Skip to main content

Posts

Showing posts from March 4, 2014

Poetry Pubs, Hubs and the State

Like Zimbabwe, most states in Africa are endowed with creative acumen and literary prowess. Zimbabwe, the country north of the Limpopo and south of the Zambezi, exudes both talent and natural endowment, while the country is faced with unending political paradoxes, social and economic ironies. Arriving at the Road and Air Ports in the pockets of Harare, your face is smashed with horrific print headlines yawning of corrupt technocrats and political stalwarts under suspension and investigation. Your ears are choked with radios belting out chimurenga hit songs and the sanctions rhetoric. The Television news bulletins belch out fat ministers signing cultural, educational and financial treaties in the Far East, accompanied by excess baggage – their delegations gobbling up what’s left of the corruption-roasted national purse. Where are the pen pundits, where are the scribes, poets, writers and their swords? The myth of censorship puts writers and poets in despair, the f