Chimurenga—which means “struggle for freedom” in the Zimbabwean Shona language—is a project-based mutable object, print magazine, workspace, and platform for editorial and curatorial activities. Founded by Ntone Edjabe in 2002, it provides an innovative platform for free ideas and political reflection by Africans about Africa. Specific issue titles of the Chimurenga magazine have included Music Is The Weapon; Futbol, Politricks and Ostentatious Cripples; Black Gays and Mugabes; Dr Satan’s Echo Chamber (a double issue on African science fiction); The Curriculum Is Everything; and The Chimurenga Chronic. This last was originally intended as a one-off edition of an imaginary newspaper; since 2013, Chimurenga has been publishing the Chronic as a quarterly gazette.
Ntone Edjabe was born in 1970 in Douala, Cameroon. He moved to Cape Town in 1993, where he currently lives and works as a journalist, writer, DJ, and basketball coach. In 1997, Edjabe cofounded and managed the Pan African Market, where Chimurenga’s public space is located, and in 2002 he launched Chimurenga to stimulate original perspectives on the contemporary African experience. In 2009, he was the Massachusetts Institute of Technology Abramowitz Artist in Residence, and in 2011, with the Chimurenga platform, he won the Principal Award of the Prince Claus Awards, which honors outstanding achievement in culture and development. With Neo Muyanga in 2008, he created the Pan African Space Station (PASS) as a musical intervention in venues across Cape Town.
