Zimbabwe Quotes

I don't believe in soul mates, not exactly. I think it's ridiculous to think there's only one person out there for us. What if your 'soul mate' lives in Zimbabwe? What if he dies young? I also think 'two souls becoming one' is ridiculous. You need to hold on to yourself. But I do believe in souls being in sync, souls that mirror each other.

I came from Thailand for you, because Mia said she could probably get you here. I'd have come from Zimbabwe, Outer Mongolia, or a prison in Central America. In truth, I came through hell getting here....because for me that's anywhere you're not.

You were born to be remembered, not missed. Being missed means you eat up people’s memory leaving them full of you but emtpy of themselves.

In 1491 the Inka ruled the greatest empire on earth. Bigger than Ming Dynasty China, bigger than Ivan the Great’s expanding Russia, bigger than Songhay in the Sahel or powerful Great Zimbabwe in the West Africa tablelands, bigger than the cresting Ottoman Empire, bigger than the Triple Alliance (as the Aztec empire is more precisely known), bigger by far than any European state, the Inka dominion extended over a staggering thirty-two degrees of latitude—as if a single power held sway from St. Petersburg to Cairo.

If you can walk you can dance, and if you can talk you can sing.

I am Bartimaeus! I am Sakhr al-Jinni, N’gorso the Mighty, and the Serpent of Silver Plumes! I have rebuilt the walls of Uruk, Karnak, and Prague. I have spoken with Solomon. I have run with the buffalo fathers of the plains. I have watched over Old Zimbabwe till the stones fell and the jackals fed on its people. I am Bartimaeus!

….So much crueller than any British colony, they say, so much more brutal towards the local Africans, so much more manipulative after begrudgingly granting independence. But the history of British colonialism in Africa, from Sierra Leone to Zimbabwe, Kenya to Botswana and else-where, is not fundamentally different from what Belgium did in the Congo. You can argue about degree, but both systems were predicated on the same assumption: that white outsiders knew best and Africans were to be treated not as partners, but as underlings. What the British did in Kenya to suppress the pro-independence mau-mau uprising in the 1950s, using murder, torture and mass imprisonment, was no more excusable than the mass arrests and political assassinations committed by Belgium when it was trying to cling on to the Congo. And the outside world's tolerance of a dictator in the Congo like Mobutu, whose corruption and venality were overlooked for strategic expedience, was no different from what happened in Zimbabwe, where the dictator Robert Mugabe was allowed to run his country and its people into the ground because Western powers gullibly accepted the way he presented himself as the only leader able to guarantee stability and an end to civil strife. Those sniffy British colonial types might not like to admit it, but the Congo represents the quintessence of the entire continent’s colonial experience. It might be extreme and it might be shocking, but what happened in the Congo is nothing but colonialism in its purest, basest form.

I don’t believe in soul mates, not exactly. I think it’s ridiculous to think that there’s only one person out there for us. What is your ‘soul mate’ lives in Zimbabwe? What is he dies young? I also think ‘two souls becoming one’ is ridiculous. You need to hold onto yourself.

It would not be an exaggeration to say that the land question in Zimbabwe is the single most decisive one.

You’re afraid to tell her you miss her in case it sounds like you love her more than she loves you. And her reply will be ‘I’ve been busy with work, I haven’t had time to think about other things’. You’re afraid you have become other things.

Things to say when in love i. I want to make you a planet. ii. I will put the galaxy in your hair. iii. Your kisses are a mouthful of firewater. iv. I have never seen a more beautiful horizon than when you close your eyes. and v. I have never seen a more beautiful dawn than when you open your eyes.

Sometimes goodness comes from treating yourself. Not like you burned earth to dust but like you made it into a beautiful body crowned it with stars, put a precious coat over it and called it home.

I am not the sum of lovers I had or never had. As for lovers who left, consider them hair. Sometimes you cut it off for it to grow longer and more beautiful (but that doesn’t mean you hate pictures of yourself with it). Even after lovers you remain Beautiful.

Does rough weather choose men over women? Does the sun beat on men, leaving women nice and cool?' Nyawira asked rather sharply. 'Women bear the brunt of poverty. What choices does a woman have in life, especially in times of misery? She can marry or live with a man. She can bear children and bring them up, and be abused by her man. Have you read Buchi Emecheta of Nigeria, Joys of Motherhood? Tsitsi Dangarembga of Zimbabwe, say, Nervous Conditions? Miriama Ba of Senegal, So Long A Letter? Three women from different parts of Africa, giving words to similar thoughts about the condition of women in Africa.' 'I am not much of a reader of fiction,' Kamiti said. 'Especially novels by African women. In India such books are hard to find.' 'Surely even in India there are women writers? Indian women writers?' Nyawira pressed. 'Arundhati Roy, for instance, The God of Small Things? Meena Alexander, Fault Lines? Susie Tharu. Read Women Writing in India. Or her other book, We Were Making History, about women in the struggle!' 'I have sampled the epics of Indian literature,' Kamiti said, trying to redeem himself. 'Mahabharata, Ramayana, and mostly Bhagavad Gita. There are a few others, what they call Purana, Rig-Veda, Upanishads … Not that I read everything, but …' 'I am sure that those epics and Puranas, even the Gita, were all written by men,' Nyawira said. 'The same men who invented the caste system. When will you learn to listen to the voices of women?

At any time in history, gazillions of lives are being lived simultaneously. In Zimbabwe, Thailand, Tasmania, and Borneo, in the poorest hovel and the richest palace, in the sky and on the moon, the lives of ants, plants, gorillas, and people are going on. But we are generally fixated on that infinitesimal thing in the scope of the universe, ourselves.

We're hungry but we're together and we're at home and everything is sweeter than dessert.

If these walls could talk, the buildings would stutter, wouldn't remember their names.

Your eyes betray a sadness that only a worthy man can conjure, but never solve

I'm here to talk about the men in your life. To talk about the men in my life. I like the dress, by the way. Very boho chic or whatever. I was on my way home, and I wanted to find out if you had a good time at the toga party and also make sure that our plans for Zimbabwe were still on. I see you tried to claw your own eye out; it's edgy.

I don't believe in soul mates, not exactly. I think it's ridiculous to think there's only one person out there for us. What if your "soul mate" lives in Zimbabwe? What if he dies young? I also think "two souls becoming one" is ridiculous. You need to hold onto yourself. But I do believe in souls being in sync, souls that mirror each other.

Well, Zimbabwe now has a higher immunization rate for one-year-olds against measles (around 95 percent) than the United States does. So do 112 other countries, according to the World Health Organization (WHO). 37 We are down to a 91 percent vaccination rate for measles, which, according to the WHO, makes us much more vulnerable to outbreaks.

I don’t believe in soul mates, not exactly. I think it’s ridiculous to think that there’s only one person out there for us. What if your ‘soul mate’ lives in Zimbabwe? What if he dies young? I also think ‘two souls becoming one’ is ridiculous. You need to hold onto yourself.

Whether it is North Korea, Sierra Leone, or Zimbabwe, well show that poor countries are poor for the same reason that Egypt is poor. Countries such as Great Britain and the United States became rich because their citizens overthrew the elites who controlled power and created a society where political rights were much more broadly distributed, where the government was accountable and responsive to citizens, and where the great mass of people could take advantage of economic opportunities.

... the poor always live on debt. At this point, time is the only thing I still have the credibility to borrow.

When things fall apart, the children of the land scurry and scatter like birds escaping a burning sky. They flee their own wretched land so their hunger may be pacified in foreign lands, their tears wiped away in strange lands, the wounds of their despair bandaged in faraway lands, their blistered prayers muttered in the darkness of queer lands.

Call no man lucky until he is dead, but there have been moment of rare satisfaction in the often random and fragmented life of the radical freelance scribbler. I have lived to see Ronald Reagan called “a useful idiot for Kremlin propaganda” by his former idolators; to see the General Secretary of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union regarded with fear and suspicion by the Communist Party of Czechoslovakia (which blacked out an interview with Miloš Forman broadcast live on Moscow TV); to see Mao Zedong relegated like a despot of antiquity. I have also had the extraordinary pleasure of revisiting countries—Greece, Spain, Zimbabwe, and others—that were dictatorships or colonies when first I saw them. Other mini-Reichs have melted like dew, often bringing exiled and imprisoned friends blinking modestly and honorably into the glare. E pur si muove—it still moves, all right.

... cynicism is the only tool that can scrape away the tint off rose-coloured glasses.

Stop pouring so much of yourself into hearts that have no room for themselves.

I feel to that the gap between my new life in New York and the situation at home in Africa is stretching into a gulf, as Zimbabwe spirals downwards into a violent dictatorship. My head bulges with the effort to contain both worlds. When I am back in New York, Africa immediately seems fantastical – a wildly plumaged bird, as exotic as it is unlikely. Most of us struggle in life to maintain the illusion of control, but in Africa that illusion is almost impossible to maintain. I always have the sense there that there is no equilibrium, that everything perpetually teeters on the brink of some dramatic change, that society constantly stands poised for some spasm, some tsunami in which you can do nothing but hope to bob up to the surface and not be sucked out into a dark and hungry sea. The origin of my permanent sense of unease, my general foreboding, is probably the fact that I have lived through just such change, such a sudden and violent upending of value systems. In my part of Africa, death is never far away. With more Zimbabweans dying in their early thirties now, mortality has a seat at every table. The urgent, tugging winds themselves seem to whisper the message, memento mori, you too shall die. In Africa, you do not view death from the auditorium of life, as a spectator, but from the edge of the stage, waiting only for your cue. You feel perishable, temporary, transient. You feel mortal. Maybe that is why you seem to live more vividly in Africa. The drama of life there is amplified by its constant proximity to death. That’s what infuses it with tension. It is the essence of its tragedy too. People love harder there. Love is the way that life forgets that it is terminal. Love is life’s alibi in the face of death. For me, the illusion of control is much easier to maintain in England or America. In this temperate world, I feel more secure, as if change will only happen incrementally, in manageable, finely calibrated, bite-sized portions. There is a sense of continuity threaded through it all: the anchor of history, the tangible presence of antiquity, of buildings, of institutions. You live in the expectation of reaching old age. At least you used to. But on Tuesday, September 11, 2001, those two states of mind converge. Suddenly it feels like I am back in Africa, where things can be taken away from you at random, in a single violent stroke, as quick as the whip of a snake’s head. Where tumult is raised with an abruptness that is as breathtaking as the violence itself.

Even if Zuma was to develop the authoritarian impulses of a Mugabe, he would be checked—not least by his own party, which set a continental precedent by ousting Thabo Mbeki in 2007, after it felt he had outstayed his welcome by seeking a third term as party president. The ANC appears to have set itself against that deathtrap of African democracy: the ruler for life.

It was the end of the October term of my sophomore year, and everything was petty normal, except for Social Studies, which was no big surprise. Mr. Dimas, who taught the class, had a reputation for unconventional teaching methods. For midterms he had blindfolded us, then had us each stick a pin in a map of the world and we got to write essays on wherever the pin stuck. I got Decatur, Illinois. Some of the guys complained because they drew places like Ulan Bator or Zimbabwe. They were lucky. YOU try writing ten thousand words on Decatur, Illinois.

Do you know,' she said one afternoon as they were reading in her study, 'do you know the area in which one would truly excel?' 'No, ma'am?' 'The pub quiz. One has been everywhere, seen everything, and though one might have difficulty with pop music and some sport, when it comes to the capital of Zimbabwe, say, or the principle exports of New South Wales, I have all that at my fingertips.

Because we were not in our country, we could not use our own languages, and so when we spoke our voices came out bruised. When we talked, our tongues thrashed madly in our mouths, staggered like drunken men. Because we were not using our languages we said things we did not mean; what we really wanted to say remained folded inside. trapped. In America we did not always have the words. It was only when were were by ourselves that we spoke in our real voices. When we were alone we summoned the horses of our languages and mounted their backs and galloped past skyscrapers. Always, we were reluctant to come back.

deaths by bullet per 100,000. In at number one is Colombia, with a whopping 51.8 whacks. Next is Paraguay with 7.4, then Guatemala, Zimbabwe, Mexico, Costa Rica, Belarus, Barbados, and the United States with 2.97—just ahead of Uruguay.

A son is not a lion or a jewel; he is a child who is as precious as a daughter. vi.

This is a story of Africa. A pioneer woman's journey north was merely the beginning.

I would say colonialism is a wonderful thing. It spread civilization to Africa. Before it they had no written language, no wheel as we know it, no schools, no hospitals, not even normal clothing.

Today I wear my mother in my voice, I am clothed in her. I wear my sisters in my thinking, my grandmother in my bone, in my soul. I

Since the day you left me I waged war to stop the unholy yearning for you. I avoided you, fearing I might become a wild dog. I waited for the day I’d stop caring about you. Waiting

You’re afraid to tell her you miss her in case it sounds like you love her more than she loves you. And

The time for careers and passions was gone. Hunger pangs displaced ambition.

I am the hunger in a lion’s growl. I am heavy with desire, my heartbeat has slowed down. All I want is a good fire.

He doesn't tell Aunt Fostalina she looks good, like I've heard other people do; he tells her she looks like sunrise.

In America we saw more food than we had seen in all our lives and we were so happy we rummaged through the dustbins of our souls to retrieve the stained, broken pieces of God.

Blood is a reservoir of delights. It is a treasure trove for those who know what to look for, and how to isolate it from the rest of the junk. I know how to do both.

Never is a man more proud than when he shuffles paper in front of an illiterate person.

.... does a fair trial necessarily amount to a fair outcome?

What voice? Tears wrote this. Pain bore this. When you are over-pregnant with fear this is what you give birth to.

One party went to far away Zimbabwe and returned with pack-oxen loaded with ivory, rhinoceros hides, lion skins and hog tusks. They reported finding a people whose women dug the mountain sides for nuggets and brittle stones, which they brought home to boil and produce a beautiful metal from which to mould bangles and ornaments of rare beauty. That was the Matebele’s first experience of gold smelting. [182]

One of the reasons why most relationships struggle is because we salute the problem more than standing besides our loved ones. We honor the problem, glorify it, magnify it and worship it, until it breaks the relationship apart. If we honored our loved ones more than the problem, forgiveness will not be a struggle.

The ideology of white supremacy, based on the subjugation of the black man in Rhodesia, denied the black man his full fundamental human rights and freedoms in his own native land and built a wall between black and white. The blacks decided, as the last resort, tha they were going to shoot down this wall; but the whites decided that this wall was to be maintained at any cost in spite of the glaring injustices inherent in it.

Studies conducted in a city in Zimbabwe found that half of reported rape cases involve girls less than 15 years of age and that girls are most vulnerable to sexual abuse by male relatives, neighbors and school teachers.

Lee Kuan Yew ruled Singapore from 1959 until 1990, making him, we believe, the longest serving prime minister anywhere. His party, the People’s Action Party (PAP), dominated elections and that dominance was reinforced by the allocation of public housing, upon which most people in Singapore rely. Neighborhoods that fail to deliver PAP votes come election time found the provision and maintenance of housing cut off.18 In Zimbabwe, Robert Mugabe went one step further. In an operation called Murambatsvina (Operation Drive Out the Rubbish), he used bulldozers to demolish the houses and markets in neighborhoods that failed to support him in the 2005 election.

Now when the men talk, their voices burn in the air, making smoke all over the place. We hear about change, about new country, about democracy, about elections and what-what. They talk and talk, the men, lick their lips and look at the dead watches on their wrists and shake their hands and slap each other and laugh like they have swallowed thunder.

You know, Tsitsi, you are so quick to point out that you are not a prostitute. I just want to laugh because you are just falling into rank. You all should spare us your ‘morality’ that lauds ‘women’ over the supposedly lesser ‘whores’ and ‘girls’. That’s how society sees us. That’s how you see us. You want it to be that we are like coal, only to be loved in the dark and tossed like ashes come morning.

In Panama, I found a spider that eats its own limbs during lean times. I am told they grow back. But though the distinction is razor-thin, desperation is not the same thing as determination. Nevertheless, auto-cannibalism is one the most intriguing phenomenon I have ever heard of.

The UNDP has estimated that the Zimbabwean diaspora is providing Zimbabwe with US$1.4 billion a year118 to the country, five or six times more than what Zimbabwe used to receive from donor aid. This has been mainly through provision of food and other necessities to their relatives.

What I wanted was to get away. But the moon was too far beyond, and there were white bits under me, where the flesh was shredded off and the bone gleamed that famed ivory, and those below cowered and, if they were not quick enough, were spattered in blood. Then came the jolt, as of a fall, and I saw the leg was caught in an ungainly way in the smaller branches of a mutamba tree, the foot hooked, long like that infamous fruit.

And there’s one other matter I must raise. The epidemic of domestic sexual violence that lacerates the soul of South Africa is mirrored in the pattern of grotesque raping in areas of outright conflict from Darfur to the Democratic Republic of the Congo, and in areas of contested electoral turbulence from Kenya to Zimbabwe. Inevitably, a certain percentage of the rapes transmits the AIDS virus. We don’t know how high that percentage is. We know only that women are subjected to the most dreadful double jeopardy. The point must also be made that there’s no such thing as the enjoyment of good health for women who live in constant fear of rape. Countless strong women survive the sexual assaults that occur in the millions every year, but every rape leaves a scar; no one ever fully heals. This business of discrimination against and oppression of women is the world’s most poisonous curse. Nowhere is it felt with greater catastrophic force than in the AIDS pandemic. This audience knows the statistics full well: you’ve chronicled them, you’ve measured them, the epidemiologists amongst you have disaggregated them. What has to happen, with one unified voice, is that the scientific community tells the political community that it must understand one incontrovertible fact of health: bringing an end to sexual violence is a vital component in bringing an end to AIDS. The brave groups of women who dare to speak up on the ground, in country after country, should not have to wage this fight in despairing and lonely isolation. They should hear the voices of scientific thunder. You understand the connections between violence against women and vulnerability to the virus. No one can challenge your understanding. Use it, I beg you, use it.

As we get ready to leave, Georgina announces that she wants to keep the kitten. But of course she can't. We walk up and down looking for its mother, calling for its siblings. But the nearby kraals are deserted, of both people and animals. And eventually we have to leave it at the gate of an empty kraal, the closest one to where it found us, hoping that this might be its home. As we start to drive away, the kitten totters down the dirt road after us, a furry ball of khaki with irregular black spots, and Georgina bursts into tears. 'Over the kitten? Really?' I ask, gesturing around the ruins of the torture base and the mass graves. 'With all of this?' 'No,' she sniffs. 'It's not just the kitten. It's everyone here. They've all been abandoned. No one gives a **** about what happened to them. They're completely alone.

Remember one thing as South Africa prepares to go to the polls this week and the world grapples with the ascendancy of the African National Congress leader Jacob Zuma: South Africa is not Zimbabwe. In South Africa, no one doubts that Wednesday's elections will be free and fair. While there is an unacceptable degree of government corruption, there is no evidence of the wholesale kleptocracy of Robert Mugabe's elite. While there has been the abuse of the organs of state by the ruling ANC, there is not the state terror of Mugabe's Zanu-PF. And while there is a clear left bias to Zuma's ANC, there is no suggestion of the kind of voluntarist experimentation that has brought Zimbabwe to its knees.

The way Harsha Bhogle and Ravi Shastri rebuked him from the press box during the Zimbabwe series was in conformity with Chappell’s language and tone. It was Harsha who sensed something was wrong inside the dressing room during the Zimbabwe tour. His exchange with the skipper compelled the latter to divulge what had actually happened in a weak moment.

The underestimation of Indigenous achievement was a deliberate tactic of British colonialism. Large structures of North American First Nations people were similarly ignored, or credited to earlier Europeans; and in South Africa, Cecil Rhodes made it illegal for anyone to mention the huge Shona structures found in what was once Rhodesia and is now Zimbabwe.

You learnt it was human not womanly to cry. And

Like the worthless dogs that are his countrymen, my husband believed that his penis was wasted if he was faithful to just one woman. - At the Sound of the Last Post

They had become a nation of traders.

A voice reminds us that the land is ours, it will not be taken from us again; the country will never be a colony again. - ‘Something Nice from London

[L]ife is one big jest at the expense of humanity. - ‘The Mupondawana Dancing Champion

If all goes well we should be in Lusaka by tonight, then Victoria Falls, and from what I hear our troubles are over after that. Zimbabwe and South Africa are comfortable, efficient, Westernized. Akuna Matata. No Problem. Wild, uncomfortable, incomprehensible Africa will give way to tamed and tidied Africa – hot baths and iced beers, air-conditioning and daily newspapers, French wines and credit cards. Lying here, listening to the aching wind in a hut by a lake in a forest, I feel a pain of sadness at the prospect of leaving behind all I have been through these past months and returning to a world where experience is sanitized – rationed out second-hand by television and newspapers and magazines and marketing companies.

The doctor in Murare is old - old for anybody. He is especially old for a doctor and especially old for an African. But he doesn´t have the luxury of retirement to look forward to. There aren´t enough doctors in Africa. Those who choose to become doctors here don´t do it for the money or because thy want to do good. They do it because they have to heal, the way most people need to breath or eat or love. They can´t stop. As long as they are alive, they will never not be a doctor. They can be old, or alcoholic or burnt-out, but they will always be a doctor.

The schools wear the blank faces of war buildings, their windows blown blind by rocks or guns or mortars. Their plaster is an acne of bullet marks. The huts and small houses crouch open and vulnerable; their doors are flimsy pieces of plyboard or sacks hanging and lank. Children and chickens and dogs scratch in the red, raw soil and stare at us as we drive through their open, eroding lives.

There’s no doubt that Indonesia’s infrastructure is in a parlous state. It’s the largest country in the world to consist entirely of islands, yet the World Economic Forum ranked it 104 out of 139 countries for its port infrastructure; even landlocked countries such as Zimbabwe, Switzerland and Botswana reported better access to ports. It did nearly as badly on roads, air transport and electricity.*

The plant and animal kingdoms (excluding humans) offered some pleasant surprises. Organisms from these realms are much simpler to figure out. Their behaviours are not muddied by personality factors or flawed belief systems. If an insect smells like a fart, you can be sure that the stench has a genetic basis. It is neither trying to make a lofty point, nor is it suffering from an inferiority complex.

You are Oceanic All she wanted was to find a place to stretch her bones. A place to lengthen her smiles and spread her hair. A place where her legs could walk without cutting and bruising. A place unchained. She was born out of ocean breath. I reminded her; ‘Stop pouring so much of yourself into hearts that have no room for themselves. Do not thin yourself. Be vast. You do not bring the ocean to a river’.

If you find yourself in a terrible storm,' he said, 'with lightning and thunder crashing, and with people panicking around you, just play your mbira and you won't notice anything; you will just remain calm.

To understand what happened in Zimbabwe its worth trying to see things through the Zimbabwean people prism for a moment. Immune from the propaganda and the western media mind- bend. The real issues started a long, long time ago before the current regimes. Those who came bearing greed and seeking to rip off the cradle of Sub-Saharan Africa orchestrated the demise the people of Zimbabwe found themselves reeling in

The World Bank, anxious that the last vestiges of Zimbabwe's former inclination toward socialism be abandoned, successfully urged the imposition of a token tuition charge for all grade levels. Equivalent to one U. S. dollar per year per child, this fee constitutes a burden to the poorest families, who have responded by sending only boys to classes. Too many of the girls . . . have resorted to prostitution in order to eat.

Just as Rolland and I know that together with our team, God has given us the nation of Mozambique, our dear friends Brian and Pamela Jourden know that the Lord has a great revival to birth in Zimbabwe and across Africa. Many prophetic words have been released over their lives, and financial miracles grow their ministry. When they started Generation Won/Iris Zimbabwe in 2008, Zimbabwe had gone from being one of the most prosperous nations in Africa, called the “breadbasket of Africa,” to being the poorest nation in the world. God spoke to them that Zimbabwe, which means house of stones, was like the stone the builders rejected, Jesus, but it would become a cornerstone nation, just as Jesus is the chief cornerstone, and a house of prayer for all nations. They have over twenty churches among three tribes, and they have seen HIV/AIDS and cancer miraculously healed as they preach the gospel. God is also opening doors with national leaders.

I tell you, Professor, growing up is a full contact sport. Somewhere in our brains, foolishness and naïveté join forces with a false sense of invincibility. Together, they score own-goals against their host’s interests. All this happens while that referee known as ‘reason’ is collapsed in a drunken stupor, unable to stop the madness. When he finally wakes up, all he can do is grant the useless penalty known as ‘hindsight’. But the outcome remains unchanged. The game is lost …

You have just said that we should remember the clear lessons of history,' said Bob Johnson. 'What are these?' 'You remember what Bismarch once said? The great issues of the day will not be solved by majority resolution, but by iron and blood.

A person is a person through others. This truth extends across time and space. We are through those who have come before us, those who have come with us and those who will come after us. Spirit possession, at the heart of Chimurenga, is an exercise in timelessness. It is those in the present communing with those in the past about the future concerning those who will come. Chimurenga has always been the intergenerational spirit of African self-liberation. It is not linear, it is bones that go into the earth and rise again and again.

It's not the lying itself that makes makes me feel bad but the fact that I'm here lying to my friends. I don't like not playing with them and I don't like lying to them because they are the most important thing to me and when I'm not with them I feel like I'm not even me.

Later, as she drove the children to school, she thought how worn the grooves were along which they moved their quarrels. She could feel herself saying all the clichéd phrases of a thousand injured women before her, but she could never stop herself. - ‘The Negotiated Settlement

The world currently has two reasonably disturbing and disturbingly reasonable examples as to what this unraveling might look like: Zimbabwe and Venezuela. In both cases mismanagement par excellence destroyed the ability of both countries to produce their for-export goods—foodstuffs in the case of Zimbabwe, oil and oil products in the case of Venezuela—resulting in funds shortages so extreme, the ability of the countries to import largely collapsed. In Zimbabwe, the end result was more than a decade of negative economic growth, generating outcomes far worse than those of the Great Depression, with the bulk of the population reduced to subsistence farming. Venezuela wasn’t so . . . fortunate. It imported more than two-thirds of its foodstuffs before its economic collapse. Venezuelan oil production dropped so much, the country even lacks sufficient fuel to sow crops, contributing to the worst famine in the history of the Western Hemisphere. I don’t use these examples lightly. The word you are looking for to describe this outcome isn’t “deglobalize” or even “deindustrialize,” but instead “decivilize.

Yes, our social and economic circumstances shape decisions we make about all sorts of things in life, including sex. Sometimes they rob us of the power to make any decisions at all. But of all human activity, sex is among the least likely to fit neatly into the blueprint of rational decision making favoured by economists. To quote my friend Claire in Istanbul, sex is about 'conquest, fantasy, projection, infatuation, mood, anger, vanity, love, pissing off your parents, the risk of getting caught, the pleasure of cuddling afterwards, the thrill of having a secret, feeling desirable, feeling like a man, feeling like a woman, bragging to your mates the next day, getting to see what someone looks like naked and a million-and-one-other-things.' When sex isn't fun, it is often lucrative, or part of a bargain which gives you access to something you want or need. If HIV is spread by 'poverty and gender equality', how come countries that have plenty of both, such as Bangladesh, have virtually no HIV? How come South Africa and Botswana, which have the highest female literacy and per capita incomes in Africa, are awash with HIV, while countries that score low on both - such as Guinea, Somalia, Mali, and Sierra Leone - have epidemics that are negligible by comparison? How come in country after country across Africa itself, from Cameroon to Uganda to Zimbabwe and in a dozen other countries as well, HIV is lowest in the poorest households, and highest in the richest households? And how is it that in many countries, more educated women are more likely to be infested with HIV than women with no schooling? For all its cultural and political overtones, HIV is an infectious disease. Forgive me for thinking like an epidemiologist, but it seems to me that if we want to explain why there is more of it in one place than another, we should go back and take a look at the way it is spread.

She She wears humble in her voice like a quarter moon veiled by night sky. Water is smooth and strong. She is burning with flowers. She has a mind that makes an idiot of genius. A day-moon, a star eating sky, eating morning. My eyes are held at attention by the beauty swimming across her face. My mind is an altar to her.

Every successful mission requires a clear plan. Tonight, Mrs. Sibanda’s mission was to enjoy some gratification. She would not be denied. Her plan was as clear as oxygen. It involved an expensive perfume, a bottle of wine, and audacious underwear. Yes, for such battles, lingerie was always a critical component of the offensive strategy.

I will not mince words. There’s been enough mincing for one day. Therefore, I shall ask my question bluntly: How does a man know that his body has been turned inside out? … His eyes can see the back of his skull with an alarming clarity. I am told it hurts like hell. Especially when he refuses to explain why he has been investigating the hangman’s replacement

TAWANTINSUYU In 1491 the Inka ruled the greatest empire on earth. Bigger than Ming Dynasty China, bigger than Ivan the Great’s expanding Russia, bigger than Songhay in the Sahel or powerful Great Zimbabwe in the West Africa tablelands, bigger than the cresting Ottoman Empire, bigger than the Triple Alliance (as the Aztec empire is more precisely known), bigger by far than any European state, the Inka dominion extended over a staggering thirty-two degrees of latitude—as if a single power held sway from St. Petersburg to Cairo. The empire encompassed every imaginable type of terrain, from the rainforest of upper Amazonia to the deserts of the Peruvian coast and the twenty-thousand-foot peaks of the Andes between. “If

There is only one illness that pushes both the well-wheeled and the un-wheeled to seek out the prophet. It is the big disease with the little name, the sickness that no one dies of, the disease whose real name is unspoken, the sickness that speaks its presence through the pink redness of lips, the slipperiness of hair, through the whites of the eyes whiter than nature intended.

Harare literally means 'He does not sleep,' which, according to the story teller, commemorates an old man's early settlement in that area when it was still inhabited by deadly snakes and lions. In the evenings the old man, fearful of the wild animals, was reluctant to sleep. In order to steady his nerves and to prevent himself from dropping his guard, he played the mbira all night long.

The second of the dimensions that Hofstede's team added to their original four was long-term–short-term orientation, based on the Chinese Values Survey. In addition, Michael Minkov identified a similar dimension using the World Values Survey. While the precise nature of the constructs varies, African nations tend to score strongly toward the short-term end of the spectrum in all of them. For example, Ghana is the second most short-term oriented society out of 93 countries in the World Values Survey; Nigeria the fifth most and, out of the bottom 20 countries, 6 are in Sub-Saharan Africa. Using the Chinese Values Survey construct of long-term orientation, the only two Sub-Saharan countries out of 23 studied were Zimbabwe and Nigeria, which respectively scored fifth and second from bottom. Although a different construct, African societies also score very low on the Globe measure of future orientation.9 Experimental

Why Westerners are so obsessed with "saving" Africa, and why this obsession so often goes awry? Western countries should understand that Africa’s development chances and social possibilities remain heavily hindered due to its overall mediocre governance. Africa rising is still possible -- but first Africans need to understand that the power lies not just with the government, but the people. I do believe, that young Africans have the will to "CHANGE" Africa. They must engage their government in a positive manner on issues that matters -- I also realize that too many of the continent’s people are subject to the kinds of governments that favor ruling elites rather than ordinary villagers and townspeople. These kind of behavior trickles down growth. In Zimbabwe Robert Mugabe is the problem. In South Africa the Apartheid did some damage. The country still wrestles with significant racial issues that sometimes leads to the murder of its citizens. In Ethiopia, Somalia and Kenya the world’s worst food crisis is being felt. In Libya the West sends a mixed messages that make the future for Libyans uncertain. In Nigeria oil is the biggest curse. In Liberia corruption had make it very hard for the country to even develop. Westerners should understand that their funding cannot fix the problems in Africa. African problems can be fixed by Africans. Charity gives but does not really transform. Transformation should come from the root, "African leadership." We have a PHD, Bachelors and even Master degree holders but still can't transform knowledge. Knowledge in any society should be the power of transformation. Africa does not need a savior and western funds, what Africa needs is a drive towards ownership of one's destiny. By creating a positive structural system that works for the majority. There should be needs in dealing with corruption, leadership and accountability.

She was still not at ease with the idea that she was now important enough to have people as accessories. Nor was she comfortable with the idea of these people as gatekeepers with access to the details of their personal lives. Whenever she felt herself shrinking under the indifferent glare of the staff that surrounded her, as she did in this instance, she straightened her back and lifted her chin in the way that Chiedza, her trusted advisor-friend, had instructed her to do.

He looked up to the gods but never accepted their eternal superiority. For better or worse, plotting their overthrow was the only aspiration that stoked the fires of destiny. Such an exalted ambition was worthy of a man who had long accomplished the chore of dominating human minds. A man so terrified of finding himself alone in a stratosphere where no one could understand just how exceptional he was. In that place, the presumed existence of gods was a great comfort, especially in a profession in which his rivals were mere mortals.

When a group of people are forced to navigate a minefield together, everyone feels a grudging sense of comfort when someone else gets blown up. Though there may be other unseen landmines left in the ground, each death creates a safe spot. A landmine cannot explode twice in the same place. Sure, the explosion robs the survivors of a comrade. Still, each death makes everyone’s next step marginally safer. So everyone keeps walking with grief on their faces, and relief in their hearts. Their own deaths are further postponed by the end of another life.

With all this snow, with the sun not there, with the cold and dreariness, this place doesn't look like my America, doesn't even look real. It's like we are in a terrible story, like we're in the crazy parts of the Bible, there where God is busy punishing people for their sins and is making them miserable with all the weather. The sky, for example, has stayed white all this time I have been here, which tells you that something is not right. Even the stones know that a sky is supposed to be blue, like our sky back home, which is blue, so blue you can spray Clorox on it and wipe it with a paper towel and it wouldn't even come off.

THE CURIOUS CASE OF THE LEMBA       One of the most outstanding cases of  Black diaspora Jewry is the case of the Lemba of southern Africa. The Lemba have long claimed that they are Jews or Israelites who migrated to Yemen and from there to Africa as traders. Amazingly, DNA evidence has backed the Lemba claim of Jewish ancestry.   Today, the Lemba can be found in southern Africa countries like Malawi, South Africa and Zimbabwe. Many of their customs are similar to Jews such as the wearing of  yarmulke-like skull cups and observing kosher laws such as the requirement not to eat pork. Interestingly they also avoid eating rabbits, scaleless fish, hares and carrion. In short, the Lemba follow the requirements in the Torah, which is the first five books of the Old Testament.     The Lemba claim that about 2500 years ago, their ancestors left Judea for Yemen. Only males are said to have sailed to Africa by boat. The migrants took local wives for themselves. They built a city in Yemen called Sena. From Sena they traveled to Africa where they dispersed. Some remained in East Africa and others traveled to southern Africa. Lemba women do not have 'Semitic' admixture, and this is in line with their oral history.     Professor Tudor Vernon Parfitt, a professor of Jewish Studies then at the University of London, spent several months among the Lemba. He later travelled to Yemen and to his

The key trait of a Sperm Pirate is that she is not driven by desperation. Escaping poverty or hardship is not her motive. She usually has a good education and access to the same opportunities as the man she tries to trap. However, she understands that it is more efficient to enjoy a lavish lifestyle through the sweat of another’s labour. But the Sperm Pirate is acutely aware that the infatuation of a hormonal man has a brief shelf life. This poor collateral must be cashed in before it expires. A pregnancy is the best way to convert this volatile resource into a stable asset. Babies are reliable insurance policies. They create legal obligations for financial support, even when the sweet milk of passion turns sour.

People have traditionally talked about civilization “spreading” from place to place and not happening by other means. This is the result, I think, of two forms of self-deception. First of these is self-congratulation. If we suppose—as people throughout history have regularly supposed—that the way we live represents the climax of human achievement, we need to represent it as unique or, at least, rare: when you find a lot of examples of something that you expect to be unique, you have to explain the effect as the result of diffusion. Yet, in reality, civilization is an ordinary thing, an impulse so widespread that it has again transformed almost every habitable environment. Peoples modest enough in the faceof nature to forgo or severely limit their interventions are much rarer than those, like us, who crush nature into an image of our approving. The attitude of these reticent cultures should therefore be considered much harder to explain than that of the civilized. The second self-deception is belief in what might be called the migrationist fallacy, which powerfully warped previous generations’ picture of the remote past. Our received wisdom about prehistoric times was formulated in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, when Europe was enjoying her own great imperial age. The experience of those times convinced self-appointed imperial master-races that civilization was something which descended from superior to inferior peoples. Its vectors were conquerors, colonists, and missionaries. Left to themselves, the barbarians would be mired in cultural immobility. The self-perception of the times was projected, almost without utterance, onto the depiction of the past. Stonehenge was regarded as a marvel beyond the capabilities of the people who really built it—just as to white beholders the ruins of Great Zimbabwe (see page p. 252 ) seemed to have been left by intruders, or the cities of the Maya (see page 158 ) to have been erected under guidance from afar. Early Bronze Age Wessex, with its chieftainly treasures of gold, was putatively assigned to a Mycenean king. The sophistication of Aegean palace life (see page 292 ) was said to have been copied from the Near East. Almost every development, every major change in the prehistoric world was turned by migrationist scholarship into a kind of pre-enactment of later European colonialism and attributed to the influence of migrants or scholars or the irradiation of cultural superiority, warming barbaric darkness into civilized enlightenment. Scholars who had before their eyes the sacred history of the Jews or the migration stories of Herodotus had every reason to trust their own instincts and experience and to chart the progress of civilization on the map. The result was to justify the project of the times: a world of peoples ranked in hierarchical order, sliced and stacked according to abilities supposed to be innate.