The "New Dawn" is a Stained Window: One Night in a Masvingo Beerhall

​There is a specific kind of heavy silence you only find in the corners of a loud Zimbabwean beerhall. It’s tucked away behind the rowdy tables, just past the sticky counters where the fluorescent lights buzz like a trapped hornet.

​In this little nook in Masvingo, the air is thick—a mix of antiseptic from the hospital nearby, the sharp tang of sweat, and the weight of secrets held by men who have survived too many "restorations."

​While the state radio blares propaganda from the main bar and Macheso’s Museve pulses through the floorboards, you hear the real stories. These aren't the rehearsed lines from the evening news; this is the talk that happens when the guard is down.

​I was sitting there recently, watching the smoke swirl and listening to a conversation between two men:

​Nico: (earnest) Joel, what if the truth is just hidden from the top? What if they are just fed a neat package by those around them?

​Joel Samo: (smirking) Wangu, what truth? The people’s truth, or the narrative they sell for the cameras?

​Nico: But that township was spotless. Fresh paint, smiling faces... it looked reborn overnight.

​Joel Samo: (laughs) Selective vision, wangu. You take one clean street, rehearse some gratitude, and you call it a triumph. They want change, sure—but they only see the world through a stained window their people have set up for them.

​Nico: (quiet) And when the cameras leave? The bed bugs don't just vanish, zvako.

​Joel Samo: The bed bugs laugh when the cameras go, wangu.

​That is the pulse of 2025. We are living in a world of window dressing, scrubbing the porch while the foundation rots beneath us. In my latest work, The Bar, I wanted to get close to that friction—the gap between the speeches on the radio and the lives we lead under the jacarandas and the dim beerhall lights.

​In Zimbabwe, the walls don’t just have ears; they have long memories.