Tarisai Masimba

15/09/2026

MNANGAGWA TURNS 84 AGAIN 🇿🇼🎂

And Zimbabwe is apparently required to celebrate

HARARE — President Emmerson Mnangagwa has turned 84 today, and in true Zimbabwean political fashion, the birthday has come with a national announcement: September 15 is now officially a public holiday in his honour.

Zimbabweans immediately started asking the obvious question:

“84 again? Who verified the results?”

Rumours and social-media jokes have long questioned everything from the President's age and famously dark hair to his names and the credibility of elections. None of those age-faking claims has been established as fact, but in a country where citizens joke that even election numbers need a recount, the birthday was never going to escape scrutiny.

One Zimbabwean reportedly asked:

“If they can announce election results, can they also rig the birthday?”

Another replied:

“V11 for the birthday please. We want to see how 83 became 84.”

And now the biggest joke of all:

The President gets older, and the entire country gets the day off to celebrate it.

Imagine that.

In Zimbabwe, where hospitals struggle, electricity disappears, salaries ev***rate and citizens queue for basic services, the one thing apparently guaranteed is a national holiday for the President's birthday.

Happy 84th, Your Excellency.

May your candles be counted transparently, your birthday be free and fair, and your cake never experience load-shedding.

By Tarisai Masimba ✊🏿🇿🇼 Chimurenga Desk

15/09/2026

U.S. Embassy in Harare to Close September 15 for Munhumutapa Day

HARARE - The United States Embassy in Zimbabwe will be closed on Tuesday, September 15, in observance of Munhumutapa Day, the diplomatic mission announced.
Munhumutapa Day pays tribute to the historic Mutapa (Munhumutapa) Empire, which flourished across Southern Africa from the 15th to the 18th centuries. Known for its extensive trade networks, sophisticated architecture, and influence over the region, the empire remains a foundational pillar of Zimbabwean national heritage and history.
During the temporary closure, all routine administrative, consular, and visa services at the Harare embassy will be suspended.
The U.S. Embassy confirmed it will resume full operations and reopen to the public on Wednesday, September 16. Emergency consular assistance for American citizens residing in or traveling through Zimbabwe will remain available throughout the holiday closure.

14/09/2026

A Warning to Zimbabwe: Stop Bowing to Fear

Zimbabwe, we call ourselves a Christian nation. We fill our churches every Sunday, we lift our hands, we sing of the blood of Jesus and the power of His name. And yet many of us, the same week, go home and bow to men who do not deserve our fear, men who steal, who oppress, who crush the poor, who kill hope in broad daylight. We flatter them. We defend them. We vote for them out of terror rather than conviction. We call this survival. Scripture calls it something else.
Remember who you claim to follow
Think about the twelve who walked beside Jesus. Peter was crucified upside down because he would not bow. Andrew was bound to a cross and preached from it until his last breath. James was beheaded by a king's sword. Thomas was speared to death in a foreign land for refusing to be silent. Bartholomew was skinned alive. Matthew was struck down for daring to preach truth to power. These were not reckless men. They were not fools who did not value their lives. They simply valued something more than their lives.
And before any of them, there was Jesus Himself, the Son of God, who had legions of angels at His command and every right to call fire down on His accusers, who instead walked to a cross, was mocked, beaten, and killed, and did not flinch from it. Not because He was powerless. Because He knew that what waited beyond death was greater than anything death could take from Him.
That is the faith we say we carry. So why do we let corrupt men, dishonest leaders, and petty tyrants own our silence?
Fear is not faith
If the men who founded the church we worship in did not trade their convictions for their comfort, why do we trade ours for a bag of mealie-meal, a party card, a promise of protection that never comes? Why do we call it "wisdom" to stay quiet while the treasury is looted and our children starve? Why do we call it "respect" when it is really terror wearing a church suit?
Scripture does not tell us to fear those who can only kill the body. It tells us to fear the One who holds eternity. "Do not fear those who kill the body but cannot kill the soul." That is not a suggestion. That is a command to stop being ruled by fear of men who are, in the end, just men, men who will die, be buried, and be forgotten, while the truth we refused to speak lives on to judge us.
Life is short, act like you believe that
We are so afraid of losing a few more decades that we are willing to lose our integrity, our nation, and our children's future to keep them. But if you truly believe what you sing on Sunday, that this life is a v***r, that death is not the end, that there is a crown laid up for those who endure , then what exactly are you protecting by staying silent? A few extra years bought at the price of your conscience?
The disciples did not die because they were brave by nature. They died because they had decided, permanently, that truth mattered more than comfort, and that Christ mattered more than Caesar. Zimbabwe needs that same decision now, not from a few pastors on a pulpit, but from ordinary people: teachers, vendors, drivers, nurses, journalists, parents. People who stop applauding evil out of fear and start telling the truth out of faith.
The warning
If we keep protecting the corrupt because we are afraid of what they can do to our bodies, our jobs, our small comforts, we are not practicing Christianity, we are practicing idolatry. We have made an idol out of our own safety and bowed to it instead of to God.
Stop supporting evil people because you are afraid of them. Stop finding excuses for the man who has plundered your country. Stop calling cowardice "wisdom." The same God who raised Christ from a Roman grave, who filled Peter with courage to face his own cross, who gave a fisherman the boldness to stand before kings, that same God is not asking you to be reckless. He is asking you to remember that you are not as small, and this life is not as big, as fear wants you to believe.
Zimbabwe, choose which kingdom you actually belong to.

14/09/2026

14/09/2026

FREEDOM IS NOT A DONATION. IT'S AN INVESTMENT.

Tarisai Masimba , Chimurenga Desk

We need to talk about something uncomfortable: why do we expect our liberation to be funded by people who never wanted us free in the first place?

We wait for grants that come with strings. We wait for NGOs that arrive with agendas. We wait for foreign money that shows up with foreign interests attached. And while we wait, our story keeps getting told by other people's mouths, on other people's platforms, for other people's benefit.

Chimurenga was never funded from outside. It was built by people who decided that freedom was worth more than comfort. That same spirit doesn't need to stay in history books, it needs to live in our data bundles, our monthly contributions, our small, stubborn acts of ownership.

Here's the math of liberation:

$1,000 a month sounds like a lot until you break it down. It's not one wealthy donor. It's not a foreign foundation. It's hundreds of us, the diaspora, the students, the taxi drivers, the nurses, the teachers, the hustlers, each giving what we'd otherwise spend on a week of scrolling. Pooled together, that's not charity. That's capital. That's infrastructure. That's power.

With that kind of consistent, collective investment, we don't just report the news, we build the tools:

📱 Apps that keep our stories, our music, our language, and our history in our own hands, not dependent on algorithms built to bury us.

🎙️ Platforms like Chimurenga Radio that don't need permission from state broadcasters to tell the truth.

💰 Self-sustaining programs that generate their own revenue, so the next generation of Zimbabwean journalists and organizers isn't begging for grants, they're drawing a salary from something we built.

This is how you build parallel power. Not by asking the system to be kind to us. By building outside the system, until the system has to answer to us.

Ownership is the revolution now.

Own the tech. Own the platform. Own the narrative. Own the revenue. Every dollar, every RTGS, every bond note we invest today is a brick in a wall they cannot tax, cannot censor, and cannot switch off.

They controlled us for decades by controlling the radio, the newspaper, the airwaves. We take that control back the same way, station by station, app by app, program by program.

Start small. Build sovereign. Zimbabwe first.

If you believe our liberation should belong to us, put your money where your mouth is. A thousand dollars a month, sustained, is a movement. Anything less than sustained, sovereign investment in ourselves is just another form of waiting.

We are done waiting.

13/09/2026

Hanzi ndirikudya Mudododo nevamwe, iwe woshora!