvangirai and his […]

@Jamwanda2 on Saturday Mining on Slaughter-Bench Our subsoil assets are on the slaughter-bench. Or so wishes the powerful Western mining/industrial/political Complex. It really does not matter if the assault on Zimbabwe’s mining assets is placed on seemingly foreign broadcast or newspaper platforms; the point is the medium is never the source of the message. Critical […]

@Jamwanda2 on Saturday What are stock characters? LET me be basic so I am accessible to many of my readers, whatever level of education, and from whichever discipline they hail. In literature we have what are termed stock characters. The more complex terms used for the same, and to varying accuracy, are stereotypes, archetypes of […]

@Jamwanda2 on Saturday Zimbabwe’s GEIST? NATIONS have what Antonio Gramsci terms “particularity of their mind”, GEIST in German language, or ESPRIT in French. Here in Africa, thinkers called the same variously, including “African Personality”, or the “African Soul”. Quite distinct from, but not necessarily unrelated to UBUNTU/HUMANISM, which refers to a people’s propensity for some […]

@Jamwanda2 on Saturday Poor Pamela Tremont I have watched Pamela Tremont’s hearing in preparation for her posting to Zimbabwe as US’ next ambassador. Both the line of questioning by US Senators, as well as her responses, were, to say the least, hilarious. Zimbabwe the country, with all its own internal politics, was not that much of […]

@Jamwanda2 on Saturday Mere Hokum Back in 1926, America witnessed the clash of two African-African American giants — then they were called Negroes — over the notion of Negro Art. Was Negro Art a separate creative tradition with distinct Afro-American canons, or just a small, tender offshoot of Eurocentric artistic mainstream? On the one side […]

Von Hornick’s nine principles on National Economy In 1684, an Austrian lawyer-turned-civil servant, Philipp Wilhelm von Hornick, published nine principal rules of a National Economy. The 17th century was the age of mercantilism, which is how his treatise became the manifesto for mercantilist Europe. The anvil of Europe’s mercantilism were States that would later become […]

A belch from a priest has greater value For a shiny trinket / Give not away your country / The foreigner is a trafficker / To mind him is no bargain / If you were skilled and artful / You’d stay away from all concoctions: / The stranger always gains. / Your goods are worth […]

Self-fulfilling, self-annulling prophecy Two developments caught my attention this week. One is a Brenthurst Foundation scholarship invitation to young Africans intent on pursuing postgraduate studies. Brenthurst Foundation is owned and financed by the Oppenheimers, and recently commissioned some outlandish opinion survey on Zimbabwe’s 2023 Harmonised Elections. The cellphone-based opinion survey granted Chamisa undisputed lead in […]

Joint American-Norwegian State terrorism So an American journalist, one Seymour Hersh, has now confirmed what we have always known, namely that the United States of America and Norway blew up the Nordstream gas pipeline which used to deliver Russian gas to mainland Europe? One cannot think of a worse act of bi-national State terrorism and […]

All set for the plebiscite now So the false furore over the Delimitation Report is now over, what with the submission of Final Report to the State President yesterday by ZEC chairperson, Judge Priscilla Chigumba? There was visible relief on her face, after the long-drawn out, fraught ritual; but there was also a glint of […]

@Jamwanda2 on Saturday Upsetting Uncle Sam big time ON February 17 and 27, the South African National Defence Force, SANDF, joins units of Russian and Chinese Defence Forces in tripartite exercises off South Africa’s Indian Coast. Dubbed Exercise Mosi II, this tri-national military exercise comes hard on the heels of a working visit to South […]

One Morris too many What it’s a name? The name of the old Triple C activist “beaten” in Murehwa is Morris Seremani. Morris as also the name of one turncoat freedom fighter who betrayed the Liberation Struggle, and led Rhodesian soldiers to ZANU’s rear camp in Mozambique for a wanton slaughter of hapless refugees. The […]