December - 2020

Alex Magaisa Articles

Alex Magaisa

Dec 23, 2020
9 min

One from the past: Will they ever come back?

This is an old piece from 15 years ago, long before the BSR was born but it's one of my favourites and most enduring. It asked a question that was pertinent then and remains relevant today. In those days, I used to have a column on Newzimbabwe.com a pioneering news-site, the brainchild of my friend Mduduzi Mathuthu. Readers of the column will certainly remember it. It was later published in the Zimbabwe Independent newspaper. I created Farai, a character who was supposed to r

Dec 22, 2020
11 min

16 observations regarding the Unity Accord

Alex T. Magaisa 1. How national is the Unity Accord? 22 December is a national holiday to mark Unity Day in Zimbabwe. While it is presented as a national affair, it is essentially an inter-party agreement between the ruling party and the main opposition party of the 1980s: ZANU PF, led by Robert Mugabe, and PF ZAPU, led by Joshua Nkomo. This agreement came seven years after Zimbabwe achieved its independence from British colonial rule in 1980. It was an agreement between poli

Dec 19, 2020
11 min

Big Saturday Read: The Great Scandal

BSR takes a moment to check the rear-view mirror. As usual, a lot has been covered each week in the BSR, but there can be no doubt that the two-part series on the Reserve Bank of Zimbabwe Farm Mechanisation Scandal is one of the major milestones. There is stiff competition for the best BSR among the faithful followers, but I imagine the series on the RBZ Farm Mechanisation Scandal must be somewhere in the top four. That heavyweight division would no doubt include the undisput

Dec 12, 2020
13 min

Big Saturday Read: Who is responsible for the demolitions?

Alex T. Magaisa The way it used to be Twenty years ago, a Tanzanian colleague I met at college in England was effusive in his praise of Zimbabwe’s urban areas. He had visited the country a few years before in the mid-nineties as part of a study into urban planning and development. He was impressed by the fact that the rules were enforced and there was order. I found it difficult to imagine what he saw as special in that. Was that not the norm everywhere? Several African colle

Dec 6, 2020
5 min

Easy Sunday Read: The forgotten case of Mr Yuchang

On 8 March 2016, Li Yuchang, a Chinese national, walked into Harare International Airport, as it was then called. He was on his way home. He was booked on the Emirates flight to Dubai and onward to China. Things did not go according to plan. As he was negotiating his way past the airport procedures, Mr Yuchang hit a snag. He was stopped by detectives attached to the Minerals and Border Control Unit. They had him under surveillance although he was blissfully unaware of big bro

Dec 5, 2020
13 min

Big Saturday Read: The Opposition’s “Annus Horribilis”

A horrible year Twenty-eight years ago, Queen Elizabeth II famously described 1992 as an “annus horribilis”. It is a Latin phrase which translates to a “horrible year”. Things had not gone well for the royal family. It is not surprising that the phrase annus horribilis has experienced a resurgence in usage this year, such is the scale of the tragedy that has engulfed the world on account of the COVID19 virus. There is that reality, but it would not be an exaggeration if Zimba

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