Bulawayo24 News - Skyes! "it makes perfect sense"

Tsvangirai clothed in borrowed robes and forgot to think beyond slogans

IT'S been many seasons ever since this column was launched, more accurately ever since I adopted it from its "tired" founder, Professor Jonathan Moyo. While I know Nathaniel to be his middle name, I will not hazard a guess on why he surnam…

Published: 24 Jun 2017 at 13:29hrs | 53 | by Nathaniel Manheru

How Rhodesia ended tribes

The year 1970 saw the birth of a publication titled "The Passing of Tribal Man in Africa". Edited by a Canadian academic, the late Peter C. W. Gutkind, the publication challenged entrenched Anglo-Saxon ideas which had congealed into a fash…

Published: 17 Jun 2017 at 10:03hrs | 8 | by Nathaniel Manheru

Zimbabwe media split into rival camps that parallel various political divides

I don't know what triggered it, but I just woke up craving for hard-reading stuff. Deep and tough reading. If happens quite often, especially when you suffer a surfeit of the mundane, the everyday, when everything looks unvaryingly matter-…

Published: 10 Jun 2017 at 17:01hrs | 6 | by Nathaniel Manheru

ANC the toddler

AM I wrong? I have always thought the goal of opposition is to govern? And I haven't said the goal is to lead. To govern. You can lead anything, at any level, including leading a village co-operative. Or Zinatha. But the goal of being in o…

Published: 03 Jun 2017 at 11:08hrs | 4 | by Nathaniel Manheru

This nonsense about Mthwakazi is just that - flatulent nonsense

ONE quote which high school history pupils in this country spout out with remarkable ease is one attributed to Otto von Bismarck, the German aristocrat and leader who is credited with the unification of Germany on the back of Prussia, then…

Published: 14 May 2017 at 14:50hrs | 486 | by Nathaniel Manheru

South Africans wake up to the horror of white interests in the rainbow

My deepest, heartfelt condolences to the Chidyausiku family on the loss of Godfrey, our recently retired Chief Justice. He was a fine character, an enormous lawyer by any measure.Above all, he served his people, right from the early days o…

Published: 06 May 2017 at 12:27hrs | 2 | by Nathaniel Manheru

Morgan Tsvangirai: Where small planets orbited

For me the important thing about the so-called memoranda of understanding signed between Morgan Tsvangirai on the one hand, and separately Joice Mujuru and Welshman Ncube on the other, was the cast in the set. I caught sight of Timba, hims…

Published: 22 Apr 2017 at 10:45hrs | 2 | by Nathaniel Manheru

South Africa hardly recovered from the race sentiment of apartheid

It is very easy to think it is the flash, not the flame; that burns big logs. The local media excitedly reported on the resignation of an aide of Mujuru's Nats, in the process missing the actual burning flame of the whole story.I mean, doe…

Published: 08 Apr 2017 at 11:54hrs | 3 | by Nathaniel Manheru

In Mujuru's Party, they break each other's knee caps

Of course political pressure comes in many ways, and manifests in many forms.In Mujuru's National People's Party, they break each other's knee caps in order to hurt Zanu-PF! In the MDCs, they shout "amandla!" in order to enthrone a muchinj…

Published: 02 Apr 2017 at 13:03hrs | 3 | by Nathaniel Manheru

Spectacle of Dead-mouse Mutasa

So it's true after all? That Tsvangirai's MDC benefited from Mai Mujuru and her late departed hero-husband, Chauya-Chauya's Mavambo project? So why was she denying it when this column made that revelation for the benefit of truth and histo…

Published: 25 Mar 2017 at 14:21hrs | 1 | by Nathaniel Manheru

Pseudo-Reformists: When Beasts of England Roar

A cryptic but interesting response to my piece last week came from one "yowe" who advised me to read George Orwell's classic, Animal Farm. I can only surmise that "yowe" is unaware that literature, English literature especially, is my fort…

Published: 11 Mar 2017 at 07:05hrs | 5 | by Nathaniel Manheru

It's the Zimdollar, stupid!

Gentle reader, I think it is a sheer waste of national time to focus on the collapse of ZimPF, spectacular though that may be. There was nothing unexpected about ZimPF's dramatic finale, especially for you who have been reading this column…

Published: 11 Feb 2017 at 20:52hrs | 7 | by Nathaniel Manheru

As the Twitter Professora would say, handei tione!

IT has been a week of laughter and good political humour, not least because my party triumphed in Bikita West, but also because of the clotted reasoning and prose which this defeat wrought in losers. It is a bit unkind to continue to menti…

Published: 28 Jan 2017 at 08:31hrs | 4 | by Nathaniel Manheru

Keeping ZDERA alive

A key strategy of imperialism is raising false dust so as to cloud national focus and vision. Or to blur a clear identification and knowledge of who the real enemy is. History, including our own, is replete with instances where this time-w…

Published: 21 Jan 2017 at 11:16hrs | 5 | by Nathaniel Manheru

Jonathan Moyo stop dabbling in Zanu-PF succession politics

In history and to the outsider, Zimbabwe has always been a fabulous illusion. An Ophir. An El Dorado, a home to the Queen of Sheba. If the wishes of early European "pathfinders" were horses, Zimbabwe would have wound up a German colony, po…

Published: 14 Jan 2017 at 08:38hrs | 3 | by Nathaniel Manheru

Bond notes: When mere depositors debate

An interview Donald Trump is alleged to have had with People Magazine in 1998 quoted him as saying: "If I were to run [for US presidency], I'd run as a Republican. They're the dumbest group of voters in the country. They believe anything o…

Published: 26 Nov 2016 at 15:49hrs | 5 | by Nathaniel Manheru

So how was America on November 9, and thereafter?

No surprises for me. Hopefully none for you too, gentle reader, if you didn't miss my September 24 and October 21 instalments. September 24 piece in part read: "However rough one finds him [Donald Trump], clearly he is the stronger candida…

Published: 12 Nov 2016 at 18:41hrs | 5 | by Nathaniel Manheru

We are not South Africans

Denial or deceit: these are the two dominant impulses between which vexed life hovers. And vexations come both by way of agonising expectations, or by way of deep fears, especially fears of hazards one would rather not acknowledge.Looking …

Published: 29 Oct 2016 at 16:26hrs | 5 | by Nathaniel Manheru

Manheru attacks Nomazulu Thata

One Nomazulu Thata - that angry Zimbabwean beauty whose headgear leaves me breathless - is not too pleased with my snide comments on the sitting arrangement of Joice Mujuru, the leader of Zimbabwe People First. She called my last instalmen…

Published: 22 Oct 2016 at 10:35hrs | 3 | by Nathaniel Manheru

Mawarire left Zimbabwe under hard-to-understand circumstances

One basic rule in politics is never to concede ground, still less to allow shrinkage of the space you hold or dominate.You live true to this motto both by being careful not to tread on doubtful turf, and by being tenacious and even pugnaci…

Published: 25 Sep 2016 at 09:34hrs | 4 | by Nathaniel Manheru

Mujuru's impending trip to Chatham House where she hopes to impress her British benefactors

THE Tongas have a good saying: Hearts are not far from concord when noses have already fraternised. Let me open my gonamombe, pull out the lid of the cow-horn canister, so you the reader and me, can share the snuff by which we summon our a…

Published: 17 Sep 2016 at 12:29hrs | 9 | by Nathaniel Manheru

Imagine a rat dreaming making love to a cat!

This week I enjoyed two statements sure to enrich the national stock of political sayings. The first one came from Kudzai Chipanga, the de facto leader of the Youth Wing of the ruling party, Zanu-PF. Addressing his peers in the Youth Wing,…

Published: 03 Sep 2016 at 09:38hrs | 2 | by Nathaniel Manheru

To Decide is to Govern!

I have made a pledge to you my readers. A pledge I will always endeavour to fulfil for as long as I write. That pledge is to raise difficult questions, break taboos, speak and spill the truth, so this society confronts its warts. And its w…

Published: 27 Aug 2016 at 07:51hrs | 9 | by Nathaniel Manheru

Mujuru - Tsvangirai: When a widow decides to go out on a binge with a long-time lover

Ice cubes in the freezer can never change the weather in the kitchen, I keep telling people. In politics, anything goes, more so for people who delight in pelting opponents. It is downright foolish to invoke the book of rules when your mis…

Published: 20 Aug 2016 at 09:37hrs | | by Nathaniel Manheru

Africa: It is the darkness now!

I have no difficulties with insults heaped upon our ancestors by the white world, both before and after colonisation. Much of it arose from overweening Victorian pride and racism anyway, a lot more from sheer ignorance of how to read thing…

Published: 13 Aug 2016 at 08:47hrs | 53 | by Nathaniel Manheru

Zimbabwe: The French connection

Well, like I indicated last week, the pilferage of the uumph of civil servants demonstrations by some externally glamorised fringe political upstarts last week was bound be exposed in the failed lockdown call this week. Simply, these upsta…

Published: 16 Jul 2016 at 07:50hrs | 4 | by Nathaniel Manheru

Zimbabwe: WhatsApp or Whatsfear?

One seemingly innocuous detail from history I always want to share with Zimbabweans relates to the relationship between a few whites in Bulawayo and King Lobengula soon after the signing of the fateful Rudd Concession in 1888. By then Char…

Published: 09 Jul 2016 at 08:26hrs | 3 | by Nathaniel Manheru

Zimbabwe: Not in a thousand years!

Let's start with a series of small, light-hearted but revealing anecdotes. Beitbridge. I am told there was quite some build-up of tension on both sides of the bridge, which means a build-up from South Africa and from Zimbabwe. The business…

Published: 02 Jul 2016 at 12:01hrs | 1 | by Nathaniel Manheru

Tsvangi-xit moment?

Our media pundits are at it again, misleading us into thinking that local opposition organisations are about to find each other, hopefully to form what might be called a party to challenge Zanu-PF. The euphoria over Joice Mujuru's small ra…

Published: 25 Jun 2016 at 09:11hrs | 2860 | by Nathaniel Manheru

Grand Coalition: Cdes without a Code

No sooner have they come together than they had forgotten the code that brought them together. That is the story of our opposition, and their famed grand coalition that was hyped to tediousness by the media. Then the People First was an id…

Published: 04 Jun 2016 at 09:07hrs | 4 | by Nathaniel Manheru

Million Man March: So hard a fact, so harder to accept

BACK in the 1970s, marriage took the form of musical rivalry that pitted families of the bride and the groom. Each side composed songs that exalted the qualities of their side - both real and imagined - while heaping execrable qualities on…

Published: 28 May 2016 at 08:43hrs | 1 | by Nathaniel Manheru

When a Nation lacks self-belief

I AM conflicted. I would have wanted to deal with David Coltart's book or, better still, deal with the whole debate around bond notes, both of them quite urgent and substantive. But I find myself having to deal with a matter that by now sh…

Published: 14 May 2016 at 09:16hrs | 7 | by Nathaniel Manheru

Coltart: (Hi)story and our story as Africans

As I sit down to write this piece, it is February 18, 1978, and David Coltart has just taken off for South Africa, to start his university studies at UCT, the University of Cape Town. He leaves behind Rhodesia, still burning, his Ngundu po…

Published: 07 May 2016 at 20:11hrs | 2 | by Nathaniel Manheru

Zimbabwe: One side black, the other side bright

I suppose it is called delayed sight. Last week I drew the ire of opposition MDC-T supporters when I raised the self-evident, dead-end scenario that comes with demonstrations, and the fleeting joy that comes with regaling inflated crowd nu…

Published: 23 Apr 2016 at 12:56hrs | 5 | by Nathaniel Manheru

Zimbabwe: Politics of Crowds

The generous ones put it at 10 000. The modest ones put it at 2 000. The niggard ones put it at 800. And all claimed to be reading from the same crowd which the MDC-T is alleged to have mustered in the wake of a court ruling favouring the …

Published: 16 Apr 2016 at 11:26hrs | 5 | by Nathaniel Manheru

US: Country without a skin

I HAVE always been struck by how local sayings often betray an advanced scientific sensibility traceable to our so-called 'non-scientific' forebears. All this against rooted allegations of pre-scientific living, a myth cultivated and nouri…

Published: 12 Mar 2016 at 15:18hrs | 2 | by Nathaniel Manheru

Mujuru: Enter the Super Tuesday party!

LIKE my favourite muzukuru always warns me: when you are among vultures, don't die. I don't know whether there was much forethought to Mai Mujuru's party launch date: Super Tuesday! Maybe her schemers thought Zanu-PF would be distracted by…

Published: 05 Mar 2016 at 07:17hrs | 870 | by Nathaniel Manheru

Holding Tsvangirai up to ridicule

Give it to our African heritage. You don't go very far in search of a proverb appropriate to express strange happenings in your neighbourhood. Our forefathers will have something for you, itself an indication of the expansive experience th…

Published: 16 Jan 2016 at 15:54hrs | 1611 | by Nathaniel Manheru

Zimbabwe: New Year, Old Thinking

2016 arrived nine days ago. Or so we allege. As before, and before, on New Year the sun still rose from the east, still set in the west. The clock - not time - ticked as before, giving us an illusion of recording reality, of time past, tim…

Published: 09 Jan 2016 at 07:13hrs | 857 | by Nathaniel Manheru

Tendai Biti, a very small man masquerading as leader of a political party

As I write this piece, I am reminded of one Dennis Brutus and his "Gore'e". "Gore'e" is a poem about an island off Senegal by that name, an island from where Africans were loaded into ships for slavery in various parts of the world, includ…

Published: 05 Dec 2015 at 07:36hrs | 7 | by Nathaniel Manheru

The fringe that fears Mnangagwa

As I write this piece, I am looking at a piece in the New York Times done by one Alexander Noyes. It is on Zimbabwean politics. The writer introduces himself as a doctoral candidate at Oxford University, a profile no doubt meant to impart …

Published: 28 Nov 2015 at 07:48hrs | | by Nathaniel Manheru

ZANU-PF: In the absence of the big idea

LET me work and play with an observation by a Marxist literary critic, Walter Benjamin, who noted: "All great works of literature found a genre or dissolve one". Elaborating this great observation, the maverick Susan Sontag added: "However…

Published: 14 Nov 2015 at 07:07hrs | 4 | by Nathaniel Manheru

Zimbabwe police: Old wine in new bottle-skins

I SEEK reader indulgence in breaking a promise I made last week. I had committed this column to a follow-up article on the wider pointers beyond the media issues I dealt with. Little did I know that new developments would occur, developmen…

Published: 07 Nov 2015 at 07:23hrs | 1374 | by Nathaniel Manheru

Supper that smells too doggy

Zimbabwe: Assassins without gunsOctober 31, 2015 Shingirai Huni Features, Opinion & Analysis, Headlines, Nathaniel ManheruJoram NyathiNathaniel ManheruI will part with tradition and dedicate this piece to Joram Nyathi, deputy editor of…

Published: 31 Oct 2015 at 10:53hrs | 4 | by Nathaniel Manheru

What makes Robert Mugabe rattle his enemies so unfailingly?

What is it that makes Robert Mugabe rattle his enemies so unfailingly? Even when he does nothing at all?We have been having a big debate on the local media, more accurately, on a portion of it. I notice the same debate is raging in South A…

Published: 26 Oct 2015 at 05:59hrs | 7 | by Nathaniel Manheru

Gutu makes claims that leave Tsvangirai as a principle butt

Last week gave us a hilarious story of Honourable Chinotimba seeking some kind of restitution for his "long lost" cellphone. Many will remember that the missing cellphone was blamed on the late Mahlangu who had to go through a trial before…

Published: 17 Oct 2015 at 16:46hrs | 5 | by Nathaniel Manheru

AfriForum challenge is less about Zimbabwe but more about South African and Namibian land reform

LAST week I promised to tackle the issue of the sale by auction of a property of the Zimbabwe Government in Cape Town, over a court action involving AfriForum, a white legal outfit defending colonial property rights in the whole of the Sou…

Published: 04 Oct 2015 at 09:28hrs | 16 | by Nathaniel Manheru

Mujuru's non-existent party

The beauty about an argument that has an encompassing, hard-to-fault, premise is that its detractors end up validating it, fortifying it. Responses to my instalment on the People First project last week, left me feeling more or less vindic…

Published: 26 Sep 2015 at 16:38hrs | 6 | by Nathaniel Manheru

Mugabe quakes in his boots, we are told

IT has been an eventful week, quite eventful. On my way home last Saturday, I ran into an everlasting convoy of MDC-T supporters. Their vehicular beeline pointed beyond, passing through and past Chivhu. The journey source, as I was later t…

Published: 19 Sep 2015 at 11:24hrs | 5 | by Nathaniel Manheru

Mujuru won't sleep alone

I LIKE what is happening in Europe, namely the trekking to its shores of thousands and thousands of refugees from North Africa and Middle East, foremost refugees from war-torn Syria. It's a pity America is so far away, made farther by the …

Published: 12 Sep 2015 at 09:09hrs | 6 | by Nathaniel Manheru

Columnist / Nathaniel manheru

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