I like to believe people who read this blog are sharp. Maybe not “quantum physics” sharp, but sharp enough to know cooking at home is cheaper than eating out. This, in Harare 2025, is no longer just a budgeting hack; it’s the last line of defence between you and bankruptcy. Restaurants here have turned into vacuum cleaners for wallets. I walked into one in Borrowdale the other day and nearly called the police.
There was a seating fee, a kitchen appreciation fee, a surcharge if you dared change a menu item, and—just to rub salt into your bankrupting wounds—a mandatory 20% tip. By the time the bill came, I half-expected them to tack on a “customer breathing surcharge” for the audacity of inhaling their air.
If you haven’t been cooking at home, please start today. Your bank account will thank you. Sticking to vegetarian meals even saves more. I’m not a vegetarian myself, but my wallet is. Which, of course, makes it awkward to pivot into today’s topic: people with beefy wallets — Wicknell Chivayo and Tinashe Mutarisi.
The Zim music industry has been hijacked by mbinga culture — a religion where ballers can pop up with cash and clout, instantly becoming the patron saints of starving artists everywhere. They are basically the bridge between broke artists and the dealership lot. The phenomenon dates back to the early 2010s, when new-money businessmen realized they could become cultural gods by simply tossing cash at artists. In a 2024 MUD Journal piece, Elias Muonde defined “mbinga” as a rich hustler, usually male, with a deep (often shady) source of wealth. Whether or not you think the shady bit matters is a debate for another day, but as working definitions go, it’s solid.
I’m not about to go spelunking into the exact origins of mbinga culture because (a) no one pays me enough for that level of research, and (b) my PC crashes if I open more than three Chrome tabs. So let’s just say the story kicks into gear in 2020, when Poptain and Allanah dropped Fadza Mutengi under Nash Nation, which, conveniently, is Tinashe Mutarisi’s studio. The song was basically one long worship service to mbingas like the late Genius “Ginimbi” Kadungure. It’s a fun track, sure, but it also flipped a switch: artists suddenly realized you can literally monetize flattery. Drop a bar about a mbinga and boom — he might buy you a car. Bootlicking became a business model.
And honestly, can you blame the artists? Music doesn’t pay here. If you’re a Zimbabwean musician, you live one missed gig away from selling your guitar to the same fan who asked for an autograph last week. The few who’ve cracked the code are the exception. My dad is living proof that passion doesn’t pay pensions. He’s in his 60s, has been a musician his entire life, and is still waiting for ZIMURA to send him a cheque big enough to cover a loaf of bread. I, on the other hand, am the failed rapper behind this blog title. Listen: I was terrible. I didn’t even have the excuse of a rigged system. My music was so crap it belonged in a pit latrine. But given what’s topping charts these days, pit latrine music is mainstream. I was just ahead of my time.
This brings me to my morality crisis. People always ask me: if Wicknell offered you a Toyota Aqua, would you take it? Easy answer: no. I’m too miserable. A Toyota Aqua wouldn’t move the needle in my life. In fact, I’d rather turn it down for the PR points. Think of the headlines: “Failed Rapper Rejects Mbinga’s Car.” The sympathy clout alone would feed me for months.
But a Toyota Fortuner? That’s a different story. Now we’re negotiating with my soul. My morals become flexible when you dangle an SUV in front of me. I would betray my ancestors for a Fortuner. I’d ghost my family. I’d delete this entire blog and pretend I was hacked. I’d sell out faster than a Black Friday flatscreen. You’d have to understand.
Anyway, the question of the day is: who has done more for Zimbabwean music, Wicknell Chivayo or Tinashe Mutarisi? Now, there’s a great deal of mbingas I could’ve picked from for this piece. My first draft was actually going to be Passion Java vs Walter Magaya: Battle of the Prophets. Which, let’s be honest, probably would’ve been funnier, but our SEO guy tells me Wicknell and Mutarisi bring more clicks. At the end of the day, I am a humble servant of Google Analytics.
Quick shoutout to Chitungwiza while we’re here. A suspicious number of mbingas — Java, Magaya, Chivayo, Mutarisi — all started in my hometown. Which raises the obvious question: what is in the Chitown water, and why did it skip me? All I got from Chitown water was typhoid.
My only realistic shot at mbinga-level money now is plumbing. I once had a plumber tell me I could make $150k a year if I didn’t mind swimming in shit. I nearly fainted. Not from the number, no; but from imagining the smell. My vomit reflex is so sharp it even activated when I played Runna Rulez’s album. So plumbing was an immediate no. The plumber then suggested becoming an electrician. But clumsy people like me don’t belong near live wires. You botch a plumbing job, you stink. You botch an electrical job, you die.
When I was a kid, our neighbor got electrocuted after confidently saying, “I’m pretty sure the breaker’s off.” Five seconds later, there was a loud kazzap followed by the longest, most operatic, heartfelt “Maihweeeee!” I’ve ever heard. That was enough to convince me that writing was the safest career for me. Unfortunately, all it guarantees is that I’ll stay broke forever. The closest I’ll ever get to money is writing about the people who already have it.
And on that note, let’s get into it.
Round One: Spend
For this category, we’re looking at who has poured more money into the pockets of artists, and how many musicians have suddenly stumbled into the soft life because of them.
Just the other day, a tweet floated onto my screen: “Sir Wicknell Chivayo has gifted Shinsoman (The Dancehall Father) a brand new Mercedes Benz C-Class valued at US$25,000, along with an additional US$10,000 in cash for fuel and spending money.”
I should have been surprised, but I wasn’t. My reaction was somewhere between a shrug and a yawn. Once upon a time, this kind of announcement would have stunned me. These days, it barely raises my eyebrows. Wicknell buying luxury cars has become as routine as ZESA vanishing the second I switch on the kettle. No day goes by without some random artist getting a car or an envelope from Wicknell. If you’re a Zimbabwean artist, your odds of driving a German car are now 50/50, unless your name is First Farai. I’m convinced it’s only a matter of time before he hands out Hiluxes to Sunday school choirs.
The sheer spend is staggering. We’re talking tens of millions of dollars already, and I’m still pretty sure I’m lowballing it. I don’t think Mutarisi can keep up. He sells paint. Unless he scores a contract to paint every square inch of the Great Wall of China, there’s no way he competes with Wicknell’s tsunami of spending.
Many aging artists try to make comebacks, brushing the dust off their old styles and assuming nostalgia alone can carry them. But music is merciless: some genres are timeless, and some are brutally ageist. You can walk into a Feli Nandi or Jah Prayzah show and see three generations in attendance — grandmothers dancing next to toddlers. But go to a dancehall or hip-hop show, and it’s strictly teenagers and twenty-somethings. Kids don’t care for golden oldies. They want Jnr Spragga, Bling4, Madedido, and maybe Master H if they’re feeling nostalgic. No one under 25 is saving their allowance to watch Shinsoman perform “Mafanz angu andikandira mawayawaya.” The only person still clapping for that is Wicknell; so bless him for it, because at least one man still remembers our childhood heroes. Even if the kids don’t care, he’s single-handedly keeping some of our favorites afloat.
Of course, I don’t fool myself into thinking Chivayo does this out of artistic reverence. Let’s not kid ourselves that this is about the spirit of the music. I don’t believe he cares deeply about that. To me, this looks like politics; buying loyalty four wheels at a time. That’s my personal read, anyway. If I’m proven wrong, I’ll gladly eat crow served with a kitchen appreciation fee at Borrowdale’s newest bistro.
Regardless, the numbers speak for themselves. The Aqua flood has gone so wide and so absurd that I lost count somewhere after 200 units and twenty-something Fortuners. These are just the ones that made it onto my feed.
Let’s talk about Mansa Musa for a minute. He was the King of Mali, a place so overflowing with gold it made El Dorado look like a tuckshop. Musa was famously generous. He tossed out gold to beggars like confetti, tipped merchants with fistfuls, and had a brand-new mosque built every week just so he had somewhere different to pray on Fridays. During his pilgrimage to Mecca, he gave away so much gold that he destabilised entire economies; basically hyperinflation before it had a name. Streets flooded with gold until gold was worth less than dust. That’s Wicknell for me. He is the Mansa Musa of Aquas.
Mutarisi, meanwhile, takes a different approach. He works like a studio executive, bankrolling artists within his orbit, nurturing their careers, and funding their projects. His biggest success story is backing the producer-artist duo of SaintFloew and Jamal, a partnership that feels inevitable now, but was anything but at the start.
I knew Jamal before the headlines, back when he was tucked away in Unit B, Seke. His “studio” was a one-room setup in a sagging cottage where $5 bought you recording, mixing, mastering, and possibly cholera. The soundproofing was done by faith and old blankets, and yet the sound quality he pulled out of that setup was impressive. Some of the songs we made together still hold up today.
I spent countless nights in that room, making music that built me the tiny cult following that survives to this day. Jamal believed in me so much that when I was broke — which was basically always — he would still let me record for free. We were too different to be close — different goals, different interests, different pigmentation. People would joke, “Coke and Fanta!” when they saw us together. Still, we respected each other’s craft, and that kept us going.
Then growth happened. Stars started crossing town lines to record with Jamal: Mudiwa Hood in a convertible, Stunner in something smaller (which I’m sure gave Mudiwa quiet satisfaction), Ras Caleb still hot off Tokwe Mukosi. Eventually, Jamal moved to Harare, linked with SaintFloew, and Mutarisi swooped in. The rest is history.
I like to imagine a parallel universe where I don’t quit. I stick it out with Jamal, he keeps recording me, we break through together, and Mutarisi signs us both. In that world, I’m not writing this blog; I’m smoking shisha from the passenger seat of an autonomous Tesla.
But back to reality.
Mutarisi has also backed Nisha Ts, whose career blossomed under his wing. I’d clocked Tashinga back in her hardcore freestyle days. I wanted her on a song, but I didn’t take music seriously enough to chase the feature. By the time I moved, Nash had scooped her up. Mutarisi treats her like a daughter now, which would make Freeman HKD her sibling.
Nash TV’s platforms gave countless young artists their first stage and their first visibility, reshaping their careers — and sometimes, their entire lives. Still, when it comes to pure, unfiltered spending power, this round is a blowout. Wicknell throws money like he’s allergic to the concept of savings. On sheer volume of splash, the first round goes to him.
Round Two: Cultural Impact
I feel obliged to lay my biases on the table before proceeding, if only because this category demands honesty. On Africa Day of 2024, Tinashe Mutarisi followed me on Instagram. Yes, the Mutarisi. The timing was suspicious, coming just as I’d released a song called Usatarise, in which I had name-dropped him. I no longer remember the exact bar — I’ve avoided listening back because nothing fills me with dread quite like the sound of my own music — but I do remember that I lazily rhymed “Usatarise” with “Mutarisi.” Truly a masterclass in lyrical genius.
Naturally, I sent him a DM to ask if it was a misclick, or if he had somehow heard the track. He didn’t reply, of course. He has actual businesses to run. Still, the fact remains: Mutarisi knew about my track — a song boasting fewer than 100 plays. That either means he is so plugged into the culture that he combs through the depths of SoundCloud for scraps, or Jamal whispered my name somewhere. Either way, you’d imagine this would make me hopelessly biased toward Mutarisi in this debate, but alas, allow me a story.
On July 12th, 2025, I borrowed my mother’s car to go to work. Don’t ask me why I was working on a Saturday. This is what I get for not being a plumber. On my drive back, I stopped at the red light by Arcadia Shops along Seke Road. The road was quiet, the sort of Saturday stillness that convinces you Harare might one day be peaceful, until a mushikashika driver barrelled into the back of my car, turning it into scrap metal in one breathtaking second.
I was livid. Had I possessed Wicknell’s build, or even Mutarisi’s, I might have pulled the man from the vehicle and rearranged his face into a Picasso painting. But I am skeletal. If I ever tried to land a punch, the most likely outcome would be a pulled muscle.
The driver climbed out, recognised me instantly, and — God strike me down if I lie — began rapping my songs back to me, word for word. Any other day, I would have been flattered. But that Saturday, I wanted to fight. Thank heavens, the police showed up before I could embarrass my fragile ribcage. The “fan,” as it turned out, had no licence, was illegally taxiing, and was driving an uninsured vehicle. Meanwhile, my mother’s insurance was third-party only, which meant there would be no payout. The only hope was this fan personally covering the damage.
I took one look at him, his clothes, his weary eyes, the way poverty clung to him like a second skin, and I knew instantly: this man cannot pay. It was over before it began. The hopelessness of that moment made me wonder — is this how mbingas look at me? When Wicknell or Mutarisi glance my way, do they see what I saw that day: someone who, no matter how loud he talks, inspires no financial confidence? If so, I honestly couldn’t blame them.
I took out a loan and had the car fixed at some back-alley garage in Chitungwiza. They did a passable job, but the car was ruined. At this point, even an Aqua would fetch more on the market. And then it came time for the paint job. Where else would I go but Nash Paints? The CEO follows me, after all.
I brought in the little fuel-tank lid, and the Nash guys worked some fancy wizardry. They whipped out gadgets, scanned the lid, and mixed the matching shade. I was impressed, until I saw the finished car. The shade was close, but not quite. Off just enough that the human eye, especially my mother’s, could spot it instantly. She reminds me of it every week. So summed up briefly, I have both a glowing and an off-color story about Mutarisi. I’m not biased.
As for Wicknell, I don’t know him enough to form strong biases. Outside of the fact that we’re both Churchill alumni (Go Bulldogs, I guess?), I’ve got nothing. Our only connection is a verse I regret. On the same album as Usatarise, I had another track called Ma1. I was phoning it in that day; every line ended with “one.” At some point, inspiration (or lack thereof) brought me to Wicknell’s famous Aqua giveaway — 50 of them, a fleet worth half a million dollars, for his Johane Masowe sect members. So I wrote:
“Mune swipe here, mageez? Dakumbochaya Namaqua one.
Dakumbopinda machena kunge postori, Wicknell ndipe Aqua one.”
Let me clear the record: I do not want an Aqua. I was just rhyming. But it does highlight the point: I have no allegiance to either man. I’ve name-dropped them both, equally, on the same album. This article is not propaganda. That said, the fact that even a failed rapper like me has invoked their names in my verses shows how deeply these men are woven into our culture. They live in our music, even in songs no one listens to.
Wicknell’s influence is big enough to nudge the art of Jah Prayzah, the greatest Zimbabwean artist of our time. On Ndini Mukudzeyi, Jah’s raw, mbira-driven track Mibvunzo was one of the lead singles. I love it, but why did that song get the video push, instead of surefire smashes like Ruzhowa? Is it because Mibvunzo happens to be Wicknell’s favorite song? I’m not sure, but Chivayo has enough influence to tilt the rollout strategy of the country’s biggest artist. That is cultural impact, for better or worse.
Then there is Mutarisi. I doubt any Zimbabwean has been immortalised in music more than he has, thanks to SaintFloew. “Ziva Tinashe ndoMutarisi” has become the expected invocation at the start of Santa’s songs, stamped onto his biggest, most culture-shifting work. It’s not just a name-drop either; it’s a layered line. On one level, it’s a simple shoutout to the benefactor who changed his life. But peel it back: “Ziva tinaShe ndomutarisi” — “the Lord is with us, watching over us.” It’s a neat little trick of the pen. Well played, Tawanda.
Beyond Saint’s shoutouts, Nash TV has been a springboard for countless careers. It would be criminal not to mention how Holy Ten’s Mwana Ndakubirai exploded on the Nash Nation Vibes riddim. That success pivoted him away from straight-laced hardcore rap into Afro-fusion territory, redefining the ceiling for Zimbabwean rap hits.
There’s also that video of Oriyano phoning Mutarisi for clearance to remake a song he’d recorded years earlier at Nash. I won’t lie, that video made me emotional. Mutarisi didn’t just say yes. He pulled down the original version to avoid confusion and advised against tagging the new one as a remake, a marketing masterstroke that ensured the song felt fresh. The song? Kamubhoga — already a monster of a hit, and on track to be one of the year’s biggest contenders.
So I’ll admit some bias towards Mutarisi here. But even if we set my leanings aside, this isn’t really a debate. Wicknell makes headlines — the Benz, the photo op, the viral moment. Mutarisi is the festivals, the platforms, the slow burn that outlives the weekend. Both matter, but they matter differently. One simply writes cheques; the other writes history, or at least tries to.
Mutarisi evens it. 1–1. We’ve got a fight.
Round Three: Artist Loyalty
Every once in a while, a song shows up and reminds you that music is special. For me, that song this year was Maskiri’s Muchibage, featuring Tererai, who should have been knighted by now for services to the nation’s collective adolescence. The duet pulled me by the collar and dropped me back into a time when Urban Grooves was the entire atmosphere we lived inside. The afternoons at school dances, the hiss of scratched CDs, the awkward thrill of texting a stranger on Mxit.
Muchibage is the quintessential Urban Grooves love song. I was raised on Urban Grooves, and the song cracked that time capsule open again. Hearing the warmth of Tererai’s voice and the earnest reach of Maskiri’s verses reminded me how much I miss that generation. There was a texture and breathy honesty to that music that modern tech has sanded smooth.
I’ve spent years fumbling to explain what makes an Urban Grooves love song different from contemporary Zim R&B or hip-hop. I’ve said things about production choices, about instrumentation, about soundscapes, and every time I’ve been wrong. My gorgeous wife, with one casual observation, nailed it better than I ever could. “With Urban Grooves,” she said, “you could feel the chemistry between the artists. You could feel them falling in love, or at least trying to.” Urban Groovers gave you more than lyrics, they gave you butterflies. They sold the feeling so convincingly that you bought into it whether you wanted to or not.
Take the 2003 smash hit Kurwizi. Betty Makaya and Jamal (the late, not SaintFloew’s producer) sang like two people who were either already entangled or about to ruin their careers for each other. Or Ndoita Manyemwe, with Leonard Mapfumo and Varaidzo. If I hadn’t seen Mapfumo’s wedding photos with Suba, I would have bet my entire net worth (modest though it is) that Varaidzo was the one. Around the 3:30 mark of Ndoita Manyemwe, Varaidzo unleashes this ecstatic, glass-shattering note. It’s the kind of uncontainable scream you make in your bedroom mirror after a first kiss, when you can’t believe your own luck. Urban Grooves was full of those moments. They didn’t just sing about love; they sounded like they were in it.
Tererai, of course, is the undisputed queen of selling this chemistry. Tinodanana with Alexio still stands as one of the most intoxicating duets of that era. You can’t listen to the song and not picture the two sneaking glances and hand-holds in the studio booth. No studio trickery can manufacture that level of intimacy. Contrast that with, say, Tingori Two by Bling4 and Tamy Moyo. Tremendous talents, both of them. But as a couple? I never bought that nonsense for a second. In fact, the idea feels borderline offensive to suggest.
So when I heard Muchibage, it felt like rediscovering that magic. Tererai’s hook soared with the same elegance she’s always carried and Maskiri sold the fantasy so well you’d be forgiven for imagining them as a couple. And then, as if the universe couldn’t resist confirming my fantasy, a video of Tererai and Maskiri looking very much like not-just-collaborators leaked a few days later. I didn’t even blink. It was the easiest thing in the world to believe.
Maskiri, to his credit, is still writing with the same mischievous brilliance that made him Maskiri in the first place. His verses are playful, sly, and endlessly quotable. My personal favorite line is:
“Unopedza masports (spots) kunge Q10”
But the line that matters for our purposes here comes later:
“Handisi kuda hug yechurch, ndiri kuda hug kwayo
Tambanudza ruoko rwako kunge VaChivayo”
Now, I can’t confirm whether Maskiri has personally benefitted from Wicknell’s Great Aqua Redistribution Program, or maybe, like me in my lazier artistic days, he just grabbed the rhyme because it was sitting there. But this is the thing: in many cases, artists use their lyrics as pledges of loyalty to the mbingas bankrolling them. A line here, a shoutout there. It’s a currency of its own and a way of securing the next envelope. Dennis calls this the economics of gratitude.
Earlier this year, my gorgeous wife and I found ourselves at a modest Joburg restaurant — one that, mercifully, didn’t make my wallet break into a cold sweat. The waitress walked over in fishnets, or something equally unsubtle, with most of her behind openly on display. It wasn’t just any behind either; it was a Zulu behind. The kind with its own gravitational pull.
My gorgeous wife stared at it wide-eyed in awe, turned to me, and in her clipped British accent said, “Seen that? Amazing bum, innit?” I nodded. Because what else was I supposed to do? Pretend I hadn’t noticed the eighth wonder of the world standing right in front of me? It was impossible to miss. We admired it together, laughed, and carried on with our meal.
In a previous relationship, the exact situation would have ended with me on trial. My ex would have stared daggers at me, waiting for the tiniest flicker of eye movement, before interrogating me for five hours because my eyes had dared to exist in the same room as an attractive waitress. “Why were you looking? What were you thinking? Do you want her number?” I would have spent the rest of the night defending myself, explaining that I didn’t look on purpose, that I wasn’t interested, and that my corneas had simply betrayed me.
My gorgeous wife, on the other hand, is the first to tap my shoulder and whisper, “Quick—three o’clock.” That’s what loyalty looks like. It’s not suspicion, it’s not fearful, it’s not performance. Real loyalty removes the need for paranoia and insecurity. It makes room for honesty, for shared jokes, for admiring Zulu behinds without anyone sleeping on the couch.
That’s where this category gets messy, because I don’t think the artists funded by mbingas enjoy that kind of security. The relationship is warped because it’s tethered to an allowance, lubricated by cash and cars. Loyalty that depends on cash flow isn’t loyalty at all; it’s credit. The songs and the shoutouts and the public endorsements all flow as long as the bag does. It’s not “I see you,” it’s “I owe you.” But cut the bag, cut the Aqua, cut the envelope, and then we’ll see how far the loyalty stretches without money on the table.
Until that day, this round doesn’t belong to anyone.
Verdict: N/A.
Round Four: What I Think
Saudi Arabia recently hosted what they proudly declared to be the world’s biggest comedy festival — a two-week carnival of safe jokes and expensive laughter in Riyadh. Dave Chappelle, Bill Burr, Kevin Hart, Louis CK, and other heavy hitters all lined up under the same desert sky, delivering sanitized punchlines in exchange for cheques so big they could silence their own conscience. It was the kind of lineup you’d expect to find on a Mount Rushmore of stand-up, only this time, the mountain was made of oil money.
It was, as you can imagine, controversial. Critics accused them of hypocrisy, of performing for power instead of truth, of trading in moral authority for money. Some of the comedians were even given lists of jokes they weren’t allowed to tell, an absurdity that would be hilarious if it weren’t also tragic. It’s a bit like inviting Messi to a football match and asking him not to dribble. The festival became the ultimate paradox: a gathering of free speech advocates politely asking if they could please say something funny. But they went anyway, because the petrodollars stacked high enough.
Even the loudest moralists folded like wet newspapers once the zeros started to multiply. Mind you, these are comedians worth hundreds of millions of dollars — men who could retire today and still have money left for several reincarnations — and yet they still couldn’t resist the pull of a fat envelope. The moral lesson here, if there is one, is that everyone has a price. The only difference is whether it’s in dollars or RTGS.
So if comedians with Malibu mansions and Netflix royalties can be bought, what chance do Zimbabwean artists have — the ones praying their next gig comes with a plate of sadza and a cab home? I’ve lived enough life in Chitungwiza to know that principles are a privilege few can afford. You cannot feed your family with dignity, and you cannot pay rent with idealism. In a country where survival is the only national sport, hunger has a way of silencing the self-righteous. The truth is brutal but simple: sometimes survival demands surrender. You either swallow your pride, or you starve beside it.
We can sneer from our air-conditioned moral high grounds all we want, but we aren’t Jamal, the kid in Seke paying rent on a single room and working himself into dust for five bucks. We aren’t Nicholas Zakaria, a man who spent half a century building the soundtrack of a nation only to see his medical bills mock everything his melodies ever earned him. And we certainly aren’t Joshua Mufunde — my father — whose only prayer, as he performed in township bars, was that his guitar case collected enough coins so his son could get asthma medication.
The sad arithmetic of Zimbabwean arts is cruelly unsophisticated: you either die of hunger, or you (quite literally) dance for your supper. No one likes the taste of leather, but when there’s nothing else to eat, you learn to lick the boot. That’s why I can’t join the chorus of the digital mob mocking artists who flatter mbingas for survival. They aren’t cowards; they’re casualties. Instead of crucifying them, why not fix the stage they’re forced to dance on?
Maybe it’s time we turn our energy toward building a system that doesn’t crush them. Go to their shows. Buy their merch. Stream their songs legally. Retweet their work. Demand that the government give the arts the same respect it gives parastatals that don’t work. Give the artists a fighting chance, so they can stand on their art without kneeling for an envelope. It’s easier to be principled when you have something to fall back on besides hunger.
But this isn’t a crusade against the mbingas either. I’ve got my opinions, sure, but fair’s fair. For all his boardroom polish and Instagram humility, Mutarisi has shown more humanity than most. When he spoke up on LGBTQ rights — in a country that treats tolerance like contraband — he knew the blowback was coming, and it came hard. But he didn’t walk it back. For once, a man with a Tesla remembered he also had a spine, and he used his voice for more than just self-preservation.
Wicknell, on the other hand, draws constant fire for spending millions on cars instead of causes — for financing V8 engines when he could be funding hospital wings. Here’s the hard truth, my fellow Zimbabweans: billionaires aren’t going to save us. The distance between their lives and ours is so vast that they don’t even see us. Their lives are too insulated. The crises that ruin our days don’t even cast a shadow on theirs. Expecting them to fix the country is like expecting the pothole to fix the road. Buying a gold-encrusted potty instead of repairing the Harare 4th Street restrooms is spectacularly on-brand for them.
Speaking of restrooms — let’s pivot a bit.
Fellow men, this one’s for you: does anyone else experience that last, treacherous dribble after you’ve finished peeing? The one that lurks in ambush, patient as a tax collector, waiting until the very moment you zip up? You can shake, you can tap, you can perform a small interpretive dance, but the instant your trousers are up, the two drops will emerge. I’ve accepted it as a divine punishment, one of the lesser-known punishments handed down since Eden. Have you also dealt with this betrayal? If there’s a cure, please DM me.
But back to something a little more serious.
Writing, for me, has always been less of a career and more of a survival mechanism. Growing up in Chitungwiza, surrounded by men who coughed music and bled poetry, I learned early that words could be a kind of oxygen. They didn’t make me rich, but they kept me breathing. Writing kept me from doing worse things to myself. It saved me from the kind of thoughts that don’t say goodbye. I once wanted to write for a living, but somewhere along the way, that dream inverted itself. Now I write to live. There is no glory in it, and certainly no money. The pay is nonexistent, the validation sporadic, but the act itself — the ritual of putting thought to page — is its own small defiance.
Last night, I came across a tweet from Noname, one of my favorite rappers, that said reading for just six minutes can reduce stress by 68%. So if you’ve read this far, I hope your day feels lighter, even if just by a fraction. If you smiled once, or felt seen, or forgot the weight of the world for even six minutes, then this writing thing still matters. That, to me, is wealth. It’s why artists do what they do.
Till next time.
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OK… I can’t end on such solemnity, so let me give you something lighter, because life, in all its cruelty, is still funny.
At my day job, I supervise two graduate trainees: Panashe, whom we call Pana, and Tawanda, whom we call Wicky — short for Wicknell. Not because he drives an Aqua, but because he has Wicknell’s build: soft, round, and perpetually confident in ways I can only envy.
When I send them emails, I always CC both. Last week, I sent one that opened with: “Hi, Panda.” A simple typo, clearly, or so I thought. Within minutes, chaos erupted.
“Who’s Panda?”
“You’re Panda!”
“No, you’re Panda!”
Wicky, ever diplomatic, tried to mediate. “He obviously meant Pana.”
To which Pana replied, without missing a beat, “If anyone here looks like a panda, it’s you.”
The whole office dissolved into laughter. Even Wicky laughed, and when Wicky laughs, his whole body joins in. For a fleeting moment, sitting there in that cramped office under flickering lights, surrounded by colleagues who still find joy in the midst of monotony, I remembered why we keep trying. Because laughter, no matter how stupid the source, is how we survive this madness. It’s proof that we’re still here, still fighting, and still finding joy in a world that insists there is none.
See you at Victor’s.
