04/07/2026
The voice is the president office and the music can used as a unifier. During war and gala fighters used music often for spiritual connection.
Zimbabwean presidential spokesperson George Charamba has rejected calls to stop South African artists from performing in Zimbabwe, arguing that musicians should not be subjected to collective punishment over Afrophobic attacks and threats in South Africa.
Writing on X under the Jamwanda account, Charamba said: “We should never persecute artists.” He made the remarks in response to a growing debate in Zimbabwe over whether South African performers should be allowed on local stages while Zimbabweans in South Africa face anti-migrant hostility.
Charamba said that, while following what he called instances of Afrophobia in South Africa, he had noticed that many South Africans from Limpopo Province had also been targeted. He described Limpopo as a province contiguous to Zimbabwe and Mozambique and linked it culturally to the Mapungubwe monuments, which he described as “sister” to the Great Zimbabwe monuments.
He said people from Limpopo were “often” mistaken for Zimbabweans and questioned whether it was fair to subject them, including their “creative children”, to what he called “double victimisation”.
“I think the girl must be allowed to perform,” Charamba wrote, adding that she should be received “as one of our own.”
The intervention places Charamba on the opposite side of calls by some Zimbabwean voices for South African artists to be boycotted or removed from Zimbabwean events.
The backlash against South African performers has unfolded against a wider regional crisis over anti-migrant mobilisation in South Africa. Reuters reported that anti-immigrant protesters marched across South African cities on June 30 after a deadline set by an anti-migrant movement for undocumented migrants to leave the country, with thousands of foreign nationals having already fled and at least four people killed in related unrest.
Reuters later reported that South African police had arrested more than 900 people during the nationwide protests, which authorities said were mostly peaceful but in some places turned violent, with shops looted and police intervention required. - Zimbo LIVE Harare
