Africa Is a Country | 17.02.2026 17:30
This essay promises two things: crankiness and an absurd story. The first I cannot avoid, and the second I could, but I am drawn to this narrative arc. The story goes like this: Terence O. Ranger, the historian of all things Zimbabwe, died in 2015. Separately, sometime in the early 2000s, as Zimbabwe entered its ruinous era of currency collapse and social chaos, a species of raptor began to disappear across Zimbabwe. Again, separately, the revolutionary spirit that brought Zimbabweans to the brink of decolonization in 1980 seemed to fade. And, again, entirely separately, international investors siphoned profit out of Zimbabwe’s red earth. This narrative is true in spirit alone.
