Reports of my death are greatly exaggerated

I am sorry to start this off with a fake Mark Twain quote. I have always found it funny. Anyway.

I know I have been quiet, and my silence is not worthy of a blogger whose blog was nominated for a blogging prize at last year’s Shoko Festival.

I have been working on a couple of big projects, not least of which has been trying to raise CONSUMERIZIM from the dead and move it forward.

To these ends, I have partnered with fledgling newspaper Harare News to contribute to their issues. I was also interviewed by editor Harry Davies.

Joe Ruzvidzo is better known as Joe Black from Twitter (@joeblackzw) – a platform whereon he is infamous for his hard-hitting commentary on the quality of services from network providers, to banks, to media and more. Indeed, evenHarare News has not been spared his perfectionist wrath. But Joe is not just a noisemaker – he cares deeply about quality and delivery, and so in 2010 launched www.consumerizim.com– a platform for Zimbabweans to share their experiences as consumers, good and bad.

‘Consumerizim’ – clever name. What’s the idea?

Funny story, that. At first iteration, I was so very angry about the change situation in shops, so I created a Facebook page called “Citizen Opposing Change-Keeping Supermarkets”. Yes, that says COCKS. As the idea of “consumers biting back” evolved, I had always been a fan of The Consumerist blog and really the idea of US having a say in what service we get. So the idea for the site was about consumers speaking candidly to business or government or service providers, so it was Candid Consumerism. Changing “ism” to “iZIM” was a natural step, then last year I removed the candid, so it’s just Consumerizim now.

Read the full article here.

I’ve also been readying a few short stories for publication, and dealing with having to shelve my novel (long fecking story) just for the moment.

But there is a lot of exciting stuff in the works, and I’ll be happy to announce it all here.

Stay tuned.