By Robyn Dixon, Los Angeles Times

JOHANNESBURG, SOUTH AFRICA - The blogger calls himself a “fat white man” and jokes about the right way to approach a cordon of Zimbabwean riot police: Don’t wear an opposition T-shirt, or ask for the results of the recent one-man presidential runoff. Instead, greet them with a breezy “Good morning! How are you, sirs?” (more…)

As the blogging phenomenon rips across the global web, a Zimbabwean online media group has set up a new blog that is set to add a whole new dimension to blogging in Zimbabwe.

The blog- www.zimbablog.com, will bring together thousands of Zimbabwean bloggers around the world and enable them to share their experiences, opinions and ideas on a single platform. (more…)

NewZimbabwe.com has won two awards for Best Website and Best News Service at the inaugural ZimAwards held in Coventry over the weekend.

Left: NewZimbabwe.com editor Mduduzi Mathuthu

New Zimbabwe Media Group CEO Jeff Madzingo was on hand to receive the awards.
“This is for our readers who make it so worthwhile to expend effort trying to deliver the Zimbabwean story to every household around the world,” Madzingo said. (more…)

Manufacturing in Zimbabwe is not dead. For Zimbabweans whose supermarket shelves bear no local goods at all, this is almost a blasphemous statement.

Ok, perhaps it is very nearly dead, but you won’t see many of the goods produced here sold locally.

They are being exported to South Africa, Botswana, Malawi, Zambia and further afield to countries across the oceans. That is the only way these businesses can make a profit- export and get paid in US dollars. But that’s not the point I want to make… (more…)

When I first met Rosinah Hove, in 2006, she struck me with her demure brand of confidence and sharp wit. She had just been appointed to the post of Finance Director at Celsys Limited, one of two listed technology counters on the Zimbabwe Stock Exchange, and she discussed this issue with me in a matter-of-fact manner, as if it was one of those things that just happen in life.

A few weeks ago she was sitting next to Condoleezza Rice and I can picture her seated there unfettered by the whole scenario, chatting about this and that with the most powerful woman in the World. (more…)

They have left Zimbabwe. Friends, family members and people I have worked with.

Left: Zimbabwean Facebookers have set up sixteen Kirsty Coventry fan groups.

Over the last ten years I have been to the airport many heartbreaking times to say good bye to them as they jetted off to destinations all over the world. Then there are those who I never said good bye to. Those who just faded into the crowd- never to be seen again- until I signed up to Facebook and started meeting them all again, one by one. (more…)

We survey the new landscape of online self-publishing that has taken Zimbabwe by storm.

When I was a kid growing up in Bulawayo I woke up one morning to find that the Sunday News- that City’s biggest Sunday newspaper at the time- had published one of the short stories I had submitted to them. I was thrilled.

That was in 1995 and I was in Upper 6 then. As any writer will testify, to find an outlet for one’s work is an ultimate aspiration.

In a time when the printed word was, well, the printed word- it was exhilarating to get printed- and I suppose, thirteen years later, in 2008, it still is. (more…)