Posts by Angus Shaw
Good show! No politics allowed
The Eurovision Song Contest was never everyone’s cup of tea. Banale, trite, cheesy? But this year it got into a hullaballoo over whether Vladimir Zelenski should be allowed to speak at it last night. No. No politics please. Shut up, if you don’t mind. Yes, a Zelensky visit might have been immensely symbolic but he…
Read MoreBringing out our dead …
It’s hard to shelter from the deluge of news from Sudan and Ukraine. So PTSD brings all this back, particularly in the dark dreams of night … Death, danger and destruction have a prominent place in history, especially in Africa. We accept it as a given until we have to bring out our own dead.…
Read MoreHorst Faas and Mohamed Amin
IMAGES OF CONFLICT Horst Faas should know what he’s talking about in the foreword to Images of Conflict on war reporting. He won two Pulitzers for his photography of war that he started in Algeria in 1962. He eventually became chief of photos at The Associated Press, for whom both Hansi Krauss and I…
Read MoreIMAGES OF CONFLICT
Horst Faas, veteran war photographer and twice Pulitzer price winner wrote this: On Monday 12 July 1993, a mob murdered four men who were working as photo-journalists in Mogadishu, Somalia. The four were separated from a convoy of media cars as they tried to photogroph a United Nations…
Read MoreFidel Castro and Ian Smith
F Angus Shaw Fidel Castro, ‘the revolutionary,’ and Ian Smith, ‘the reactionary,’ never actually met, but we all found it rather amusing that the Cuban embassy bought a house next door to Ian Smith’s in Harare. For so many years Cuba was anathema to our pre-independence prime minister. The Cubans were the very symbol…
Read MoreFrom the past, Saxon rises again?
Andrew Saxon was a pen name of mine. Our “Public Eye” column in newspapers and magazines was quite well-liked in Zimbabwe, as modesty would have it said. Let’s see if Saxon stands the ravages of time in an upcoming serialisation of snippets beginning right here. Ghosts from three decades past will need some annotations. Muammar…
Read More‘Fings ain’t wot they used to be
May Day, mayday, mayday, the international radio distress signal for ships and planes but no-one has heard ours. Zimbabwe is going down fast and furious and there’s no rescue on the way. For workers, things aren’t what they used to be. It’s not surprising that Workers’ Day is celebrated by not going to work. Once…
Read MoreStop the World I Want to Get Off
As the old musical said: Stop the World I Want to Get Off. It’s not possible unless you want to take out your 9mil and shoot yourself in the head, so we have to make do with what we’ve got. Away from the daily troubles of 2023, it helps to look at the wondrous world…
Read MoreThe curse in cricket, now the race card
Disturbing to see professional Zimbabwe cricketer Gary Ballance has retired after “falling out of love with the game,’’ as the British tabloid press put it. In truth, he fell out of favour. Cricket fell out of love with him. Gary, 33, former England and Yorkshire county player, was dragged into the highly publicised scandal at…
Read MoreOur foremost hero Mbuya Nehanda is crying
The people out there are saying that Mbuya Nehanda is crying: You put me on the 50 dollar note now worth a measly 3 US cents.. Even a ‘freezit,’ the frozen flavoured drink sold on the street that comes in a small plastic sachet, costs four Mbuya Nehandas – 200 Zimbabwe dollars, and probably less.…
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