Opinion: Why I Stopped Calling Bulawayo “Sleepy”

For years I joined in the lazy joke. “Bulawayo is sleepy. Things move slowly here. The pace is gentle.” I said it on radio. I wrote it in business columns. I now believe I was wrong.

What outsiders read as sleepiness is, on closer inspection, patience. It is the discipline of a city that has watched economic plans come and go and has learned not to spend its energy on each new fashion. It is the calm of a place that knows what it is.

Sleepiness implies nothing is happening. But quietly, in workshops, kitchens, churches and informal classrooms, an enormous amount of work is being done. It is just done without fanfare.

Patience is not the same as resignation. It is selectivity. Bulawayo knows what to bet on. We should stop apologising for that, and start learning from it.