Columnist / Zifiso masiye
Are you clumsy at prayer like me?
Our budding socialisation is keen on teaching us math, geography and science as critical skills of life and sundry tools of solving ours and the problems of the world we grow into. Many of us have rea...Published: 14 Mar 2021 at 06:27hrs | 5 | by Zifiso Masiye
Civics must drive the VP's office
In our new kind of normal, where restraint, moral integrity and sound values have been replaced by lumpen orgy, profanity and clown foolery, I meet the question: So what do you think of the latest VP ...Published: 07 Mar 2021 at 08:15hrs | | by Zifiso Masiye
Of power and our intrinsic failings
Like so many of you, I too could never quite wrap it around my head. Just how does arguably the world's most developed nation connive to vote into the most important leadership position an unabashed b...Published: 28 Feb 2021 at 08:56hrs | | by Zifiso Masiye
Covid-19 lockdown: How times have changed
It was after four aborted attempts at assembling that customary team of amadombo, an attempt at receiving and meeting our prospective in-laws as a non-negotiable precondition to observe the cultural r...Published: 21 Feb 2021 at 07:08hrs | 1 | by Zifiso Masiye
Some 'good' that can come out of Covid-19
As usual, but maybe particularly now, at every funeral, as they bury loved one after loved one and in the hospital wards, as their parents sink in their own breath, people throw in a frustrated towel ...Published: 31 Jan 2021 at 10:05hrs | 2 | by Zifiso Masiye
Coronavirus and the mystery of infection
He waited by the bus-stop, all day, shaking his car keys rather impatiently, pacing up and down as each bus arrived, as each bus left. Only a dishevelled tramp sat by the benches, mumbling incoherentl...Published: 23 Jan 2021 at 22:45hrs | 1 | by Zifiso Masiye
Even your enemies, learn to love them
"VENGEANCE is mine. Neither hate nor be bitter with your brother, no matter how he has injured you. For when you hate, you must know, it is me and my Father inheaven that you hurt."Both to...Published: 17 Jan 2021 at 09:28hrs | | by Zifiso Masiye
Have funerals become super spreaders of Covid-19?
I was six and Gogo was showing me how to deal effectively with marauding ants in the little hut where I slept."Mana kancane, ngikwenzele isililo sobunyonyo!" (let me create for you an ants fun...Published: 10 Jan 2021 at 07:56hrs | 7 | by Zifiso Masiye
The curse of education?
I was jolted by a friend's tweet last night. It said "I have learnt much in my life… but the biggest stumbling block to my learning has been my education!"So it turns out, life is really one...Published: 25 Aug 2019 at 18:59hrs | | by Zifiso Masiye
Change: Wither Zimbabwe?
I had to go cross to check the theory. What is the change we have been sold? Or is this another war-time dummy!Particularly when the quality and magnitude of change is huge and transformationa...Published: 04 Aug 2019 at 14:22hrs | | by Zifiso Masiye
Bulawayo: The absent citizen
He must have been a pro. We never had a glimpse of the camera-man. He stood afixed to the door and focused on the desk and the town clerk's quivering face and frothing mouth. Even watching, many faint...Published: 28 Jul 2019 at 18:24hrs | | by Zifiso Masiye
The pig in Mthuli Ncube's bacon
I had occasion in my last visit to my discerning barber to try and explain the latest glowing World Bank reviews of the sterling performance of finance minister Mthuli Ncube and the minister's impecca...Published: 21 Jul 2019 at 10:22hrs | | by Zifiso Masiye
Lead if you may, without power
The top left grandstand at the iconic White City Stadium gave me a vintage hawk's eye view of proceedings. Increasingly, White City has become an arena less popular for sport, for football and Boy Ndl...Published: 02 Jun 2019 at 09:24hrs | | by Zifiso Masiye
Mnangagwa wants a critical friend, not more praise worshippers
Always, there was something inherently evil about that dinner table, authority and truth-to-power. I shall come to that.My maternal grandfather's very name said it all … Ndabakayithethwa! (L...Published: 19 May 2019 at 09:33hrs | 1 | by Zifiso Masiye
Bulawayo's love letter
To trade fair or trade foul, that is the question.In the past week, Bulawayo woke up to that roving, rattling helicopter sound, hovering low, above her rusty rooftops…the harbinger of the ci...Published: 05 May 2019 at 10:33hrs | 5 | by Zifiso Masiye
Of heroes betrayed, forgotten
When, in the fullness of time, the lies can hold no longer, when the frail bottom of deception falls off, when the foggy morning dew of orchestrated media smokescreens withers and gives way to the pow...Published: 21 Apr 2019 at 08:55hrs | | by Zifiso Masiye
Building national confidence
And so the old Indian tale is told. When the country became infested with venomous cobra snakes, government, in its wisdom, reacted with a smart snake stabilisation programme.A dollar for ever...Published: 10 Mar 2019 at 08:38hrs | 1 | by Zifiso Masiye
Selfishness, self-interest, opportunism and corruption
Dear Mr President,Policymaking and policy implementation are areas that we like to think of in idealistic terms in which the actors are altruistic. Often, we accept a certain level of self-int...Published: 03 Mar 2019 at 10:51hrs | 3 | by Zifiso Masiye
Nuggets from the men's conference
I just sneaked out of a boot-camp for that boy-thrill, the urge to break a cardinal rule: What happens at the men's conference stays at the men's conference! The thrifty snitch in me couldn't resist t...Published: 17 Feb 2019 at 08:07hrs | | by Zifiso Masiye
Zimbabwe won't die, the youth will save it
What really caught Ian Smith unawares was presumptuous complacency and his government's arrogance of incumbency… a deeply entrenched sense, both of class entitlement and invincibility based, not so ...Published: 20 Jan 2019 at 09:40hrs | | by Zifiso Masiye
A divided people, a defeated people!
The national shutdown or stayaway is developing in interesting dimensions.... It is not as peaceful as earlier predicted and disturbing reports of loss of lives keep filtering in. Variously motivated ...Published: 14 Jan 2019 at 13:41hrs | 1 | by Zifiso Masiye
What leaders? No more than tortoises sitting atop lamp posts
I decided in the new year to return Kuumba, my beautiful pet tortoise, to his wild, natural habitat of Matojeni.Besides my amazing wife, few sights and few life experiences have left a greater...Published: 13 Jan 2019 at 10:54hrs | 1 | by Zifiso Masiye
Which devolution Mthuli Ncube?
On the back of another, rather surprising, albeit welcome political somersault that has seen President Emmerson Mnangagwa embrace devolution, a hitherto Zanu-PF taboo, Finance minister Mthuli Ncube an...Published: 09 Dec 2018 at 07:09hrs | 1 | by Zifiso Masiye
Which way Prof. Ncube?
Somebody observed rather poignantly ,that every cobbler , house wife ,vendor and taxi driver in Zimbabwe is a spontaneous master of economic phenomena , aerodynamics ,football formations and medicine!...Published: 25 Nov 2018 at 07:50hrs | 1 | by Zifiso Masiye
Mnangagwa doing things differently from Mugabe
Much to the chagrin of the opposition dictatorship, Nkosana Moyo predicted, well before the elections, that a President Emmerson Mnangagwa would do things, (not necessarily well), but certainly differ...Published: 11 Nov 2018 at 12:55hrs | 1 | by Zifiso Masiye
Zimbabwe: Beware the long queues doth come
Our rations of overnight snacks packed, our cold-water bottles stashed away, perchance some juice or can of Miranda, warm clothing and a blanket each, here Bible, there a novel in hand and DJ Mjoks on...Published: 21 Oct 2018 at 09:52hrs | | by Zifiso Masiye
Mthuli Ncube has invited to his breakfast table ingredients from both the chicken and the pig
The unmistakable, yet inevitable atmosphere of limbo, utter despair, confusion and analytic paralysis engulfs the nation yet again. It has become our accustomed portion.The triumphant arroganc...Published: 14 Oct 2018 at 10:06hrs | | by Zifiso Masiye
Graft remains Zimbabwe's national sickness
The aftermath of one of Zimbabwe's most remarkable harmonised elections in recent history has been marked by a heightened sense of national anxiety.There is a curious mixture of great hope and...Published: 30 Sep 2018 at 08:01hrs | | by Zifiso Masiye
Five years of peaceful storm
"I cannot vote for my tormentors. Never!"Of the thousands of statements made this election year, Robert Mugabe's openly paraded acrimonious divorce with his childhood love and avowed life part...Published: 05 Aug 2018 at 09:58hrs | | by Zifiso Masiye
What government awaits Zimbabwe next week?
How is it that with such a long, rich history of pain, and deep experience of heartbreak, abuse and lies, smart girls still fall for the lies of cheap confidence tricksters and con-lovers? How is it, ...Published: 22 Jul 2018 at 10:37hrs | | by Zifiso Masiye
Trust, not arrogance, will deliver a good election
The 2018 World Cup spectacle has been a jarring and intriguing global tournament at many levels. Besides the remote control tensions and conflicts it visited unto our living rooms and the early humble...Published: 15 Jul 2018 at 17:01hrs | | by Zifiso Masiye
Zimbabwe's answer doesn't lie in the box
And so it is with my Grade 2 granddaughter. Only yesterday, she sought my help with what seemed to me a very simple multi-choice Math problem. My wife and I have always admired the rare professional a...Published: 01 Jul 2018 at 14:32hrs | | by Zifiso Masiye
2018: Why do we prefer bad leaders?
Behold the Ides of March are come and gone with little event and no fanfare, save for some bitter blue roof rantings of an aged, vanquished, fangless rattlesnake.The dim headlamp of Election 2...Published: 18 Mar 2018 at 09:05hrs | | by Zifiso Masiye
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