News — Zimbabwe

Strive Masiyiwa is a Zimbabwean businessman and philanthropist. He is best known for being the founder and chairman of Econet Wireless International and Zimbabwe’s first billionaire.

Masiyiwa was born on January 29th, 1961 in Zimbabwe. His father was a miner who later became a businessman, and his mother was an entrepreneur whose interests ranged from retail sales to small-scale farming and transportation. In 1968 Masiyiwa and his family fled to the north-central Zambian town of Kitwe due to regional government instability. At the age of 12 Masiyiwa’s parents afforded him the opportunity to study abroad at a private school in Edinburgh, Scotland. After graduating in 1978, he returned to Zimbabwe with the intention to join the anti-government guerilla forces but was told by a senior officer that the conflict was almost over and that the country needed people like him to help rebuild it. Masiyiwa took the officer’s advice and in 1983 earned a degree in electrical and electronic engineering from the University of Wales.

Masiyiwa traveled back to Zimbabwe in 1984 after a brief 1-year stint in the computer industry in Cambridge, England. He joined Zimbabwe Posts and Telecommunications Corporations (ZPTC) as a senior engineer and would eventually become a principal engineer within the company. In 1988 Masiyiwa left ZPTC due to frustrations with government bureaucracy.

Realizing there was there was great promise for wireless telephones in sub-Saharan Africa, Masiyiwa founded and financed Econet Wireless in 1990. This business venture was met with heavy opposition from ZPTC which had claimed a monopoly on telecommunications and the Zimbabwean government which wanted bribes. After lengthy legal battles, Masiyiwa’s Econet obtained a license to provide cell phone service in Zimbabwe. Econet would go on to have a presence in other African nations as well as New Zealand and the United Kingdom. Masiyiwa later became involved with the privately held London-based Liquid Telecom Group. This company is Africa’s largest fiber optic and satellite business. In 2018 Masiyiwa was named Zimbabwe’s first billionaire and in 2020 he became the first African to be appointed a Netflix Board member.

Known as a philanthropist, Masiyiwa and his wife, the former Tsitsi Maramba, established the Capernaum Trust which is a support program designed to educate Africa’s orphans and vulnerable children. He is also involved with Bill Gates and Warren Buffett’s Giving Pledge initiative. Masiyiwa supports a wide range of health issues and campaigns against cervical cancer, HIV/AIDS, and malnutrition. He is co-chair of Grow Africa and has helped organize $15 billion for African agriculture. Masiyiwa’s Ambassador Andrew Young Scholarship, named after a former United States ambassador to the United Nations, provides funds to send African Students to Morehouse College in Atlanta, Georgia. In 2015 he was awarded the Freedom Award by the International Rescue Committee for his contributions towards supporting refugees and championing the cause of dignity, individual freedom, and liberty.

Masiyiwa and his wife, Tsitsi have six children. He holds an honorary degree from Nelson Mandela Metropolitan University in Port Elizabeth, South Africa, and has been named an influential figure by many publications including Time magazine and Forbes.

John Pombe Joseph Magufuli was a politician who served as the fifth President of Tanzania from 2015 to 2021. Magufuli was born on October 29, 1959, in Chato, Tanganyika (now Tanzania), to John Joseph Magufuli and an unnamed mother. Growing up, Magufuli attended the Chato Primary School from 1967 to 1974. He also attended the Kateke Seminary School from 1975 to 1977, then relocated to Lake Secondary School in 1977, graduating in 1978. Magufuli graduated from Mkwawa High School in Iringa, Tanzania in 1981. After graduating, Magufuli enrolled in the Mkwawa College of Education where in 1985 he received a Diploma in Education Science, majoring in Chemistry, Mathematics, and Education. Magufuli also attended the University of Dar es Salaam where he earned a Bachelor of Science in Education degree in 1988, a master’s degree there in 1994, and doctorate in chemistry in 2009.

Magufuli began his professional career as a teacher at The Sengerema Secondary School in Sengerema, Tanzania. He later quit his teaching job and became an industrial chemist at the Nyanza Cooperative Union Limited. While there he was elected as a Member of Parliament (MP) in 1995, where he represented the Chato district. He was appointed Deputy Minister for Works during his first term as MP by President Benjamin Mkapa. Magufuli would become Minister for Works following the 2000 election.

On January 4, 2006, President Jakaya Mrisho Kilkwete moved Magufuli to Minister of Lands and Human Settlement. He also served as Minister of Livestock and Fisheries from 2008 to 2010 and Minister of Works from 2010 to 2015.

On July 12, 2015, Magufuli was nominated as CCM’S (Chama Cha Mapinduzi) Presidential candidate for the 2015 election. Magufuli won a majority vote in the final round of the primary against Asha-Rose Migiro and Amina Salum Ali. Magufuli then faced candidate Edward Lowassa in the Presidential election held on October 25, 2015. On October 29, 2015, Magufuli was declared the winner by the National Electoral Commission (NEC). His running mate, Samia Suluhu Hassan, was declared vice president. During his presidency, Magufuli took on many issues but he was most notable for his measures to curb unnecessary government spending including cutting unnecessary foreign travel by government officials. Magufuli also reduced his own presidential salary from $15,000 to $4,000 a month. Magufuli presidency was not without its controversies. These controversies included being accusing of having autocratic tendencies seen in restrictions on freedom of speech, restrictions on LGBT rights, and a crackdown on members of the political opposition. He was also known of promoting misinformation about COVID-19 over the pandemic in Tanzania.

Magufuli won reelection against Tundu Lissu in the 2020 Tanzanian general election. On March 17, 2021, Magufuli died at the Emilio Mzena Memorial Hospital in Dar es Salaam, Tanzania at the age of 61. Magufuli’s cause of death was not known, but according to his vice president Suluhu, he suffered from a heart condition for many years. On March 20, 2021, Magufuli was laid-in-state at Uhuru Stadium in Dar es Salaam, Tanzania. Magufuli was at one time married to Janeth Magufuli. The couple had three children together.

If pro-government lawmakers have their way in Zimbabwe, a bill would be passed that would seek to punish citizens outside the country who criticize the government for various reasons. The law will define such criticisms as “unpatriotic” that drags the international reputation of Zimbabwe through the mud.

The bill was proposed in March by a member of the ruling Zanu-PF party who argued that some of the criticisms his government faces from many Zimbabweans outside the country are unpatriotic. He promised that his intention was not to punish dissent but to safeguard the reputation of the country. Despite opposition from civil society and opposition politicians, the bill continues to be debated in the legislature.

Backing what has been called the Patriotic Bill, Pupurai Togarepi, the chief whip of the ruling party in parliament told the BBC, “[t]he government has always tried to persuade its citizens to behave in a patriotic way to maintain unity. But after the coming in of opposition parties [in 1999] many agendas came to the fore and it led to a situation where you are at war as a country. It is difficult to manage behaviour and you cannot arbitrarily arrest people without a law to back that.”

Other members of parliament are even calling for the law to apply to Zimbabwean NGOs as well members of the media fraternity.

Zanu-PF has been the only party that has ruled Zimbabwe since the country attained independence from Britain in 1980. But former President Robert Mugabe was isolated by Western partners after he embarked on a drastic land redistribution program that sought to take back lands from minority white Zimbabwean farmers. The isolations were accompanied by sanctions that have burdened Zimbabwe for about two decades.

But in recent times, Mugabe’s successor Emmerson Mnangagwa has moved to take off some of the pressure from his country by proposing terms to give some lands back to white farmers.

In September, Zimbabwe’s government announced that it was giving back lands to foreign white farmers who have the benefit of protection under international investment treaties. The offer applied to about 37 foreigners whose lands were seized between 2000 and 2001. In cases where land ownership reversal is impossible, the Zimbabwean government will make restitution with land from elsewhere.

Valerie Moran was born into a family of five children. Originally from Zimbabwe, her parents were successful entrepreneurs. Her mother was a beautician while her dad owned many businesses including a school uniform factory, bakery, and a property investment firm.

Besides her parents being entrepreneurs, several of her uncles and aunties were university professors and deans at universities. Education was highly promoted in her family. She went to college to study COBOL/Fortran/C (programming language) and graduated to become a talented Systems Analyst. While in Zimbabwe, there was no work for a Woman-In-Tech, so Valerie moved to London, she said in an interview with Anne Marie Ruby.

She co-founded Prepaid Financial Services (PFS), which specializes in financial technology with her husband Noel Moran in 2008. As a couple, they own 81.5% shares in the company. Valerie solely owns a 16.3% stake in the company.

She became the first employee of the firm, serving as its Implementation Project Manager after quitting her paid job. She managed to put the company on the global Regulated Financial Services map. Today, her firm is one of the most successfully managed fintech organizations in the world, posting profits for 10 conservative years.

Valerie moved to London in 2003 when Zimbabwe went into recession. She now lives in Ireland with her husband Noel. They are jointly worth $278 million, according to the Sunday Times Rich List 2020. In 2019, Valerie became the first and only Black woman in the top 1,000 people of The Sunday Times’ annual Rich List, which ranks Britain’s super-wealthy.

Valerie and her husband had started PFS at a kitchen table in London. In its first year of operation, PFS lost $43,000. They also unsuccessfully tried multiple ways to raise funds. They fell back on their savings to keep the company running. They eventually landed a big client and moved into an office space at London’s Hanover Square. Their company is now operating in 25 countries, 12 years on. The firm, in 2018, posted a profit of $9.8 million, according to the Irish Times.

The company has also won multiple awards. It was awarded the Queen’s Award for Enterprise: International Trade 2017 by HRH Queen Elizabeth II and the British Government. In September 2019, the couple also won the Business of the Year Award from the European Business Awards.

Valerie told IdeaMensch that her typical working day lasts about 15 hours, from 9 am until midnight. “During the working day, I spend time trying to catch up with Team Managers to help things move along, especially where they are waiting on decisions from me. After the normal working day, I then get time to catch up on emails and my own workload,” she said.

Her long working hours also tie with her work ethic of listening, learning, and accepting feedback. For aspiring entrepreneurs who want to be like her, Valerie said they should commit 100% to whatever they are doing.

“Work hard and give 100% to your work effort. Leave no stones unturned so that at least if you have to walk away you know you have given it your best shot,” she said.

Zimbabwe will allow trophy hunters who are willing to pay up to $70,000 per elephant to shoot up to 500 of the beasts in national parks, in a bid intended to help raise money to sustain the conservatories which the cash-strapped government cannot maintain.

The intention was actually put on paper last year, but the COVID-19 pandemic destabilized plans for tourists to travel to the southern African country. However, this year’s southern hemisphere winter – beginning in June – will see trophy hunters from countries such as the United States going to Zimbabwe.

Officials in Zimbabwe are well aware of the backlash this will generate among conservationists and ecotourists. But a spokesperson for the Zimbabwe Parks and Wildlife Management Authority (ZPWMA), Tinashe Farawo, was quoted by Bloomberg saying: “How do we fund our operations, how do we pay our men and women who spend 20 days in the bush looking after these animals?”

Zimbabwe’s elephant population is more than 100,000. Trophy hunters will be charged between $10,000 and $70,000 depending on the size of an elephant they would like to shoot. This program is also seen as a way of controlling the elephant population that has disturbed towns and farms surrounding national parks. The Bloomberg report says the ZPWMA has registered about 1000 complaints so far this year about elephant destruction to crops. This is compared to about 1,500 in the entirety of 2020.

The country’s plans of utilizing the elephant population to make money are not limited to trophy hunting. in 2019, Zimbabwe was believed to have sold at least 30 young elephants to China as drought hit the country. Park officials were reported to have said proceeds will be used to dig more wells to save other wildlife.

That same year, more than 90 elephants were exported from Zimbabwe to China and Dubai, earning the southern African country $2.7 million.

Apart from Botswana, Zimbabwe holds the largest quantity of elephants in Africa. However, the former has also not been spared criticisms by conservationists who have questioned why Gaborone is allowing trophy hunting again after a five-year ban.

Sometimes, it takes starring in more than 30 movies, a dozen television series credits as well as a good amount of accolades and awards over three decades for you to say you have had enough of living up to the misspelling of your name.

Hollywood actress Thandie Newton now wants to be known professionally and publicly as Thandiwe, reverting to the Zimbabwean Nguni spelling and sense of her name. The 48-year-old was born to a white British father and a Black Zimbabwean mother who also happened to be a royal.

“That’s my name. It’s always been my name. I’m taking back what’s mine,” Newton said of Thandiwe to British Vogue. Thandiwe is pronounced tan-DEE-way and the actress wants her future film and TV credits to carry the name her mother bestowed on her.

Nguni is a collection of Bantu languages in southern Africa. This group of tongues includes Xhosa, Zulu, Ndebele and Swati. In these languages, Thandiwe means ‘beloved’.

In 1991 when she first starred in a film, Flirting, along with Nicole Kidman, Newton’s name was spelled as Thandie. It would seem that was not her choice but rather a mistake on the part of the producers. Intriguingly, she has also starred in another movie along with Oprah Winfrey and Danny Glover where she played the titular character, Beloved. That was a movie based on a Toni Morrison novel.

So why has it taken this long for a woman who has been known to global audiences for 30 years to rectify a mistake? Newton explained that she is taking advantage of the phase the film industry has evolved to where Black identity is now allowed to exist and is not repackaged for white consumption and satisfaction.

“The thing I’m most grateful for in our business right now is being in the company of others who truly see me. And to not be complicit in the objectification of black people as ‘others’, which is what happens when you’re the only one,” she continued in the interview.

Newton’s point taps into a long history of the harmful cinematic depiction of Black people, including the era of Blaxploitation, as well as the burden that often comes with possessing an African name in western countries.

It has been known for a while that Newton had African parentage but many thought she was Zambian. That is because until the early 2000s many of her biographies said she was born in Zambia. She however explained that she was born in London but grew up until age three in Zambia.

Finding an attorney to represent you in court can sometimes be hectic and costly, particularly among small business owners, where many cannot afford legal services. An estimated 80 percent of small businesses in Africa cannot afford a lawyer.

To break the barrier, a group of Zimbabwean entrepreneurs have created online legal services that allow you to get instant legal assistance from dozens of lawyers at a reduced rate through low cost add-on legal protection insurance products which are delivered and marketed through established insurance companies. LawBasket provides a new way of financing and delivering legal value to small businesses in Africa.

LawBasket also works with co-working spaces, tech accelerators and hubs across Africa to deliver free in-person and online law clinics using a network of lawyers who deliver practical legal content to help startups grow, it says on its website. Through its lawyer-on-demand platform, LawBasket also enables small businesses and startups to hire lawyers at a predictable price when they need them.

The company was founded in December 2018 by a group of entrepreneurs who had previously run Lexware Inc, a local tech company. The founding team has two lawyers, each with four years of experience in top Zimbabwean law firms, a finance person and a software engineer.

“LawBasket presents a credible alternative to traditional law firms, providing solutions to getting legal help for the ever-increasing crusade of small businesses and start-ups in Africa,” co-founder Nyasha Makamba told NewsDay. “Through LawBasket payments, the company also declutters the process of creating and managing bills for lawyers, as well as provide a simple portal to process multi-jurisdictional payments for legal services.”

Although LawBasket originally started in Zimbabwe, it is also available in 15 other African countries. In fact, the majority of the lawyers on the platform are from Nigeria, a development Makamba finds exciting. On its websites, LawBasket says its lawyers have expertise in areas like intellectual property, motor vehicle accidents and real estate.

“What we are doing is to create a virtual law firm which anyone can access from anywhere in the world through one platform,” the founders told Tech In Africa. “It’s a business that is exciting to scale, and our journey so far has shown that we can scale the business.”

The growth of the company has been organic, Makamba said in a 2019 interview, adding that they were exploring the option of further expanding their footprint though they would need some funding. “We have been talking to organizations across Africa and in the US, and we are confident that we will raise the funding we need to this on a larger and profitable scale,” Makamba told Tech In Africa.

In the 1960s, about 100 Shona missionaries arrived in Kenya from Zimbabwe and Zambia to establish the Gospel of God Church. The move was accepted and welcomed by Kenya’s first president, Jomo Kenyatta, but his successors have not done much to integrate the Shona.

The descendants of these missionaries are stateless in Kenya. Despite living and being born in the country, they are not recognized by the law and have been demonstrating in recent weeks to end decades of statelessness.

Most of the missionaries settled in the Kiambu area just on the outskirts of the Kenyan capital, Nairobi. Under the first post-independence constitution, people who are not of Kenyan descent cannot be registered as citizens.

Due to this, about 5,000 Shona people living in Kenya have been rendered stateless because of this outdated law and it is affecting their daily lives.

Nationality laws in most African states operate on the concept of jus soli, or ‘rights to soil’ and jus sanguinis, or ‘right of blood.’ With the jus soli concept, a person can obtain citizenship if they are born in a specific country while with jus sanguinis, a person gains citizenship by virtue of the origin of their parents.

The issue now is, countries that base their citizenship laws on ‘rights to soil’ hinder people who are away from their ‘historic’ homeland rights to citizenship of their ‘new’ country, and unfortunately, they are also denied nationality of their new country of residence because of laws based on ‘right of blood,” according to a report by DW.

Thus, the Shona, without proper recognition, are stateless, meaning, they cannot hold Kenyan citizenship or identify as Kenyan nationals. Their ties in Zimbabwe or Zambia have been severed as well, hence, they cannot identify with those countries as well.

In international law, a stateless person is someone who is “not considered as a national by any state under the operation of its law.”

“They are in limbo because they are not protected by the citizenship of their new country and at the same time they are not protected by their country of origin because they are no longer citizens,” Cristiano d’Orsi, a research fellow and lecturer in Refugee and Migration Law at the University of Johannesburg told DW.

The Shona in Kenya do not have access to identity cards, passports or driver’s license and are hindered from accessing good jobs because they cannot be employed formally. Subject to informal streams of income, they cannot also open bank accounts or buy houses. They sometimes cannot get legally married or even travel abroad.

Mike Moyo, a carpenter in nearby Kiambu County, has 10 children and 7 grandchildren who were all born in Kenya but are stateless and do not have birth certificates or identity cards. Moyo’s eldest son laments on the dreadful effect of their statelessness.

“We can’t enjoy services that nationals enjoy. We don’t have mobile banking and going to the hospital is also a challenge.

“Birth certificate are needed for class 8 registration for our children who are in primary school so sometimes we are forced to ‘buy’ parents so that our children can continue with education. We cannot even save money.”

In recent weeks, some hundreds of Shona people have been going on peaceful marches in the streets of Kenya to draw the attention of the government to their statelessness; they simply want to be recognized.

Although they have fully integrated with the Kenyan way of life, they will not truly belong unless they are recognized formally as citizens.

Members of the Kenyan Shona community have presented a petition to the Kiambu county calling for recognition. The Assembly’s speaker, Stephen Ndichu, told VOA that it’s now up to the government to process the petition as they have handed it over for fast track processing.

There have been efforts by the Kenyan government to resolve the statelessness of the Shona people and in August 2019, 600 citizenships were offered to some of them although there is more work to be done. Some 2,000 people have applied for birth certificates recently and they are yet to be processed.

According to a UNHCR report, there are about 19,000 stateless people in Kenya and approximately 12 million in the world of which 715,000 are in Africa. Statelessness is seen as a major problem in Africa, however, there are ongoing works to tackle the issue across the continent by individual governments and the African Union.

Mutare, Zimbabwe — Women's rights campaigners say new law will help ensure girls have equal rights to an education

Zimbabwe has made it illegal for schools to expel pupils who get pregnant, a measure women's rights campaigners said would help tackle gender inequality in the classroom and stop many girls from dropping out of school.

A legal amendment announced last week seeks to reinforce a 1999 guideline that was patchily implemented, and comes as school closures due to coronavirus raise fears of a rise in sexual abuse and unwanted pregnancies.

Many parents of pregnant girls, or the girls themselves, decide to quit schooling due to the pregnancy, and schools do not always do enough to encourage them to stay, officials say.

"I'm expecting every parent and guardian and everyone else to understand that every child must be assisted by all of us to go to school," Cain Mathema, the education minister in charge of schools, told the Thomson Reuters Foundation on Monday.

"Every child whether boy or girl... has a right to go to school in Zimbabwe," he said.

In 2018, 12.5% of the country's roughly 57,500 school dropouts stopped attending classes due to pregnancy or marriage reasons - almost all of them girls, according to Education Ministry statistics.

Priscilla Misihairwabwi-Mushonga, an opposition lawmaker who chairs a parliamentary education committee, said making the previous guidelines into a law with possible sanctions would make the rules more effective and address gender disparities.

"In circumstances where the pregnancy was a result of kids of the same age, the boy would not be necessarily expelled from school," she said.

"It was also a double tragedy for the girl... as in most circumstances, it was not a consensual sex but some sort of abuse by some predator older than her. So, she has been traumatised and raped then she is further traumatised by being kicked out of school."

Nyaradzo Mashayamombe, founding director of advocacy group Tag a Life International and leader of a consortium of organizations that pushed for the law, said she feared lockdown measures may have caused a spike in unwanted teen pregnancies.

"We are in a dangerous time where children have been out of school for a long time. Most of them are not even attending radio and television lessons," she said, calling for the government to ensure the new law is enforced.

Pregnancy is just one of the reasons that girls in Zimbabwe could fail to return to classes after coronavirus restrictions are lifted, said Sibusisiwe Ndlovu, communications specialist at Plan International Zimbabwe.

Poverty and early marriage will also stop some from resuming their studies, she said, welcoming the new legislation as a step in the right direction.

"This amendment is crucial in fulfilling the access to education right for all children - especially girls," Ndlovu said.

However, campaigners in the southern African country say girls will still need extra support to continue with their studies even if they keep attending classes while pregnant.

"Social support and financial resources are required for girls to fully utilise this window of opportunity," said Faith Nkala, national director of education nonprofit CAMFED Zimbabwe.

"Especially girls from marginalised families, who will need the additional support to remain in school, and to come back after giving birth."

A Zimbabwean forward has sealed a deal with a South African club just three days after advertising his services on social media.

A video of match highlights posted by Nyoni on Twitter
shows his pace and finishing skills, and says, "Kindly like and retweet. Maybe I can get a job."

The post attracted attention on the continent and beyond.

"Cape Umoya already had an interest in me, but the Tweet cemented the interest and made other clubs as far as Egypt wanting my signature, as well as some South African PSL teams," Nyoni told BBC Sport Africa.

"The Tweet also gave me football contacts as far away as Europe, but the interests came after I had then already agreed terms with Cape Umoya.

"The other clubs asked why I didn't wait for them, but loyalty and honesty are among my top priorities, so I finished the deal with them."

Nyoni completed a degree in marketing in 2016 when he was playing for Highlanders in Zimbabwe, and is finding that his qualification is useful to him as a footballer.

"With my degree I understand how social media can help someone to grow. I wanted to market my brand and create awareness of what I can do.

"I have a manager but I did this as my own initiative - as a player, as a brand, you have to take yourself out there, and after playing football it will benefit you, even if you want to go into football administration."