This year we are celebrating 10 years since the inception of the POVO journal, and we have decided to kick it up a notch. As we contemplated 10 years of building this movement, the big question was if you want to honour ten years of putting something together, where exactly do you start? First things first, tens years is a big thing even though in retrospect, it appears like a flash. A lot has happened indeed. Too much in fact.
2013 was a quiet year for POVO with no partnerships. Our expenses for the year were $3,230 which included, T shirt production, covering HIFA, Update of the website, Production of Hardcopy Journals. The election played a role to a certain extent and a nation stood still in anticipation. Elections have passed and life goes on. Initially for the journal we had targeted 40 pages but because of overwhelming response we bumped it up to 48 pages! Unfortunately printing hard copies is still a challenge hence we are publishing online.
The art form that has grown in Zimbabwe while many others have suffered has been poetry and spoken word which actually, the spoken word movement did not really exist here until the early 2000s. And our idea is it not just being about poetry and not just about hip hop but about all facets of urban culture that are progressive. So that’s why you will see we've got, we will have the social media reporting going on, tweeting, blogging about the festival in real time.
Despite this year’s HIFA theme being titled engage, nothing could be further from the stated objective. The low audience turnout and entertainers didn’t help matters. The billed acts were barely known in Zimbabwe. However, with POVO’s debut at HIFA, the intention was to make our stand as engaging as possible. The main purpose of the stand was to market the POVO brand, generate traffic to the website, and encourage more people to contribute to it. The T-shirts on sale generated a lot of interest and rave reviews from both local and international visitors to the stand.
We had the privelege of talking to Tinotenda Mawoyo, Zimbabwe crickets' opening batsmen. he agreed to answer question from fans from the Cricket Zimbabwe Fan page, Zimbabwe Cricket Forums and Twitter.
Batting with Tinotenda Mawoyo
