DECOLONIAL
Praxis
Journeyman…
Workers’ movement still matters
GANDANGA…
Man of the Left straight outta Global South
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LATEST THOUGHTS
April 11, 2025
I am from Bikita, Masvingo province in Zimbabwe. I was born there. But I grew up in Harare with the regular school holiday visit during public holidays. As instructed and directed by my mother and father. Upon attaining adulthood and sort of passing my Advanced Level courses and arriving at the University of Zimbabwe (UZ) […]
April 2, 2025
In the tragic crossfire that was Zimbabwes liberation struggle, I have only known at a personal level eleven (11) liberation war veterans. I can only name five (5) who are regrettably late but who also actively always encouraged me to tell stories of their own versions and roles, as they wrote or spoke of it, […]
April 1, 2025
I have recently made very general comments about Zanu Pf succession politics as they are occurring in 2025. And their newfound contestations about current president ED Mnangagwa’s term extension beyond 2028. I have done this on social media and in one or two instances for mainstream media. This succession question in Zanu Pf has caused […]
March 17, 2025
We may have a new form of what I will refer to as a fake Pan Africanism in our African immediate consciousness. One that has recently found voice following the dramatic and tragic cutting of foreign aid assistance by the new United States government led by Donald Trump and Elon Musk. Accompanied by the quite […]
March 10, 2025
You could almost laugh about it. Thousands of adult Zimbabweans flocking to a Sunday service to ‘see’ the power of ‘prophecy’. Over and about a US$ 1 million pledge on, you guessed it, the ability to prophesy what was in a religious leader’s pocket. These thousands of Zimbabweans were not only in the auditorium. They were also online and […]
March 3, 2025
Zimbabwe’s urban landscape is changing form quite rapidly. Particularly where one considers new modern urban developments such as shopping malls away from city centres or new residential housing in the form of either ‘flats’ or ‘cluster’ residential compounds and new low-income suburbs. This is also in tandem with the expansion of privatized social service buildings […]
KEEPING IT
HARD left LEFt
WITH CDE ZHANG!
Takura Zhangazha is a Zimbabwean writer and thinker. He has a background in political science and human rights advocacy, and identifies as a Pan-Africanist and a man of the Left. Cde Zhangazha was active in the student movement that allied with trade unionists and several civic groups – following the 1999 People’s Working Convention – to form Zimbabwe’s biggest opposition party. His trenchant and accessible style holds up the commons of our time against political theory.
Workers' Movement
September 25, 2024
By Takura Zhangazha* The much referred to Middle East has multiple and diverse meaning(s) for many Africans. The majority of these meanings are religious ones. Given our historical interaction with the slave trade, pre-colonial trade routes, colonialism and neo-colonialism, these ‘meanings’ of that geographical place that straddles what is referred to as the Arabian Peninsula […]
July 22, 2024
I hold no brief for the politics of the United States of America (USA). Though I always have a keen interest in what transpires there politically. This is mainly because of that country’s cultural hegemony not only in Africa but also across the rest of the world. It is an empire since the end of […]
June 28, 2024
Kenya, Bolivia and The Global Souths’ “Age, Ideology and Catharsis” By Takura Zhangazha* Two recent internationally flagged events could not skip my mind in the last few days. The first, as an African, was the occurrence of this week’s demonstrations that regrettably turned violent in Kenya over a Finance Bill (2024) proposed by that country’s […]
June 24, 2024
By Takura Zhangazha* There are new key political developments in the Southern African Development Community (SADC) region. On top of the list are the results of the South African general election that saw what was a regional political hegemon the African National Congress (ANC) lose its majority in Parliament. And by dint of the results […]
June 20, 2024
By Takura Zhangazha* Zimbabwe is going to host the next Southern African Development Community (SADC) Summit in August 2024. Our central government in Zimbabwe may be over stretching it a little bit. But that does not take away from the fact of the SADC summits importance. Historically or in terms of current international relations global […]
June 13, 2024
Re-Understanding Zimbabwe’s Fast Track Land Reform Programme. By Takura Zhangazha*So a comrade asked me about Zimbabwe’s Fast Track Land Reform Programme (FTLRP) and its full import almost after twenty three years since it began. I replied with relative ease that it has changed how capitalism works in this country. He retorted that it sort of […]
Human Rights
March 17, 2025
We may have a new form of what I will refer to as a fake Pan Africanism in our African immediate consciousness. One that has recently found voice following the dramatic and tragic cutting of foreign aid assistance by the new United States government led by Donald Trump and Elon Musk. Accompanied by the quite […]
February 5, 2025
As an African you will regularly reflect on your being, your othered ‘blackness’ and also your material standing in a now highly globalized perception of what can be the ‘good life’. And in all of its mimicry of the colonial legacy of global north societies. Or if we were to be a little bit more […]
January 13, 2025
On Monday 13 January 2025, the former prime minister of Kenya, Raila Odinga paid a courtesy call on Zimbabwe’s President E.D Mnangagwa in Harare. It turns out he has been on a tour of a number of African states and meeting with their presidents in order to let them know that he is bidding to […]
November 25, 2024
There are many conversations I have had with many comrades about the importance of what we now know to be the Southern African Development Community (SADC). And most times these conversations have bordered on the dismissively ahistorical. Wherein colleagues view SADC as this anti-democratic organisation in the region that is preventing new/ nascent opposition political parties […]
November 7, 2024
It was Franz Fanon that wrote on what he referred to as “A Dying Colonialism”. In this collection of essays, Fanon was generally optimistic about the future of Africa and its revolutionary and liberatory ethos. Already in “The Wretched of the Earth” he had also sort of indicated the ambiguity of what liberation meant and […]
October 24, 2024
So I once boarded a plane as an election observer to Mauritius in 2005 or thereabouts. I was part of a delegation of the Southern African Development Community (SADC) Parliamentary Forum. On the flight I met up with a member of the Mozambique parliament. In my naivety I thought he was from the Frelimo ruling party. At that […]
Pan-Africanism
March 17, 2025
We may have a new form of what I will refer to as a fake Pan Africanism in our African immediate consciousness. One that has recently found voice following the dramatic and tragic cutting of foreign aid assistance by the new United States government led by Donald Trump and Elon Musk. Accompanied by the quite […]
January 18, 2025
The United States of America (USA) Supreme Court on Friday 17 January 2025 unanimously upheld a decision by both the executive government and Congress to indefinitely ban the hugely popular social media platform Tik-Tok. The main reason for this was/is the security threat the social media application would cause the USA from China. With the […]
January 9, 2025
In the first calendar week of 2025, the Zimbabwe government announced its intention to privatize water in the capital city of Harare. The minister for local government, Daniel Garwe, in a recent press conference said the following, “Last week Friday, we were given the green light to privatise water services. We are now in the […]
January 4, 2025
At the beginning of the year 2025, there is now some rain that covers broader parts of Zimbabwe. Our metrological experts had anticipated, via their own public pronouncements that it would rain significantly in early 2024 December. The reality of the matter is that no matter the science, the weather in Southern Africa is not […]
November 4, 2024
There is currently a major drought in Zimbabwe. Its impact is somewhat not as felt in the urban as it would be in the rural areas of the country. In the urban areas it is more or less about the depth of boreholes and the setting up of support committees to deal with water shortages due […]
October 9, 2024
By Takura Zhangazha* Zimbabwe’s President Mnangagwa recently announced a change to land policy within the context of under what we now historically refer to as the Fast Track Land Reform Programme (FTLRP). This was done at a routine weekly cabinet briefing by his minister of information. This new land policy essentially changes the tenure system […]
History
April 2, 2025
In the tragic crossfire that was Zimbabwes liberation struggle, I have only known at a personal level eleven (11) liberation war veterans. I can only name five (5) who are regrettably late but who also actively always encouraged me to tell stories of their own versions and roles, as they wrote or spoke of it, […]
February 19, 2025
I have a couple of friends that like to remember what they refer to as the good old Zimbabwe days. Be it when they were in primary or secondary school. Or undertaking one or the other state-sponsored tertiary education. They talk of getting milk at school, eating well, getting student payouts/loans and how everyone was […]
February 10, 2025
USA president Donald Trump recently issued an executive order about South African domestic politics. In it he was basically protecting white South Africans and in particular those of Afrikaner (Dutch) origin. This was after one of his infamous and closest political advisors, Elon Musk had warned via his social media platform X, that there would be […]
November 30, 2024
A young Zimbabwean cde asked me about the meaning of ‘global war’. His question was coming from a context of the general narrative of a globalilsed world war between Russia, Ukraine and the North Atlantic Treaty Organisation (NATO). And of course the celebrity narrative or even movie like narrative that comes with pitting Biden, Putin and now […]
November 25, 2024
What has brought contemporary Zimbabwean politics to where it is today? The easy answer is the Southern African Development Community (SADC) mediated Global Political Agreement (GPA) in 2008. While we can talk about the legacy of Zanu Pf’s rule, the liberation struggle there is always a time when the past meets the present. The past is never enough […]
October 24, 2024
So I once boarded a plane as an election observer to Mauritius in 2005 or thereabouts. I was part of a delegation of the Southern African Development Community (SADC) Parliamentary Forum. On the flight I met up with a member of the Mozambique parliament. In my naivety I thought he was from the Frelimo ruling party. At that […]
Theory
February 19, 2025
I have a couple of friends that like to remember what they refer to as the good old Zimbabwe days. Be it when they were in primary or secondary school. Or undertaking one or the other state-sponsored tertiary education. They talk of getting milk at school, eating well, getting student payouts/loans and how everyone was […]
November 7, 2024
It was Franz Fanon that wrote on what he referred to as “A Dying Colonialism”. In this collection of essays, Fanon was generally optimistic about the future of Africa and its revolutionary and liberatory ethos. Already in “The Wretched of the Earth” he had also sort of indicated the ambiguity of what liberation meant and […]
October 14, 2024
A friend recently asked me about what I meant many years ago about “generational praxis”. I will come back to this concept/issue later. But if you want to crosscheck Antonio Gramsci on Google, please go ahead. He asked me this in an awkward context wherein we had listened to the new music that is now […]
October 3, 2024
By Takura Zhangazha* Most of us as Zimbabweans do not examine the trajectory of our contemporary but also individual national consciousness. For example we do not really ask, what shapes our individual political opinions? Is it the school we went to? The churches we attended or the political processes that we witnessed or experienced? Let […]
September 5, 2024
By Takura Zhangazha* With high levels of unemployment in the formal sector in Zimbabwe it is relatively given that formal trade unionism and workers rights activism is on the decline. Yes we still have trade unions such as the brave Zimbabwe Congress of Trade Unions (ZCTU) and its affiliates. But it is only to be […]
August 5, 2024
By Takura Zhangazha* When persons of my age, not necessarily generation, were growing up in the 1990s, we knew the importance of the library. In most cases, it was considered a sort of sanctuary and serious space for either studying for examinations or alternatively a place to escape whatever issues were happening at home or […]
Books
June 19, 2024
It was recently falsely reported that one of America’s leftist intellectual and media giants, Noam Chomsky has passed on. It has turned out that his wife quickly dispelled social media rumours that had spread like wildfire. What had been reported in progressive mainstream and social media is that Chomsky has been unwell for a while. […]
Politics
April 2, 2025
In the tragic crossfire that was Zimbabwes liberation struggle, I have only known at a personal level eleven (11) liberation war veterans. I can only name five (5) who are regrettably late but who also actively always encouraged me to tell stories of their own versions and roles, as they wrote or spoke of it, […]
April 1, 2025
I have recently made very general comments about Zanu Pf succession politics as they are occurring in 2025. And their newfound contestations about current president ED Mnangagwa’s term extension beyond 2028. I have done this on social media and in one or two instances for mainstream media. This succession question in Zanu Pf has caused […]
February 10, 2025
USA president Donald Trump recently issued an executive order about South African domestic politics. In it he was basically protecting white South Africans and in particular those of Afrikaner (Dutch) origin. This was after one of his infamous and closest political advisors, Elon Musk had warned via his social media platform X, that there would be […]
February 5, 2025
As an African you will regularly reflect on your being, your othered ‘blackness’ and also your material standing in a now highly globalized perception of what can be the ‘good life’. And in all of its mimicry of the colonial legacy of global north societies. Or if we were to be a little bit more […]
January 24, 2025
The Zimbabwe Heads of Christian Denominations (ZHOCD) recently issued a statement on an issue which essentially waded into a Zanu Pf debate around extending the current president E.D Mnangagwa’s term of office from 2028-2030. I deliberately mention Zanu Pf here because this issue of 2030 is essentially a ruling party one. It obviously has national connotations […]
January 13, 2025
On Monday 13 January 2025, the former prime minister of Kenya, Raila Odinga paid a courtesy call on Zimbabwe’s President E.D Mnangagwa in Harare. It turns out he has been on a tour of a number of African states and meeting with their presidents in order to let them know that he is bidding to […]
Media Freedom
January 18, 2025
The United States of America (USA) Supreme Court on Friday 17 January 2025 unanimously upheld a decision by both the executive government and Congress to indefinitely ban the hugely popular social media platform Tik-Tok. The main reason for this was/is the security threat the social media application would cause the USA from China. With the […]
June 30, 2022
Takura Zhangazha gave this presentation to the Annual Media Stakeholders Conference on November 2, 2018. Held at Sapes Trust in Harare, the event was organized by the Media Alliance of Zimbabwe. Colleagues, cdes and friends, I have been asked to discuss, albeit briefly, strategic issues of the media in Zimbabwe, going forward. I am not […]
Culture
April 11, 2025
I am from Bikita, Masvingo province in Zimbabwe. I was born there. But I grew up in Harare with the regular school holiday visit during public holidays. As instructed and directed by my mother and father. Upon attaining adulthood and sort of passing my Advanced Level courses and arriving at the University of Zimbabwe (UZ) […]
March 10, 2025
You could almost laugh about it. Thousands of adult Zimbabweans flocking to a Sunday service to ‘see’ the power of ‘prophecy’. Over and about a US$ 1 million pledge on, you guessed it, the ability to prophesy what was in a religious leader’s pocket. These thousands of Zimbabweans were not only in the auditorium. They were also online and […]
March 3, 2025
Zimbabwe’s urban landscape is changing form quite rapidly. Particularly where one considers new modern urban developments such as shopping malls away from city centres or new residential housing in the form of either ‘flats’ or ‘cluster’ residential compounds and new low-income suburbs. This is also in tandem with the expansion of privatized social service buildings […]
January 24, 2025
The Zimbabwe Heads of Christian Denominations (ZHOCD) recently issued a statement on an issue which essentially waded into a Zanu Pf debate around extending the current president E.D Mnangagwa’s term of office from 2028-2030. I deliberately mention Zanu Pf here because this issue of 2030 is essentially a ruling party one. It obviously has national connotations […]
December 10, 2024
Controversial Zimbabwean businessman Wicknell Chivayo has been quite literally dishing out both luxury and basic utility cars to celebrities and individuals at an alarming rate. Both unilaterally or upon social media requests/ pleas from long known celebrities. He has also been helping, at least according to his social media accounts and some media reports, well known […]
December 10, 2024
Mothers are correctly sacrosanct in Zimbabwean culture. More-so given the popular adage ‘kusina Mai hakuendwe, kune rima’ (where there is no mother, you do not go there, there is darkness) is deeply ingrained in most of our national consciousness. Especially as popularized by Simon Chimbetu and the Orchestra Dendera Kings in the famous hit single “Kusina Mai”. Hence […]