Animal Farm

By Youngerson Matete.  Introduction: The Legacy of June 16, 1976 On June 16 every year, Africa commemorates the Day of the African Child. A solemn occasion born from the blood-soaked streets of Soweto in 1976. On that day, thousands of Black students in apartheid South Africa took to the streets to protest against the imposition of Afrikaans as the medium of instruction in schools. A policy that symbolized the broader, systemic oppression of Black lives under apartheid. The apartheid regime responded with brutal force, killing hundreds of young students, some as young as 12 years old. Among them was 13-year-old Hector Pieterson, whose lifeless body, captured in a harrowing photograph, became a global symbol of youth resistance. The Soweto Uprising was more than a protest against language policy; it was a radical defiance of a racist system by the youngest members of society. Today’s youth in Africa, however, face a different yet equally insidious enemy. The status quo of post-colo...

By Youngerson Matete Since the military coup in November 2017 that ousted long-time ruler Robert Mugabe and brought Emmerson Mnangagwa to power, Zimbabwe has witnessed the rapid rise of a new black business elite. This elite has enriched itself through corrupt state tenders, patronage networks, and the capture of key economic sectors. This class has amassed vast illicit wealth not through innovation or entrepreneurship, but by parasitically extracting from the state through its network with the ruling elite. Operating in the shadows of formal governance, they have become an alternate power center - shadow sovereigns - who now rival the military in influence and pose an existential threat to Zimbabwe’s democratic future. Far from being passive beneficiaries of state largesse, this group has actively entrenched itself within the ruling ZANU-PF party and government structures.  Owing to each other’s survival the ruling party ZANU-PF and this new business elite have all the incentives...