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Takura Zhangazha

OPINION: Zimbabwe’s hidden economic class struggle dilemma

Takura Zhangazha: “In Zimbabwe we have this primary challenge of either beginning to forget the fact that we are also a class-based society. Both by way of our modern colonial history as well as by way of our many desires to by almost any means necessary move from one ‘lower class’ rung to the next and then shouting from the hilltop that we have made it. Only to come tumbling down again. Or to die trying to get up the same ladder, never mind giving a pretense at still being there.”

Jan 11, 2024 Read more

Takura Zhangazha: Stubborn opinion, conjecture and feeling in Zimbabwe

By Takura Zhangazha

I am not sure if there has been some sort of scientific study on this but I will hazard to argue that we Zimbabweans are a highly opinionated people. This is for various reasons. Some of them similar to other countries in Africa such as assumptions of the superiority of our education system.

Meaning our ability to speak English or mimic the political economic knowledge and cultural systems of our former colonisers. Including complex considerations of our generally unrequited desire for equal ‘recognition’ for these capabilities.

Hence for example we have inundated social media chat with convoluted explanations of the invasion of Ukraine by Russia, something that fundamentally very few of us would easily understand.

Mar 14, 2022 Read more

Miseducating our future in Zimbabwe

Takura Zhangazha: “Many of us with rural roots will invariably remember fireside conversations around an uncle or aunt who instead of going to school would hide in the hills in abstract resistance to the classroom or ‘kwa fata’ as it was referred to in those early days of the entrenching of the colonial political economy. With ahistorical hindsight we would find humour in this but the reality of the matter was that the introduction of formal education to young Africans via initially mainly missionaries was about disruption of African knowledge production systems. And also our forced cooption into a colonial political economy that promoted not only capitalist inequality but also the racist narratives that came with it.”

Feb 06, 2022 Read more

Re-inventing Zimbabwe public libraries for a post Covid-19 conscious future

By Takura Zhangazha

A struggle cde recently reminded me, via social media, of the importance of libraries. He had tagged me in his own reflections on the importance of Walter Rodney’s epic book “ How Europe Underdeveloped Africa.” 

And I remembered how I first encountered the same said book via initially the Waterfalls and eventually the Dzivarasekwa District Council library as an emerging teenager straight out of boarding high school.

Oct 22, 2020 Read more

A General’s Cause, Recognition and Pursuit of Wealth – Review

By Takura Zhangazha

Blessing Miles Tendi’s biography of late national hero Solomon Mujuru, better known by his liberation war nom de guerre Rex Nhongo, is a riveting read.

What is more interesting is a different perspective on what were Mujuru’s motivations for the actions he undertook at various stages in his life. Tendi uniquely looks at possible reasons for specific key decisions that Mujuru made over the course of his life.

Mar 16, 2020 Read more

Takura Zhangazha: Magaya abuse allegations and evils of commodifying the female body

By Takura Zhangazha

A local weekly, the Sunday Mail newspaper recently carried a very disturbing story on allegations of sexual abuse of female worshippers by well-known clergyman Walter Magaya.

Titled, ‘Magaya Bombshell’ the story gave accounts of some of the worshippers and how they were either victims or witness to the alleged sexual abuse.  

One of the victims also claimed that ‘…the police were compromised and so were most of the journalists…’  so recourse to the law or the court of public opinion was by implication, difficult. 

Jul 25, 2019 Read more