Posts by Angus Shaw

  In Kenya’s waterless townships and shanties, the Nairobi municipality is installing the water ‘ATM.’ Consumers buy a charge card and insert it to fill a chigubu from a tap below. Clean water costs a couple of cents, a tiny fraction of the foul-smelling polluted river and stream water touts and vendors sell  for 50 Kenya…

Some people are saying the mophead mayor of London Boris Johnson  is a racist. But the cabbie in this episode was not black at all; a black cab is common usage for the distinctive London taxi,  if not all of them are black these days. Johnson, an occasional visitor to Zimbabwe when working as a…

Illegal street vending from a police vehicle – registration ZRP 3256M clear for all to see. Not a policeman in sight and the pick-up looks like it might have been sold off as old stock. If so, the number plates should have been changed for chunky fees to the roads authority and the taxman. The…

The scourge of the smartphone has brought wrack and ruin to many in the skittle alley of life. For  the second year running, Miss Zimbabwe has been sacked after earlier naked photos went out on the net. What has happened in both cases, it seems, is that one-time partners felt cuckolded by the more glamorous…

In the record books, again for all the wrong reasons. Until September, Zimbabweans can cash in their old defunct local currency, the Zimbabwe dollar. The biggest bank note, ZD 100 trillion, gets US 40 cents. (Contemporary Zimbabwean Art Deco) Just how much is 100 trillion mathematically? If the pyramids in Egypt are 5,000 years old,…

🔴 Scud: our traditional ‘food and drink’ beer. Fifteen young and middle aged men are in the Kudenga rural store. The proprietor has put in a free-to-play pool table because there’s little else to do around here and no money to do it with. One player says they are all “hungry for scud.” Scud is…

🔴 Jacob Zuma and Sepp Blatter. So farewell, Mr Blatter. You are stepping down after 17 years in power because you no longer have the full support of world football. During the 2010 World Cup in South Africa, I arrived, by mistake, at a press conference venue ridiculously early. Blatter came in with aides to  see…

Winner Emily Kachote, 25   Many say the Miss World Zimbabwe beauty pageant is being unjustifiably militarised and that’s in bad taste. The head of the Miss Zimbabwe Trust is supermodel Mary Chiwenga, née Mary Mubaiwa (left, arriving at the Independence Day celebrations), the wife of army commander Gen. Constantine Chiwenga. He is lending a…