Mail & Guardian
Mail & Guardian
Chenjerai Hove

Creator

Chenjerai Hove

New dawn: Methodist church reverend Canaan Banana

Free at last: The day Zimbabwe became independent

Chenjerai Hove reminisces about what April 18 1980 meant for him.

Zim elections: Give us fresh ideas, not insults

More-of-the-same Robert Mugabe seems to have lost touch with his audience during this campaign, writes Chenjerai Hove.

Still I hear my mother’s voice: ‘But don’t die in foreign lands’.

Not yet time to plan a return trip to Zim

Memories of a forced departure haunt Chenjerai Hove, who explains why he’s unlikely to return to his birthplace anytime soon.

Laugh at your own risk in Zimbabwe

Cracking a joke about the president or circulating a photoshopped picture of him is hazardous business.

“I want to join my friends in the world of the ancestors. Death has a short memory.”

How an ancestor is born in Zimbabwe

Zimbabwean writer Chenjerai Hove gives us a rare glimpse into a Shona ceremony that transformed his deceased father into one of the living-dead.

Zimbabwe’s war of empty slogans

Politics is not about persuasion, it is about forcing people to shout allegiance at the barrel of a gun, says Chenjerai Hove.

Fly-by-night election monitors fail Africa

Fly-by-night election monitors fail Africa

Such ‘airport observers’ judge the freedom and fairness of the ballot from the luxury of the nearest hotel bar.

Dogs of war still prowl

Not enough has changed in Zimbabwe for its people in exile to heed Tsvangirai’s call to return.

Mugabe’s apartheid state

The new government is window-dressing to conceal motives that have nothing to do with the welfare of the country.

A Zimbabwean arrogantocracy

The MDC has learnt from experience that dictators give away only mirages of power.

Inside the mind of a dictator

The man shuns the beautiful landscapes, the winding rivers that pour down magical gorges and the glossy inland lakes of his own country and goes to Malaysia on holiday. He…