They are Gen-Z Black South Africans, highly educated, raised in typical “Christian homes,” but now flipping the script. Via aggressive use of Instagram, Twitter and YouTube, they’re re-inventing themselves as entrepreneurial “Afro-spiritualist” healers, fortune readers or dream interpreters. It’s all…
Digital e-funerals split church emotions as migration redraws Africa’s bereavement norms
Pastor Tonderai Hlahla nurses “a small grudge, sort of,” he says. ‘”My former congregants are passing on 7,600 miles overseas in England and get buried there. I, their mentor, I only get to watch their funerals on WhatsApp video; it…
Pastors dabble in brewing and mining to survive Zimbabwe’s burning economy
Father Chukucha cuts a lone figure as he circles the withering garden of his parish in Mberengwa, one of the poorest districts of the middle of Zimbabwe. While 250 miles away in another district, Pastor Noel Fengu, a Baptist minister,…
In Zimbabwe, churches are among the few places where the poor can access Wi-Fi
In a sprawling township in Mutare, a border city in Zimbabwe, Laurence Moyo, 24, spends five hours each day resting his back on the wall of a gigantic church building that belongs to the United Baptist Church. He grasps a…
In water-scarce Zimbabwe, free Muslim water wells are the ‘kiss of life’
Decades of water corruption, mismanagement and climate change mean Harare, the capital of Zimbabwe, is one of Africa’s thirstiest cities. In some neighborhoods, Muslim families, building on the altruism of their faith, are erecting free, clean public water wells on…