It looks like Zimbabwe has missed the boat again. No-one here has thought about it lately, but when the nearest harbour in neighbouring Mozambique was being rehabilitated three decades ago with the help of Zimbabwe’s own Beira Corridor Group of consultants, engineers and investors electricity was drawn from ships to keep the projects going and…
Thank you one and all for your warm birthday greetings. My 66th was an excellent day. To use a golfing term, I have played more than half the course and find myself on “the back nine,” maybe the 10th or 12th fairway. I hope the clubhouse, the 19th hole, will still be open when…
The virtuous New York Times is in the doghouse. They slipped up by using unverified quotations from Mr Mugabe that appeared in a Kenyan magazine. In an article on corruption in Kenya, The New York Times attributed to Mr Mugabe these thoughts: “The people of East Africa shock me with their wizardry in stealing. You…
So what does it matter if Mr Mugabe didn’t wear the traditional Indian attire like all the other heads of state in the photo line-up at the just ended Africa India summit in New Delhi? So what if he appeared to stumble on the shallow step up to the podium and had to be helped…
Much as there is sympathy for migrants streaming into Europe, the families of the victims of the latest earthquake or flood and shock at the unending violence between Israelis and Palestinians, it is no longer a simple blessing that Zimbabwe is so far away from all of it. On the way to Glen Forest Memorial Park…
Charles Frizell writes in to say images in stone sculpture and drawings of NyamiNyami, the legendary river god of the Zambezi, look like the logo of Italian carmaker Alfa Romeo. The Italians who built the Kariba dam in the 1950s brought the first Alfa Romeo cars to the Zambezi valley. The Alfa logo first appeared…
It is abidingly and enormously satisfying to stand in the shower and, for the first time, wash away the grime, dust and chaos of Zimbabwe with water heated by God’s own sunshine without depending on the tin-gods and the oafs of politics for electricity. The solar geyser is online, as are solar panels on the…
If it’s at all possible, forget about the debilitating 18-hour electricity cuts for a moment. The agonising and costly writing of a new Zimbabwe constitution, accepted overwhelmingly in a 2013 referendum, seems to have been yet another waste of time and money; much of the reformed constitution still has to be adopted into hard and…
Much as Zimbabwe’s ability to laugh at itself is to be applauded, the lighter side of the 18- hour 4.00 a.m. to 10.00 p.m. power cuts isn’t a laughing matter any longer. The neighbour’s young daughter gets up in the dark to get ready for work and comes home to darkness, father goes to…
Coming out of retirement, this charcoal iron that for decades has been used as a door stop. The daintily painted flowers will burn off as soon as it is fired up. The new wave of power cuts have met everyone’s worst fears. Mr Mugabe’s state media confirms the cuts from 4.00 a.m. to 10.00 p.m.…