Zimbabwe International Carnival 2013

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The Zimbabwe Tourism Authority hosted the Zimbabwe International Carnival that was supposed to run from the May 21-26 2013 but ended up being Harare's biggest ever street procession.

For a first time event I think the Zimbabwe Tourism Authority (ZTA) was rather rash in organising what was supposed to be one of Zimbabwe's mega-events hosted to increase tourism arrivals to the "World of Wonders."

Coordination of the many proposed events that were supposed to make the carnival week fell apart towards the dates of the Carnival resulting in so many advertised participants not attending. This development left ZTA with no choice but to ride on existing Harare activities resulting in a landslide decrease in the number of attends.

Events such as the Mbira Night were hosted at the Book Cafe, which is a considerably small venue hosting less that 200 people comfortably. Reggae night was moved to Red Fox Hotel, one venue that has asserted itself strongly in the reggae and dancehall genres and has created a loyal patronage that are willing to pay as much as US$15 for their favourite performers considering that many other local artist charge about US$5 for their acts.

However, despite grabbing too big a pie ZTA pulled an interesting crowd on the procession Saturday. I spoke to Fungai Tichawangana, and in fact ended up spending the afternoon together and we were in consensus that overall the Zimbabwe Carnival Procession was a success.


Harare has not never in a long time been that excited about any event especially it being impromptu and spontaneous for most Hararians as the pre-carnival media coverage was not the best as I perceive most journalists did not really know what to write about.


Fungai was without a doubt super excited and could not stop clicking his camera capturing carnival moments.
 "I am surprised at how this march has turned out to be this huge."

We had freshly cooked sadza with meat at the Pakare Paye kitchen and toured the Social and Cultural Fair which sadly was not well attended not even on the Saturday when more than 10 000 people marched or followed the carnival procession to the Exhibition Park.


Later in the afternoon the musical gala kicked off in the Glamis Arena with some very interesting traditional dance troupe performances. Early in the evening I was especially ticked by how the arrival of Bev - (deemed infamous by most women and christians) - stirred the audience from the stage to crowd the truck that was supposed to be her carnival float. Seeing the crowd she obviously did a tease show and sent most young men wild obviously to the murmurs and resentment of many women.

I waited a little while longer but had to leave because the gala line up turned out be just like most Zimbabwean galas.


We are optimistic that since the Zimbabwe International Carnival has been penned to be an annual event, next year it actually manages to attract "international" participants and audience. Moreover, I think the carnival should be more participant inclusive. ZTA has to find means to turn all the spectators to participants.

Maybe as indicated 2014 we may have more fun in Bulawayo if the carnival is confirmed to be there.

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