And Our Story Of The Year Is…

In a year in which a lot and nothing actually happened it was always going to be difficult to pick out standout story of the year.

Think of the crazy things that have happened this calendar year. The Prime Minister got married then unmarried and then married again thanks to that girl called Locardia. There were Gokwe goblins stealing panties. Makandiwa had a judgement night. TB Joshua ‘killed’ Bingu Wa Mtharika. Roki and Maneta Mazanhi got kicked out of Big Brother. President Robert Mugabe’s health was up for debate. Tinopona Katsande got beaten up. Julius Malema was expelled from ANC. Miners were killed in Marikana. Obama got re-elected. Lance Armstrong became a disgrace. The ‘moon-walking’ Armstrong died. Andy Brown died. So did Adam Ndlovu.

When you think of it, nothing much happened to be honest. It seems like a lot but nothing happened.

If we are to go by numbers our top 7 most read stories this year were

However the bigger story was not actually a story we actually we wrote. Our story of the year is the increase in news content providers in Zimbabwe on the Internet. Before stories about Zimbabwe used break on BBC and filter their way back here but this year saw Zimbabwe begin to take ownership of its own story-telling. Take the Tsvangirai wedding for example. While international papers were still stuck on the news from the night before, local content providers were giving an almost blow-by-blow coverage of what was going on.

In an almost organic way, we are beginning to tell our own stories. Yes, there have been some errors but this happens in the game to the best of the lot. The fact of the matter is that, now, more than ever, we now tell our own stories. We provide our own analysis. We create our own anger.