Category: Books

  • Equality as a Stimulus for Growth

    Book: Why Nations Fail Authors: Daron Acemoglu & James A. Robinson Publisher: Profile Books (2012) ISBN: 978 1 84668 430 2 The expanse between rich and poor nations is vast and sustained. Explaining the gap has long been the site of controversy. The persistence of poverty sparks off clichés of every mood and rests bitterly…

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  • Depth of Diamonds: Chiadzwa Insider’s Confession

    Lovemore Kurotwi (The Herald) When the poor are crunched into by-products of their circumstances, as the rich evolve into monsters of their lust, money matters more than morality. This is the story of Chiadzwa diamond fields, a site of national promise and missed opportunities. Imperilled by financial opacity and institutionalised sabotage, smuggling and corruption, Zimbabwe’s…

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  • Harmonise Climate of Opinion

    Primary and Secondary Education Minister Dr Lazarus Dokora Secretary for Primary and Secondary Education Dr Sylvia Utete-Masango officially launched the national pledge this week amid concerns from Christian parents that its content violates the liberty of conscience. The pledge is designed to encourage a patriotic work ethic among students and upholds honesty and hard work,…

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  • Morality – Syllabus That Can’t Be Scrapped

    President Robert Mugabe When education prepares students for a livelihood but not for life, its benefits can seldom be sustained. It is a glaring contradiction when space for acquiring self-sustaining skills equally becomes space for acquiring self-destroying behaviour. Tragically, this seems to be the case with education in Zimbabwe, at least to a minor but…

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  • Roland Mhasvi’s Environmental Sequence

    Former UN secretary general Kofi Annan Roland Mhasvi’s environmentally themed poetry anthology, “Time of the Rupture,” is an impassioned case for the preservation of the planet. Mhasvi advocates for the protection of biodiversity from the scourge of extractive capitalism with an urgency approaching the apocalyptic. The poet’s cause is especially pertinent cause as factory-made carcinogens…

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  • Chanting Down the New Capitalism

    Add caption Book: People Get Ready  Authors: Robert W. McChesney and John Nichols  Publisher: Nation Books (2016) ISBN: 978-1-56858-522-2   Set fire to the earth and redeem the gold: It is hard to think of a deeper intersection between capitalism and science fiction than this mutual template. In science fiction, conquest by fire could mean…

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  • Style Wars – John Eppel vs. Togara Muzanenhamo

    Add caption When the muses refuse to smile on a poet, he runs out of inspiration but when a woman refuses to smile on him, a creative current carries him along. If not for this irony of deprivation, Dante, John Keats and Thomas Hardy may never have attained half their stature, and poetry would have…

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  • How Charles Darwin Institutionalised Racism

    Add caption The proliferation of the Zika virus in Latin America has flared up speculation about its possible appropriation by Western powers as an instrument of population control in developing countries. Latin American governments are already advising women to hold off on having babies in the interim as a medical recourse to the birth defects…

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  • Nyerere – Homage to Village-Wise Statesman

    Julius Nyerere and Kwame Nkrumah (PBS) When politicians run their tenure, they are survived by our monuments, but statesmen are survived by their legacy. Pan-Africanist father figure Julius Nyerere towers immortally in his manifold legacy for the continent, chiefly freedom, unity and development. Although there are still promises to keep, at a time when inequality…

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  • Occupy Silicon Valley: Unwiring the Internet

    Add caption Book: The Internet Is Not the Answer Author: Andrew Keen Publisher: Atlantic (2015) ISBN: 978-0-8021-2313-8 If the history of modern societies was to be simplified into one thread, it would be most likely the story of people in the service of profit and power. As a virus will go through serial mutations just…

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