Petina Gappah

Zimbabwe is an unusual case study in African colonialism in that it was invaded by a private company under Royal Charter. ”

Only al-Jazeera is allowed to report from Zimbabwe, but it is unwatchable. Their Zimbabwean reporter Supa Mandiwanzira was one of Zanu-PF's praise-singers at the reviled Zimbabwe Broadcasting Corporation. ”

People always ask me how I manage to find humor in so much bleakness. I think this is almost a necessary skill to have. ”

These are the kinds of names that Zimbabweans like: names that have positive qualities. Like, Praise is a very popular name; Loveness is a very popular name. ”

I always say to people that Zimbabweans are the funniest people in Africa; we even laugh at funerals. And it's true. I mean, there are so many jokes about funerals. There are so many jokes about AIDS. We find ways of coping with pain by laughing at it and by laughing at ourselves. ”

My grandfather was a polygamous man, and he had two wives, and between him and his two wives, we are about 200 or so in our family. ”

You could have names like Hatred; you could have names that mean something like Suffering or Poverty. So names are not just names: names have real meaning, and they tend to tell the world about the circumstances of your parents at the time that you were born. ”

The struggle for Zimbabwe lit up the imagination of people around the world. In London, New York, Accra and Lagos, bell-bottomed men and women with big hair and towering platform shoes sang the dream of Zimbabwe in the words of the eponymous song by Bob Marley: Every man has the right to decide his own destiny. ”