We Need A New Story
Guest Post
On a recent trip to Ghana, while visiting the lush, undulating hills of the Volta Region, I found myself in conversation with a local man. We had been talking for just a few minutes when he asked me where I was from. I answered with pride, “Zimbabwe.” His eyes lit up with recognition, but not the kind I’d hoped for.
“Oh, Mugabe!” he exclaimed, nodding as if that name alone summed up our entire country, our entire history.
I smiled politely, but inside, I sighed.
Turns out, for many people outside Zimbabwe, especially those with even a passing familiarity with African politics, Mugabe is the name that defines the nation. To them, Zimbabwe is not a place of artists, thinkers, or innovators. It is a place of political infamy. A nation frozen in the amber of a long-deposed leader’s legacy. For others, the name evokes something even less flattering: trillion-dollar bank notes, and the surreal spectacle of 2008 hyperinflation. Some people I’ve met didn’t even know Mugabe had died. To them, Zimbabwe remains trapped in a time capsule, one sealed shut with his name.
It’s a strange thing, to carry a passport that feels like a historical footnote. To know that your country, with all its complexity and potential, has been reduced to a symbol of excess, of failure, of defiance, depending on who you ask. But rarely of hope.
And it was in Ghana, of all places, that I began to feel the full weight of this narrative fatigue. Ghana, a country that itself has undergone massive transformation since the days of Kwame Nkrumah, now pulses with a confidence and cultural pride that is infectious. It reminded me that stories can change. That nations can be reimagined.
I had another moment of recognition, this time with a young writer from Togo. I admitted, somewhat sheepishly, that I didn’t know much about her country. In fact, I told her, the only Togolese person I could name off the top of my head was the footballer, Emmanuel Adebayor.
She laughed. “That’s what most people say,” she replied. “He’s our most famous export.”
It was a moment of shared honesty. But it also made something click. Adebayor had, for better or worse, become a symbol. He had given Togo a recognisable face. And suddenly I wondered: who is our Adebayor?
Who is that one figure, that story, that cultural moment, that allows people to see Zimbabwe as something other than the sum of its political tragedies?
We need a new story.
Not because we must forget the past, but because we cannot live forever under its shadow. Mugabe was a towering figure, sure, but he is not all that Zimbabwe was, or is, or will be. There are stories unfolding here every day that speak to resilience, to ingenuity, to beauty.
And yet, globally, we’re still known for a man who no longer walks among us.
This is not a call to erase history, but to add to it. To complicate it. To expand what Zimbabwe means in the global imagination. To replace pity with curiosity. To shift from notoriety to nuance.
What will it take? Perhaps it will be a novelist whose words travel far beyond our borders. Or a tech innovator who disrupts old systems with new tools. Or a filmmaker who captures our contradictions on screen. Or even a footballer who scores goals and makes headlines.
But it will certainly take storytellers.
Because stories shape perception, and perception shapes possibility. If we want the world to see us differently, we must first see ourselves differently. We must write, paint, build, and dream our way into a new narrative. One that doesn’t begin and end with Mugabe but opens wide to everything else we are.
So the next time someone hears “Zimbabwe,” maybe, just maybe, they’ll say something else.
And maybe it will be something true.
About Author
Simbarashe Steyn Kundizeza is a Zimbabwean thriller writer and novelist based in Harare. His debut novel manuscript, titled “Freelance,” won the Island Prize for Debut African Fiction in 2024. A finalist in the 2018 Africa Book Club Short Story Competition, his work has been featured in the Wrong Patient and Other Stories from Africa anthology, and Transition Magazine Issue 131.
Kundizeza crafts gripping stories that delve into the themes of power, corruption, and resilience in the African context.
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