I finally left Zimbabwe for good.
After we got married in January of 2025, the natural next step was that my gorgeous wife Chi and I would live under the same roof, a concept married couples tend to take seriously. The complication, of course, was geography. Chi had already constructed a perfectly respectable adult life in Denton, a quiet town in Greater Manchester, while I was still based in Chitungwiza, a noisy town in the pits of hell. We had to decide who would move so that we could begin our life together in earnest. This was, without exaggeration, the easiest decision I have ever made. It took approximately three seconds and did not require negotiation, prayer, or consultation with elders.
Other decisions, however, proved far less straightforward. The wedding playlist, for instance, nearly ended us. This wasn’t a small disagreement, but a drawn-out, emotionally exhausting ordeal that tested our love, our patience, and our commitment to seeing the marriage through to its legally binding conclusion. If I had surrendered full creative control to Chi, the ceremony would have featured a generous helping of Megan Thee Stallion, Cardi B, GloRilla, and Latto — artists whose work she has since requested I stop referring to as ratchet-ass music, even though the description remains, to my ear, accurate. I have no doubt this version of the playlist would have been significantly more enjoyable for the under-40 demographic. Unfortunately, weddings are not organised for the under-40 demographic.
There were other factors to consider: age, culture, tradition, and aunts who do not approve of joy. As a result, the final playlist — heavily anchored by the morally upright sounds of Mai Tanaka Dube and Mai Jeremaya, which Chi continues to describe as horrible-ass music — was approved by the elders. It was a triumph for the over-40 demographic and a personal defeat for the bride, one I am fairly confident she still has not entirely forgiven me for.
To be clear, I have never had an issue with my gorgeous wife’s taste in music. I am, after all, still on the younger side myself, so ratchet-ass music features prominently in my own listening habits. The real issue is context. Chi is British, which means she does not arrive preloaded with the instinctive understanding required to navigate Shona culture without incident. As a result, I function as her cultural interpreter, explaining why certain Shona words should not be repeated aloud, why others should never be said at all, and why some songs are perfectly acceptable at home but wildly inappropriate in mixed company unless you are actively trying to start a family feud.
Before we got married, Chi was familiar with exactly two Zimbabwean artists: Takura, and me. My own music — which she consumed out of loyalty rather than genuine enthusiasm — is not precisely her preferred flavour, although it did, with time and repeated exposure, grow on her in the way Stockholm Syndrome sometimes does. Her favourites are Doro, largely because of Dancehall Keddah, and Picture, largely because of Dough Major. Takura, however, she genuinely enjoys. She discovered him accidentally while googling me, after mistyping my middle name, Takurira. One of the lengthiest conversations we had on the eve of our wedding involved explaining why Takura’s Haarore was, under no circumstances, an appropriate wedding song, no matter how sultry the melody might feel.
After the wedding, Chi made a genuine effort to learn Shona, aided in no small part by Takura’s music, including his collaborations with an artist named, fittingly, Learn Shona. I began curating Shona music playlists for her on a brand-new Spotify account she had set up specifically because she did not want this nonsense contaminating her ratchet-ass algorithm. Whenever a new album dropped, we listened together, reviewed it, debated passionately, and traded opinions as though this process carried constitutional importance.
Over time, however, I began to notice something unsettling: I was being edged out. I was no longer central to the operation. I would check her listening history and discover she had been playing new Zimbabwean music I had not yet even found the emotional strength to confront. Patterns emerged, preferences hardened, and she developed her own taste.
It truly hit me the day Megan Thee Stallion dropped Lover Girl on the same day Freeman HKD dropped his highly anticipated 2025 album, The Notebook. Chi played Freeman first. She listened to the entire album before circling back to Megan, which, given her musical convictions, was an extraordinary gesture. The Notebook ultimately disappointed her. I vividly remember her remarking, “I have so many notes for The Notebook. He didn’t sing one single note right.” Which is a quadruple entendre that comfortably clears all Zimbabwean hip-hop bars released since I retired, but that is a conversation for another day. What mattered was her decision to prioritise the Zimbabwean album over her favourite rapper.
December arrived not long after. For reasons too romantic to explain, I found myself staying with my gorgeous wife at a gorgeous hotel called The Belfry. The countryside was stunning. The air was kind. The only complaint I could reasonably muster concerned the price of the champagne, which appeared to have been calculated by someone with deep contempt for working-class joy. I was otherwise having an excellent time — until my editor, Manando, sent a WhatsApp message.
I hesitated before opening it. Manando does not text socially. He does not ask how you are. He texts for work. Anything else would be deeply out of character and, frankly, suspicious. After a few tequila shots — which were far more affordable than the champagne and considerably more aligned with my finances — I opened the message. Weeks earlier, Manando had asked me to compile a list of my ten favourite Zimbabwean songs of the year. Now he was following up with a simple question: “How far?”
This was a problem. Choosing ten songs out of thousands is difficult enough. Choosing them publicly is an invitation to violence. Six months ago, I compiled a list of the twenty greatest Zimbabwean hip-hop songs of all time, and the Zim hip-hop community spent the next seven days reminding me exactly why I am a failed rapper. The insults were inventive and specific. And while I held my own — because, frankly, I am better with words than my critics — it did sting.
I had no interest in reliving that experience. So, like any intelligent coward, I looked for a scapegoat. Unfortunately, that scapegoat had to be my gorgeous wife. Her playlist aligned more closely with public sentiment than my notoriously pretentious inclinations. For instance, my favourite song of 2025 is Steve Makoni’s Kufadza Vabereki. No, not Fadza Madzimai — I hate that song. It would not make my top 102 million songs, which is the approximate number of tracks currently available on Spotify. Yes, I can already hear the pitchforks sharpening. So for my own safety, I cannot publish my list. At least if people are angry at my gorgeous wife, she is not on social media. And even if the vitriol reaches her, it will almost certainly be in a language she does not yet fully understand.
With that settled, let us proceed.
Here are the ten best Zimbabwean songs of 2025, according to our resident tastemaker: Chipo Tania Mataranyika-Mufunde.
10) Voltz JT – Why Worry
I am not remotely surprised this ballad found its way into Chi’s top ten, despite the chorus of groans that greeted it on release. If you are wondering why she loves it, the answer lives in three neat chapters. One: my gorgeous wife has an unembarrassed affection for artistry, and she appreciated Voltz stepping out of his usual rap cadence and stretching into something softer. Two: the line “Ndopindwa nechando kunge +44” hit home for the girl from Denton, Greater Manchester, for reasons that do not require academic footnotes. And three: because of something Chi said to me during my visa application.
Storytime.
When I finally decided to gather courage, documentation, and my scattered sanity to apply for my visa, the first step was a website — a bureaucratic labyrinth so gratuitously complex it should come bundled with therapy. I was then required to enter everything about myself into a row of stubborn text boxes: every address, every job, every questionable decision, and other deeply personal disclosures that suspiciously drifted from immigration screening into what felt like an unsolicited autobiography. By the time I reached the end, I was genuinely surprised the website hadn’t asked for my penis size. And had it done so, it would have been phrased with full medieval politeness, something along the lines of: “Art thou endowed to a length befitting entry into Britannia?”
The questions were so needlessly intimidating that I started doubting basic facts about myself. Even my name felt uncertain. I’ve spelled it correctly for decades, but suddenly I wasn’t sure if I’m Takurira or Takura. To make matters worse, the site kept rejecting my uploaded documents, citing mysterious file-format violations and imaginary viruses, as though I was trying to immigrate malware into the United Kingdom. So, like any logical adult on the verge of tears, I went to Google to search for answers from other traumatised applicants who had suffered before me and lived to post about it. Perhaps a Reddit thread. Perhaps a Quora lament. Instead, Google greeted me with a wall of AI-generated “answers”, which is never comforting. At this stage in technology, I cannot open anything — email, browser, toaster — without some digital assistant offering to “help”, usually by making things worse. Even search results are now being ghost-written by robots who do not understand the assignment.
Let me be clear: I am not anti-technology. I am, however, simply unimpressed by anything that promises the future while delivering inconvenience. I do not want AI in my email. I do not want it to write my messages, generate my feelings, or reinvent the search engine. What I want is simple: scan a PDF properly, find me an academic article that isn’t hiding behind five subscription walls, and secure a cheap plane ticket. Unfortunately, it can’t manage any of that, presumably because those things are useful. What it can do, however, is serve me pre-installed features I’ve never needed in my life.
My gorgeous wife, on the other hand, believes in OpenAI with the conviction of a shareholder. She insists that if there is one thing ChatGPT can do competently, it is to point you towards useful references — essentially the job search engines were already happily doing before someone decided to give them feelings. So I swallowed my pride, ignored the AI overview, and opened ChatGPT. I asked it for websites, links, guidance — anything that could rescue my collapsing visa application. It responded with a magnificent essay full of references and citations. I was quite impressed. Then I clicked the links and discovered that not a single one led anywhere remotely useful.
Two hours dissolved into the night as I prompted and re-prompted, pleading with the screen to coax intelligence out of technology that seemed deeply opposed to the concept of being useful. Midnight was closing in, my biometric appointment was the next day, my form was still incomplete, and my documents were floating in the void between “corrupted” and “not accepted.” I was exhausted, defeated, and perilously close to tears. So I phoned the only person in the world who steadies my breathing.
“Hello, Babi.”
“Hi, Babi. How’s Denton tonight?”
“It’s calm. How’s Africa?”
“I don’t even know anymore. I’ve been wrestling with this visa application all night and—”
“What’s wrong?”
“Nothing works, Babi. The site is useless. I am stressed. I am genuinely worried.”
She paused for a second, and then said the line that pinned my heart back together.
“Listen, my poor baby. Like Voltz JT said: Why worry? Usaware, innit?”
9) Oriyano — Kamubhoga
After finally forcing my documents into a strange file format using a convoluted workaround — with absolutely no help from the very AI tools promising to revolutionise civilisation — I slept for about an hour, which is technically sleep only because my eyes were closed. My biometric appointment was at 9am. Most of my paperwork lived at my office, which I considered marginally safer than my mother’s mattress, so I planned a simple route: drive to the office, pick up the files, then drive to the visa place.
I parked my Toyota IST at Julius Nyerere Parkade, as I had done countless times before. I walked to the office, gathered my documents — holding them with the anxious reverence of a man carrying both paper and destiny — and returned to the car.
Then I turned the key.
Nothing.
Not a cough. Not a whimper. Not even a theatrical dying sound. Just silence.
I opened the bonnet and performed the traditional masculine ritual of staring at the engine as though my eyes might repair it. I do not know what I expected to find. I have never in my life fixed a car by opening the bonnet and looking inside, but as men we do this anyway. It is our heritage. We stare. We touch random components gently, as though the engine merely needs our affection. The engine did not respond to my affection.
I already knew the problem. The battery had been hinting at resignation for weeks. I had even pre-emptively given my brother, Takudzwa — whose name gently rhymes with my middle name Takurira, because my mother enjoys a coherent naming strategy — $200 to replace it a month back. The job costs half that amount. The rest was sibling tax. Taku took the money, took the car, and later returned claiming the mission had been accomplished.
It had not.
He casually admitted it over the phone when I called, not even with shame.
“Pakabhaizika.”
I did not have time to be mad. Cancelling the appointment would trigger all manner of immigration suspicion, and my application would acquire an asterisk. So I asked Taku to come and jump-start the car. He promised he would arrive in thirty minutes. It was 6:30am. I told myself thirty minutes was manageable.
Taku arrived on time, but since Harare parking runs on bureaucracy, we now had to persuade City Parking to let him drive into the parkade through the boom gate — despite the small matter of him not having a parking disc — to perform a battery resurrection. The clerk on duty explained, with the authority of someone who has memorised the rules and laminated them in her mind, that only the branch administrator could approve such a request. However, the administrator began work at 9am. This was said slowly.
I asked if the administrator could be contacted before then — a small favour, a quick phone call, a tiny detour for humanity. This, I was told, would constitute overtime. And overtime was not an option because business had been slightly down over the past few months. She did not summarise this. She unpacked it all: revenue pressures, operational costs, overheads, expense structures. It was less an explanation and more a board meeting. Meanwhile, my brother’s car was blocking the boom gate, and patrons – whose patience had already clocked out – were leaning on their hooters with determination.
So I tried negotiating again.
“Ma’am, I am willing to pay whatever fine applies here. But that car needs to come in. That is my mechanic.”
“Does he have a parking disk?”
“No, as I said —”
“So he is not a client?”
“No. But I am. And my car needs a jump-start.”
“I cannot approve. Only the administrator can. And she will not be in until —”
“9am! Yes. I know. We are all very informed!” I screamed.
We repeated this conversation in several emotional registers: polite, pleading, exhausted, and faintly feral. Eventually, out of the mist of corporate hierarchy, a more senior-looking staff member appeared. Her presence immediately lowered the temperature in the room. She listened to the saga, weighed my impending breakdown against institutional risk, and granted us fifteen minutes inside the parkade. Strictly fifteen minutes. The audit team, she explained, was watching closely, because business was slightly down. I agreed instantly, gratefully, submissively.
We hastily drove up to Level 5. Taku opened his bonnet. Then he opened mine. Then he attached the cables like a paramedic defibrillating an unconscious patient. Within five minutes, the Toyota IST sprang back to life, sounding far too cheerful given everything it had put me through. We had ten minutes to spare; plenty of time. I used them to express brotherly disappointment and lecture Taku about responsibility, truth, and the concept of trust. He apologised. We hugged. Brotherhood was restored.
Then he turned his key.
Nothing.
Not a cough. Not a whimper. Not even a theatrical dying sound. Just silence.
In his heroic rush to honour the thirty-minute promise, Taku had ignored the fuel gauge, and now his car — the one with the fifteen-minute conditional visa — was now stranded inside the parkade.
I took a slow breath.
The helpful senior-looking lady had vanished back to wherever competence lives during business hours. Which meant I had to go back to the first clerk; the bureaucratic custodian of procedure and guardian of the boom gate. I humbly walked into her office to plead my case. On her little speaker, Oriyano was singing Kamubhoga at a confident volume.
“♪ Ah, ndide. Pakuvira kwezuva, bhebhi ndiringe… ♪”
“Hi, ma’am,” I said, gently, because I needed grace.
She sighed the sigh of a person who already knows they are going to be disappointed.
“What now?”
“My mechanic’s car has run out of fuel. He won’t make it out in fifteen minutes.”
“Then you will pay a fine. That is now a violation.”
“I understand. Truly. But the fuel station is five minutes away. I just need five more minutes.”
“I cannot approve. Only the administrator can. And she will not be in until—”
“Oh God.”
I realized, eventually, that this conversation was going nowhere useful. She wasn’t listening, and I was rapidly approaching the stage of anger where front teeth go missing. I pressed pause on my temper, drew in a deep breath, and called the only person who has ever managed to calm me down.
“Hello, Babi.”
“Hi, Babi. How’s Denton this morning?”
“It’s calm. How’s Africa?”
“I’ve been fighting City Parking all morning and—”
“What’s wrong?”
“Nothing works. The staff is impossible. I am stressed. I am genuinely worried.”
She paused — the thoughtful kind of pause that always precedes wisdom — and then said, cheerfully:
“Wait. Is that Oriyano in the background? I love that song.”
8) Nutty O — Too Much
I will not incriminate myself by explaining in forensic detail how Taku and I eventually secured permission to leave the parkade, mostly because I am still unclear whether the process would withstand legal scrutiny or even basic moral inquiry. But we did escape. And somehow, against all reasonable odds, I was still within the shrinking window of time required to drive across town and make my biometric appointment.
The visa centre was not far from town, and I already knew where it was, because this was not my first rodeo. I had previously applied for special visas that allowed me to visit my gorgeous wife for short, tantalising periods before being escorted back to the departures lounge of Manchester Airport. This time, however, I wanted to stay – permanently. Or at the very least, long enough for our Wi-Fi to recognise me automatically. But even though I had driven to the visa centre before, and even though my body half-remembered the route, I did not trust my memory with something this serious, so I handed responsibility over to Google Maps, a decision I now regret with the full force of hindsight.
I was fairly certain that I needed to stay on Borrowdale Road. That is what every sane memory in my head insisted. But Maps, with the confidence only flawed technology possesses, instructed me to turn onto a narrow one-lane road that eased itself through a cemetery before depositing me at what I can only describe as a haunted house. The residents, who were either real or ghosts, stood outside watching as I attempted a humiliating twenty-seven-point turn in their graveyard, trying desperately to avoid mowing down a headstone or clipping an ancestor. I cursed the developers of Google Maps all the way back toward the main road, furious at both the app and myself, because I should have known better than to trust software, especially after last night’s debacle.
Just as I was finally making my escape, I glanced into the rear-view mirror and noticed one of the cemetery residents chasing after my car. At first, I assumed my exhaustion had finally unlocked hallucinations, so I pressed a little harder on the accelerator, comforted by the belief that no one, living or dead, could outsprint a Toyota IST. I was wrong. He kept pace, faster than a man should reasonably be. This only strengthened my conviction that I was being pursued by a supernatural being.
He finally caught up to the car and began thumping on my window. I stopped at once. Partly because fear had stiffened my soul, and partly because if a ghost wants to talk to you badly enough to jog, you might as well hear him out. I rolled the window down, reached instinctively for my rosary, and prepared — with the faith of someone who has watched every Ghostbusters movie — to defend myself against whatever awaited. As it turned out, he was a perfectly friendly spirit — perhaps Casper himself — and he had not come to haunt me. But he brought bad news.
During my brief tour of the cemetery, I had driven over something sharp — either a nail, a shard, or a skeleton — and one of my front tyres was now rapidly deflating. Only then did I hear the soft hiss of the air leaving the wheel. I thanked Casper sincerely and did what men always do when faced with mechanical calamity: I opened the bonnet and stared into the engine bay.
“The problem is the tyre, not the engine,” the ghost-adjacent gentleman said gently.
He then graciously offered to change the tyre, and I gratefully stepped aside. After a few minutes of steady, professional-looking progress, he paused:
“Where’s your jack?”
I did not even know what a jack looked like. But I did remember giving Taku $200 some months earlier to acquire one, after being advised that every responsible driver should carry a jack. The jack costs half that amount. The rest was sibling tax. Taku took the money, took the advice, and, in a recurring theme of my life, did absolutely nothing with either.
So I called him.
He answered.
He had not bought the jack.
He admitted with the same casual openness, like someone confessing to misplacing a pen rather than sabotaging my international migration plans:
“Pakabhaizika.”
I did not have time to be mad. I asked him to bring the jack immediately, and he assured me that he would arrive in thirty minutes. It was now 7:30am. Once again, I told myself thirty minutes was manageable. All I had to do was make small talk with Casper while my brother drove from Seke to Borrowdale. Unfortunately, I am not built for spontaneous gravesite small talk, so after a few strained attempts at discussing life, death, and the state of road infrastructure, I did the only sensible thing left to do. I called my wife.
“Hello, Babi.”
“Hi, Babi. How’s Denton?”
“Calm. Africa?”
“I don’t even know anymore.”
“What’s wrong?”
“Nothing works. Not the car. Not Google Maps. Not AI. Not Taku. Nothing.”
This is the magic of talking to my gorgeous wife. Within minutes, instead of spiralling in angst, we were debating Zimbabwean music videos with the silliness and joy of people who genuinely like each other. My anxiety quietly melted. I’ve forgotten most of the actual conversation from that half-hour. What I do remember is my wife calmly observing:
“That girl from Nutty O’s Too Much video — she’s got a ginormous butt, innit?”
7) Enzo Ishall — Chibatamabvi
The girl my gorgeous wife was referring to, of course, is Poshia Manyere — a woman I had never heard of until Nutty O released Too Much in July 2025, and then suddenly she was everywhere, as if she had been summoned by a committee that felt Zimbabwean music videos needed more derriere. Since then, she has appeared in Poptain’s Chikokoko and, most memorably, in Enzo Ishall’s Chibatamabvi.
It was inevitable that Chibatamabvi would appeal to Chi. It sits squarely in the genre I affectionately identify as ratchet-ass music, which is the lifeblood of our marriage. The song itself is classic Enzo: witty, coded, slightly mischievous, and written with such linguistic dexterity that the lyrics manage to be about women shaking their hinds while also remaining perfectly suitable for daytime radio.
I’ve known about Enzo’s gift longer than most. We went to Churchill School together, where he was my senior, and even back then, his everyday speech carried the same glimmer — always furnished with clever quips, comebacks and jokes. At Churchill, that kind of smart mouth was not considered a gift so much as a disciplinary opportunity, so Enzo received a generous — some would say artisanal — supply of lashings from both teachers and prefects. Outside the walls of Churchill, however, the streets were starving for exactly that kind of voice, and the moment he left school, he became what he was always supposed to be: a star.
The challenge with Enzo is that his brilliance often hides in plain sight. Because his subject matter lives between nightclub doors and the “ladies’ night” poster on the wall, people often underestimate him. His themes rarely sound like they belong on an academic paper so his genius is easy to miss. Enzo’s brilliance lies in the surgical precision of his language, the way he uses the simplest words possible, and the way his double entendres glide past you without straining for effect.
Take the opening bars of Chibatamabvi:
“Dzandisingasvikire, ndodzitanha nehooker
Ndaona dzimwe dzakatsvuka
Handinhonge dzepasi, ndabatidza cooker”
In just three lines, he manages to build the entire metaphorical engine for the song, using mangoes as stand-ins for women. “Tanha dzaunosvikira” is a street proverb that roughly translates to “pluck only the fruit you can reach,” a caution against overambition. In practice, it’s a polite way of saying: know your limits, aim humbly, and stop chasing women above your station. It is the kind of thinking that, if I had followed, would have ensured I never married my gorgeous wife, so I take personal offence at how popular the proverb has become.
Enzo, however, refuses to obey it. He doubles down with a double entendre, clarifying that he simply fetches a hook if the ripe mango is too high. Yes, there is misogyny baked into some of these metaphors, but we do not listen to Enzo for gender policy recommendations. The magic is not that Enzo uses analogy — anyone can do that. It’s how faithfully he commits to it, how cleanly the metaphor holds, how naturally the jokes land, how lightly it all floats while still carrying bite.
What strengthens Chibatamabvi even further is its visual language. The video does not pretend to be anything other than what it is: beautiful women dancing beautifully. And at the front of this bevy stands Poshia, which brings us to Zimbabwe’s favourite national sport: performative conservatism. Women appearing in music videos — particularly women whose waistlines understand rhythm — are judged as though they are personally attempting to dismantle civilisation. The outrage is, of course, gender-exclusive. Men can be music video models freely and even graduate to Hollywood careers, as Tongayi Chirisa nobly demonstrates. Women, meanwhile, are told that their participation signals moral collapse.
A friend of mine appeared in Nyasha David’s WaWa, performing nothing more scandalous than dancing while being alive. Her relatives, upon discovering the video, held a disciplinary summit and temporarily disowned her for partaking “in the works of the devil.” I am not Nyasha David’s biggest fan, but even I think declaring him Satan is slightly dramatic. And, more importantly, if her relatives are this divine, I would genuinely like to know how WaWa found its way onto their viewing schedule.
My friend later graduated in flying colours and has gone on to build the life everyone prayed she would build, but she has not danced publicly since. Because in Zimbabwe, there is always someone ready to police the joy out of women. How dare women enjoy themselves! To avoid this public stoning, many artists simply remove the women’s faces from the final cut — reverse angles, blurred shots, masks — ensuring the body is visible but the person remains anonymised for her own protection. Jnr Spragga’s MARULEZ is a recent and very deliberate example. While Chi loves the song, she ranked it outside her top ten purely because the video was a reminder that ratchet-ass music still has to negotiate morality in Zimbabwe.
And yet, there are glimmers of progress. I am always inspired when women who are already accomplished — academically, professionally, socially — choose to appear in videos anyway and do so loudly with both face and name visible in the credits. Women like Rain Jasmin in Kae Chaps’ Gehena, Cupcake Amour dancing with Oriyano in Kamubhoga, or Mazvita — an intellectual property lawyer, no less — starring in Qounfuzed’s Georgina. They exist as a corrective footnote: woman, your degree is safe, your dignity is intact, and dancing does not revoke your qualifications.
By the time Chi and I finished unpacking all of this — patriarchy, gender politics, and the fascinating paradox of a society that wants women invisible unless they’re cooking — Casper had finished changing my tyre. The car was ready. The road was waiting. My mood had stabilised. It was time to leave the cemetery, re-enter the land of the living, and finally go get my biometrics done.
6) Nyasha David — Ta Ta Ta
When you apply for a visa, you are presented with two options: standard and priority. With a spousal visa—the route Chi and I were taking—the standard application can take up to sixty working days to process, which is long enough for a relationship to be tested by distance, time zones, and WhatsApp misunderstandings. The priority option halves this wait, promising a decision in roughly thirty days, assuming your case does not contain mysteries. Because we were done with waiting to be together, Chi and I agreed that priority was non-negotiable. The night before my appointment, we attempted to pay for it online, clicking through the visa website with the hopefulness of people who still believed in technology. The option never appeared. It simply did not exist. I assumed, based on recent experience, that the website had been designed by the same invisible committee responsible for every AI-driven inconvenience in my life.
So the first thing I did upon arriving at the visa centre was explain, politely and clearly, that I wished to pay for the priority service, but had been unable to do so online. The agent assisting me immediately informed me that this was not a system failure, but a me failure. According to him, I simply was not tech-savvy enough to navigate the website. I briefly considered reminding him that I am Zimbabwe’s preeminent e-commerce scholar, that I graduated top of my class from the most prestigious tech college in the country, and that I have personally built payment systems that worked under worse conditions than this. But I chose humility. I let him take control of the mouse. After all, I had paid for the VIP service, which meant that for the next thirty minutes, this man was contractually obligated to care only about me and me alone, and would ignore all other human beings. After about fifteen minutes of clicking, frowning, and refreshing, he returned with a revelation.
The priority option was not available on the website.
“You don’t say,” I replied.
Thankfully, there was another option: I could pay for priority at reception. This was good news, because I had brought cash, which remains the most dependable technology in Zimbabwe. Unfortunately, cash was not accepted due to “audit issues”, a phrase that now triggered a mild physical reaction in my body. I was told I could only pay by card.
I explained that I did not have card funds.
He explained that this was not an option.
“Much like the website option,” I responded, no longer trying to disguise the sarcasm.
Borrowdale, being where wealthy people store both themselves and their money, is full of banks, so I sprinted to my preferred branch, deposited the cash, and was back at the visa centre in under ten minutes, feeling briefly triumphant. This is when hoodoo leaned forward in its chair. My bank’s system was down. The agent spent a solid ten minutes swiping my card repeatedly, convinced that persistence was a troubleshooting strategy, before suggesting that I simply abandon priority and wait sixty days.
I wanted to punch him. In my mind, I briefly pictured his headstone somewhere near Casper’s cemetery:
HERE LIES A MAN WHO SUGGESTED SOMETHING STUPID TO MALCOM MUFUNDE.
Eventually, he remembered that Ecocash existed. This seemed promising. I rushed back to the bank to withdraw the same money I had just deposited, only to discover that withdrawal queues move at the speed of Telecel broadband. I waited patiently as one anxious customer after another reclaimed their cash. When my turn finally came, the bank had run out of cash. I was the last person in the queue.
At the enquiries desk, I was informed—very seriously—that the ATM could not dispense cash.
“Thank you, Captain Obvious,” I said. “Are you going to do anything about it?”
“Yes. We need to put money in the machine.”
“Excellent, Captain Obvious. Will that happen now?”
“No. Only the administrator can approve that, and she will be in at 12.”
I scanned the room for hidden cameras, convinced I was being pranked. But no. This was simply Zimbabwe, a country where a bank can exist without money while everyone behaves as though this is normal. After arguing with several members of staff whose job descriptions involved standing near counters, security escorted me out. I now had no cash and no dignity. So I called my brother.
“Please bring cash from my office,” I said.
“Thirty minutes.”
True to form, Taku arrived exactly thirty minutes later with ten one-hundred-dollar bills. I thanked him, sprinted to an Ecocash booth, deposited the cash, and rushed back to the visa centre, sweating but spiritually dry. The agent was visibly annoyed at my return, clearly in the middle of a far more important discussion about anime. He sighed deeply, reluctantly gave me the Ecocash details, and watched as I attempted the transaction.
It failed.
Again.
And again.
“Are you sure these details are correct?” I asked carefully.
“I work here,” he said. “Of course they are.”
“Just checking,” I replied, “because earlier—”
“Keep trying,” he interrupted. “You know how to use Ecocash, right?”
Once again, I resisted reminding him that I am Zimbabwe’s preeminent e-commerce scholar, that I graduated top of my class from the most prestigious tech college in the country. Instead, I did what I do best: independent research. Within minutes, it became clear that Ecocash was down nationwide. The entire country was offline. At that moment, the only thing that made sense were the lyrics from Freeman HKD’s Chitsike:
“Ndafunga kuenda mhiri kwemakungwa nda-applier visa
Zvinoramba kubuda ndotadza kuenda asi moyo uchida
Dzimwe nguva ndofeeler sendomiswa nemweya yemadzinza
Chavanovavarira chete kuti ndife nenzara”
I am not superstitious, but it truly felt like unseen forces were invested in this failure. To make matters worse, my VIP thirty minutes had expired, which meant that unless I paid again, I was now on my own.
Then hope returned — a new swipe machine had arrived. This one, I was told, worked better with my bank. I rushed back to the Ecocash booth to withdraw my funds.
“I’d like to withdraw $1,000.”
“You can only withdraw $500.”
“I deposited the $1,000 just five minutes ago.”
“I understand, but my float—”
“Come on, man. You have already made decent money from this transaction.”
“I understand. But only the administrator can approve, and—”
I walked away.
In desperation, I texted Chi to send money directly from her Barclays account into my local bank account. She did it immediately. Then the notification arrived, gently reminding me that international transfers take twenty-four hours to process. At that exact moment, Chi called.
“Hey, Babi.”
“Please don’t ask me how Africa is doing,” I said. “Africa is not doing well.”
“I wasn’t. I wanted to ask—do you know what ta ta ta means?”
“Ta ta ta?”
“I heard it in a Nyasha David song,” she said.
“Nyasha David?”
“Yeah. He’s the guy who got your old girlfriend disowned by her parents.”
“She wasn’t my girlfriend.”
“Whatever. Anyway, I started listening to his other songs and found this one where he says, ‘Mafindifuwa — ta ta ta.’ But I don’t know what ta ta ta means.”
“That’s the part you’re stuck on?” I asked. “Do you know what mafindifuwa means?”
“No,” she said cheerfully. “But Shona singers keep saying ta ta ta. There’s also this guy—ExQ—who has a song called Sweeter, and he says, ‘Sweeter, sweeter, sweet ta ta ta.’”
5) Sylent Nqo — Huya
Although I eventually managed to submit my priority visa application, the unseen forces were not finished with me yet. On Day 29 of waiting — one day before the promised miracle window — we received a polite, devastating message informing us that my visa could not be processed within the thirty days. No explanation was offered. No reason was attached. Apparently, there are many acceptable causes for delay, ranging from overwhelming workload and internal reviews to astrology and vibes. What made it worse was the absence of any revised timeline. There was no “soon,” no “approximately,” no “hang in there” for soft reassurance. There was only waiting.
So I waited. But Chi did not.
Since I had surrendered my passport to the process and was now officially grounded, Chi flew to Harare the very next day. Despite the universe actively conspiring against us, we found ourselves sitting together one afternoon at The Jam Tree — reunited, impatient, and pretending that uncertainty was not sitting between us at the table. That is where we ran into Sylent Nqo.
I had always respected Nqo’s artistry. That part had never been up for debate. What complicated things was my long-standing difficulty separating the art from the artist — a difficulty rooted in history, memory, and perhaps a little unresolved teenage trauma. For years, I admired his work while quietly maintaining a grudge against him, and our chance meeting at Jam Tree would end up forcing those two positions into the same room. Chi, however, had no such baggage. She loved Huya, Nqo’s hit single from March 2025, so when I spotted him walking past our table, I did what all husbands occasionally do when they want to appear impressive in front of their wives: I called him. Part of it was because Chi was a genuine fan. The larger, less dignified reason was that I wanted to show my gorgeous wife that I was connected, that I knew people, that I was not just a man waiting on a visa but a man with reach.
“Nqo! Wassup!”
Nqo glanced at us, gestured apologetically to indicate that he was on a call, and kept walking. I was furious. To be fair, he was on a call. A real call. But logic rarely survives embarrassment. Instantly, my mind sprinted back fifteen years and reopened the file labelled Reasons I Don’t Like Sylent Nqo. I leaned over to Chi and, in a desperate attempt to salvage dignity, explained that Nqo had always been an asshole and clearly had not evolved since our days together at Churchill.
In the lawless ecosystem of high school, Nqo had enjoyed a significant physical advantage. He was big, and carried himself like someone who knew most confrontations would end in his favour. In my memory — which I admit may be exaggerated by time — he used this advantage recklessly. He was one of the most notorious bullies I could recall.
As someone deeply interested in music, I spent a lot of my breaks in the music hall, until I stopped. Not because I lost interest in music, but because Nqo was always there. If you missed a note or drifted off tempo, punishment followed, sometimes delivered with a xylophone mallet which he always had on hand. For fourteen-year-old, scrawny me, Nqo was the devil. This was a long time ago — at least fifteen years — so it’s entirely possible that my memory has embellished certain details, but I vaguely recall him slapping Enzo Ishall at some point for being a nuisance. To be fair, Enzo was a nuisance, and I might have supported the decision at the time. Ishan and Gary Tight were always around the music hall, so they may be able to confirm this anecdote. Ishan, if Ti Gonzi permits, please verify. I may be exaggerating. But the spirit of the story remains intact.
After I had finished thoroughly soiling Nqo’s reputation in my wife’s eyes, the guitarist returned. He walked up to our table with a smile so warm and sincere that it immediately began dismantling my narrative. He extended his hand, greeted Chi first, then me, and spoke with a humility so genuine that I could practically feel my version of events dissolving in real time.
“I’m sorry,” he said. “I was on a call. I was about to leave but I wanted to make sure I properly say hi before I go. What’s your name, ma’am? Chipo? That’s a beautiful name. And that dress looks gorgeous on you. And you, sir — Malcom? Named after a revolutionary, huh? Are you enjoying the food? That’s good, that’s good. Here’s what I’m going to do. I’ll speak to the guys inside and pay half your bill. No, no — it’s no problem. You’re a beautiful couple. Thank you.”
It was one of the most wholesome interactions I had experienced in a long time. In less than a minute, Nqo had undone years of resentment and rewritten my internal mythology of him. I was ready to forgive him fully — until my wife spoke.
“My husband says you were an asshole in high school.”
I closed my eyes. I did not open them. I stared into the safe darkness behind my eyelids, seeking asylum. I do not know what Nqo did in the thirty seconds before responding, but I am certain it was awkward. He had not anticipated this turn, especially not after having been this kind.
“Churchill?” he asked carefully.
“Yes,” my gorgeous wife replied confidently, because she had nothing to lose.
“That tracks,” he said after a pause. “I’m really sorry. I was a bully… kind of.”
I immediately launched into emergency crisis management.
“It was fifteen years ago, man,” I said. “Who even cares? We were just boys. Enzo was the real menace. You were cool. I always liked how cool you looked walking around with the mallet. You’re such a superstar. Chi and I are huge fans. Thank you so much for the bill. You’re incredibly kind. I love your TikToks. Huya is a beautiful song.”
4) Learn Shona, Takura & Tamy Moyo — Pote
According to Chi, Takura — also known in this season of his career as Shona Prince — is the best thing that has ever happened to ears, particularly when he is working alongside Learn Shona. She can sing their songs, Pote especially, word-for-word and with frightening commitment, even though she does not yet possess a structurally sound understanding of what most of those words actually mean. This has never bothered her. We sang Pote at a karaoke night at The Belfry, a decision that left an entire room of white people profoundly confused. However, they applauded enthusiastically, not because they understood what was happening, but because they did not want to be accused of racism in a hotel lounge. That is the depth of Chi’s love for that song.
Naturally, as the clout-chaser that I am, I wanted to show my gorgeous wife that I was connected, that I knew people, that I was not just a man waiting on a visa but a man with reach. I felt compelled to inform her that I am on a first-name basis with the artist… kind of.
Storytime.
Since Takura’s rebrand into Shona Prince, the second-best thing to happen to his career has been his partnership with the relentlessly prolific Learn Shona. The best thing, however, remains a YouTube comment referencing Kelvin “Imanii” Mucheche, the Takura lookalike, stunt double, and general stand-in Shona Prince who appears in the Pote music video:
“That’s not Takura. That’s mutakura.”
I love Zimbabwean humor.
Anyway, a lot of people have been asking who exactly Learn Shona is, mainly because he remains impressively behind the scenes. He has resisted the urge to hijack artists’ momentum by splashing his name across visuals or wedging himself into lyrics the way certain uncles of the culture — Zeb Tsikira, I am looking directly at you — have historically done. Eventually, some people correctly identified Learn Shona as Tarisiro Fundira. I, however, knew him before it was cool.
Part of my nine-to-five involves connecting Zimbabweans in the diaspora — particularly those in the United Kingdom — to the services our organisation provides. To negotiate the geographical complications, this work happens mostly online, which is where my e-commerce degree becomes relevant. (Have I mentioned that I am Zimbabwe’s preeminent e-commerce scholar?)
In that capacity, I set out to partner with Zimbabwean creators who had a UK audience, and came across a modest but promising channel called T&T Animation Studios, run by a young man named Tarisiro Fundira, who produced an animated series called Boys Dzangu. We connected and collaborated. Over time, Tari and I developed a cordial, brotherly relationship. We talked about everything — screenwriting, ambition, the general difficulty of being a creative in Zimbabwe, and, because we are men, women. Eventually, he invited me to his wedding, scheduled for the 28th of August, 2021. This is where I disgraced myself.
Because of anxiety, class insecurity, and the newfound realisation that Tarisiro came from money, I ghosted him a few days before the wedding. I simply could not bring myself to show up and be visibly poor among people who owned Rolls-Royces. Unfortunately, that was the last time we ever spoke. That said, I remain genuinely proud of him and Clare, and I wish them nothing but happiness. Their wedding video, in fact, inspired our own — shot-for-shot, beat-for-beat, frame-for-frame. So if you notice similarities, please keep them to yourself.
There is, admittedly, nothing especially dramatic about this anecdote beyond the fact that I knew Learn Shona before the timeline did. Perhaps the only mildly interesting addendum is that Tarisiro lives in Manchester, which means it is statistically inevitable that we will one day run into each other at Greggs. That interaction will be awkward.
But since you have made it this far into this article, you deserve compensation. I appreciate your commitment, your endurance, and your patience with my digressions. So here is a completely unrelated fun fact about Manchester:
In 1875, a factory worker in Manchester screamed at the sight of a mouse on her table. A man hurried over, waving and shouting to drive it away, but only succeeded in frightening it. The mouse panicked and climbed into his clothes, and when he recoiled in surprise, it leapt into his mouth and he swallowed it. Inside him, the mouse clawed and bit its way through his throat and chest, and he later died in prolonged, excruciating agony. This is a true story.
3) Jah Prayzah — Chiringiro
This is the only song in Chi’s top ten that also appears in mine. We somehow arrived at the same place independently, both of us circling it for different reasons and landing it around the third spot, almost in sync. As declared earlier, my favourite song of 2025 was Steve Makoni’s Kufadza Vabereki, followed closely by Ndiani Akatuma, also by Steve Makoni, which should already give you a very clear sense of the sonic lane I was driving in all year.
I have very specific taste. Folk music, when done properly (without gimmicks), moves me in a way that very little else can. This is the music my father used to play on his guitar when I was growing up; the music that filled the house in the evenings and the world felt slower and somehow manageable. So when I listen to it now, I’m transported to a place where things once made sense. It’s like a doorway to my childhood.
My third and fourth spots kept changing because I could not decide between Jah Prayzah’s Hubaba and Chiringiro, What surprised me was seeing Chiringiro in Chi’s list at all, because this is about as far away from ratchet-ass music as one can travel without leaving the solar system. She could not have selected a song further from her usual taste if she had tried. And yet, the more I listened, the more obvious it became why this song reached her so deeply.
Chiringiro is a song about African beauty and refusing to apologise for existing in the body and history you were given. The lyrics insist on self-acceptance, and speak directly to the fatigue of being told constantly from childhood that beauty exists somewhere else. When you frame it this way, it makes perfect sense that the song would resonate deeply with a Black woman who has spent her entire life absorbing Western templates of beauty that she was never meant to fit, let alone achieve.
Jah Prayzah has always carried the idea of home through his music, circling it from different angles and returning to it again and again. Origin, loyalty, and belonging are themes that recur across his catalogue with the persistence of someone who knows how easy it is to lose them. Chiringiro feels like it picked up the thread left by Kwayedza from Hokoyo, a song that carries some of Jah’s most profound lines:
“Zvikanzi chinja mutupo, unochinja here?
Vakakuti chinja ruvara, woita ganda jena, unoda here?
Kuchiva rumwe rudzi hurema
Mwana wemutema, ucharamba uri mutema”
When the plane finally lifted off the tarmac, I looked down in tears and said goodbye to Zimbabwe. I was leaving the place that made me, the place where my Blackness did not attract commentary or curiosity, where I was not exceptional for existing, where I blended in by default. Leaving felt necessary, but it did not feel light. I was moving toward the steady, grounding comfort of my gorgeous wife, toward a life where I would no longer have to call her every time anxiety gripped me, toward a future that promised us the same physical space. But at the same time, I was preparing myself for the fated reality that awaited me on the other side. I was now stepping into a life where I knew, with absolute certainty, that I would be the Blackest man in every room I entered, where my presence would always be slightly noticeable, slightly weighted, slightly interrogated, even when no one said anything out loud.
Chiringiro did not play as the plane ascended. I did not need it to. It had already done its work. It reminded me who I was before the move, what I carried with me, and what parts of myself I would have to protect fiercely so that distance did not dull them into memory, like the folk songs Dad used to play.
2) Tamy Moyo & Mark Ngwazi — Husiku Hwese (Remix)
Music, like all art, is subjective. Still, even in a world where taste is personal and arguments are endless, there exists at least one obvious truth: remixes suck. I have never, in the entire history of my listening life, encountered a genuinely good song and earnestly thought to myself, “You know what this song needs? A verse from Kikky Badass.” That sentence has never formed naturally in the human brain.
Most remixes do not exist because a song is calling out for expansion or because an artist has discovered a new emotional angle worth exploring. They exist because someone, somewhere in the production process, looked at the streaming numbers and decided the song had not yet been fully exploited. The remix is rarely a continuation of an idea; it is a commercial afterthought, a way of stretching a moment that should have been allowed to end gracefully. If Zimbabwe survives long enough to produce future historians, they will one day identify a troubling stretch from the mid-2010s and conclude that far too much national energy was wasted listening to pointless remixes.
A remix only works under very rare and very specific circumstances. It requires the kind of artistic curiosity that asks, “What happens if we invite this voice into the room?” When a remix works, it feels less like an add-on and more like the final page of a chapter that was always missing. It has to introduce a fusion that the original song could not have achieved on its own, something so effective that it retroactively justifies its own existence. In my entire history of listening to Zimbabwean music — which, tragically, is extensive — I can count the number of good remixes on one hand, and I will still have fingers left to slap everyone at Zimcelebs. This has happened convincingly exactly twice.
The first time was Baba Harare’s Rita remix, which deserves its own small plaque somewhere. The original song was serviceable at best, drifting dangerously close to forgettable. Mai Titi altered the entire chemistry of the record, injecting a sense of life that the song had been desperately missing. The brighter production helped, but it was her presence that turned an aggressively dull solo into one of the most infectious duets of the decade, achieved by accident, genius, or divine intervention — probably all three. It remains one of the rare cases where a remix does not dilute the original but rescues it.
The only other time a remix has earned its keep without argument is Husiku Hwese. Mark Ngwazi does not fade into the background or behave like an accessory, so the song opens up. Instead of clashing, the pairing unlocks something playful without being messy, catchy without being loud, and effortless in a way that suggests nobody in the room was overthinking anything — which is usually when the best music happens. Husiku Hwese (Remix) does not feel like an attempt to extend a hit’s lifespan. There is no sense of scrambling here. The song moves better. The energy sharpens. It becomes the version you instinctively reach for, even if you pretend you still like the original out of loyalty. This is how a remix earns respect: by not begging for it. And because this blog operates on a strict policy of rewarding artistic success, it feels only right to honour Tamy Moyo and Mark Ngwazi with another random fun fact:
Mark and Tamy, did you know that barnacles have penises that are seven times longer than the rest of their bodies?
1) Nitefreak — Masterclass
My departure from Zimbabwe was not smooth. It was Zimbabwean in the most familiar sense of the word, meaning it involved confusion, terror, and the creeping feeling that the country might still have unfinished business with me. The moment my visa was finally approved, I did what any reasonable Zimbabwean would do after years of stress and spiritual warfare: I booked the next available flight out of Zimbabwe. I did not pack. I did not curate outfits. I was ready to leave this chapter of my life behind entirely, its fashion choices included. I assumed — foolishly, as it turns out — that the universe might reward this decisiveness with a painless check-in experience.
It did not.
The instant my passport details were captured into the system, a red light flared up on the screen — the kind of signal that makes officials stop smiling and start asking questions in voices that suddenly sound official. My passport, I was informed, had been flagged. There was a “DO NOT BOARD” order attached to my name, which is not a phrase anyone enjoys hearing when they are already emotionally halfway to another continent. The questions followed quickly and with increasing seriousness: Had I overstayed in a foreign country at some point? Had I been arrested abroad and quietly returned home? Was there anything at all I wished to disclose before things escalated?
We then embarked on a detailed oral history of my travels. Every country I had ever visited was discussed, scrutinised, and verified, and for each one, the check-in officer — who bore an unsettling resemblance to the visa agent who had already traumatised me a few months ago — picked up the phone and contacted the relevant embassy to confirm that I was, in fact, not an international menace. With every call, my confidence thinned.
This continued long enough for a senior staff member, one with a face that inspired marginally less panic, to approach and ask why the queue had frozen. After listening to the explanation, the senior officer punched in a few details, frowned deeply, and announced that the issue originated from Zimbabwe’s own Home Affairs, which meant they now had to consult with them directly. I lost all hope.
As he spoke on the phone, I began mentally retracing my entire life, sifting through every small transgression to identify which one had finally caught up with me. I had written about Wicknell before, poked fun at him here and there, and suddenly I was forced to ask myself whether that had been a mistake. Surely, I believed, no one from ZANU-PF was reading my stupid ramblings. Surely.
And then it hit me.
City Parking.
That arrogant clerk. That day at the parkade where diplomacy failed and I decided to liberate myself by unconventional means. Of course, they had captured my registration. Of course, they had reported it. Of course, I was now a fugitive in the eyes of the state, attempting to flee the country before answering for my sins. As the senior officer continued speaking into the phone, I could not hear his words anymore. All I could hear, on a loop, was Freeman HKD’s voice echoing in my head:
“Dzimwe nguva ndofeeler sendomiswa nemweya yemadzinza.”
This was it. I was finished. I stood there on the verge of tears, already composing the message I would send Chi explaining why I would not, in fact, be joining her in Manchester, and why love conquers all except Zimbabwe. Eventually, the senior officer hung up the phone, turned to me with a face that suggested deep personal irritation, and handed me back my passport.
“I’m sorry,” he said with authority. “That was an error in our database. Enjoy your flight.”
I wanted to punch him. In my mind, I briefly pictured his headstone somewhere near Casper’s cemetery:
HERE LIES A MAN WHO ALMOST GAVE MALCOM MUFUNDE A HEART ATTACK.
The flight itself passed in a blur, and when we landed in Manchester in the quiet hours of the morning, I walked toward immigration with the dread of a man who no longer trusted authority figures. The officers were serious in that very British way that suggests they will never laugh, even privately.
“Who is your wife? What is her birthday? Where does she live? When did you get married? Where does she work? What does she do? And lastly, art thou endowed to a length befitting entry into Britannia?”
“In Zimbabwe,” I replied, “my nickname is Barnie. Short for Barnacle.”
“Welcome to the United Kingdom.”
Chi was waiting in arrivals, and when she saw me, she ran forward and wrapped herself around me like someone reclaiming lost property. We held each other tightly, our hearts pounding so loudly I am convinced they were communicating.
“Hello, Babi.”
“Hi, Babi. How’s Denton this morning?”
“Never been better.”
As we walked toward the parking area, she casually mentioned that she had booked us a hotel in the countryside to celebrate, somewhere called The Belfry.
“Does the room come with an office?” I asked.
“Mhm. You want to write?”
“Yeah. Manando wants me to write about my ten favourite songs of the year.”
“Oh really? Mine’s Masterclass, by Nitefreak.”
