Bulawayo’s Absent Zim Dancehall
Thomas Mapfumo, celebrated at home and abroad as the don of Zimbabwe’s rebel music scene, invited a tsunami of brickbats when he dismissed a music genre that has the whole country talking, if not dancing. Zim dancehall, as its name suggests, borrows heavily from Jamaican chants in a country where Bob Marley is revered […]
Terence Ranger and the Jagged Geometry of Zimbabwe
Percy Zvomuya celebrates the thoughts and texts of groundbreaking historian Terence Ranger, who died on 2 January 2015 In 2004, after Terence Ranger had delivered a paper at the Wits Institute of Social and Economic Research (Wiser), I went up to him to greet him, make a few comments about his lecture and introduce myself […]