New twists

by Angus Shaw · 24 October 2025

Nowadays few will remember the dance craze made popular by Chubby Checker based on moves likened to drying one’s back with a bath towel and squirming the feet on errant ants on the floor.

Yes, the new twists in life demand more than a bathroom jiggle and squiggle.

Consider this, for example. Cyber dating sites to match hopeful partners report Artificial Intelligence jives up personal profiles so that Joe Bloggs turns out to be a weak and boring old twat at the first meeting, not the prince charming AI made him out to be.

Remember the first Terminator film in 1984 in which Arnie Schwarzenegger terminates himself and computer control of civilisation?

Who said on TV “I work my ass off to make our country great”? A whole lot of twisting is going on over there – and in such unpresidential language. No matter. It’s more twist and more shout on attempted ceasefires, tariff wars and the Epstein files..

In this neck of the woods, our leader, once an avowed protector of the constitution, has changed his tune and backed an extension of his time at the top beyond the two 5-year terms stipulated in the constitution.

Opponents of this called for mass protests billed as the Million Man March onto the streets. A mere couple of dozen came for it and were promptly arrested. There seems no longer to be any appetite for struggles against injustice.

Meanwhile, there’s a pernicious Game of Thrones going on within Zimbabwe’s ruling party itself. Of the powerful factions, who will come out on top of the heap in the end? At one meeting 30 brand new cars were given out to loyalists. The dishing out of luxury cars for the favoured is common at a time most people go hungry.

The party spent an estimated US$2 million on its annual conference this month. One heavyweight speaker warned against the xenophobia he blamed on critics of the growing presence of Chinese nationals in the country and their destruction of the environment through reckless mining of gold, lithium and other valuable resources. Trees are disappearing fast, taking away shade for rural community meetings.

Here’s the new twist on foreign occupation. It is estimated there are some 300,000 Chinese here, more than the entire white colonial population pre-independence in 1980.

Four Chinese arrested with cocaine were fined US$ 150 each, given bail and later deported. Then a small-time local Rastafarian cannabis dealer gets three years in jail.

Enter Robert Mugabe Jnr, 33, son of the late first president, driving the wrong way up a one-way street. He is caught with weed and Ecstasy in his car. Was he dangerously stoned? 300 bucks for bail.

Too often there is what ethical anglers would call ‘catch and release,’ i.e. public figures, big fish, are let go to continue swimming in their criminal endeavours.

In my hood, profiteering is in plain sight. Old residences are being torn down to make way for exclusive town houses and condominiums. It is hardly the new Eldorado as some think of it, and the old saying comes to mind when I drive past this on the side of the road: SHIT A BRICK!!!