Bulawayo still feels the heat as Mnangagwa starts finding his feet
The next layer in the palimpsest of the City of Kings is a matter of contestation
It’s early December in Bulawayo. Matabeleland, the western region of Zimbabwe, has succumbed to a crippling heat wave and the administration of the country’s third president, Emmerson Mnangagwa, is embryonic. Under Mnangagwa, the economy is primed to trump democracy. Relations between the government and the West are nevertheless easing after Robert Mugabe’s three decades in charge ended. Despite the heat, the municipal swimming pool remains mostly empty. Most people can’t afford the $2.30 to take a dip in the pool at the edge of the centre of Bulawayo, cloaked in the grand colonial architecture for which the city is famous. Only a few residents have the luxury of backyard pools. Bulawayo has gone largely unnoticed in favour of the more illustrious capital city, Harare, in the initial telling of the new chapter in Zimbabwe’s history. Often called the City of Kings, it is, to borrow from Jawaharlal Nehru, a palimpsest of a city on which layer upon layer of thought and reverie has been...
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