Kaziwai News & Blog

Most of us have been priced out of the FIFA 2026 events; what with the dynamic ticket pricing and re-sales, prohibitively costly travel; we’re having to make do with watching the beautiful game at the sports bar. Which is exactly what I did this Saturday at 6PM Eastern Time.

Walking into the sports bar, there was nothing apparently unusual in the atmosphere. No group of fans hooked onto some huge life-sized screen. No fan fare concerning the FIFA World Cup 2026. No sports regalia. Just several screens showing baseball, basketball and the usual USA sports catalog. In panic I walked around searching for a lucky screen showing the World Cup.

Finally, I got lucky! At the corner of one of the bars, a screen showing the World Cup, hurray!! But my bar ‘neighbors’ did not seem interested. The one guy and his lady contemplating the game at the corner of his eye immediately stood up with his partner and moved to the darts section instead.

I had already lost 7 minutes into the game. The players were going through their paces. From what I could see through the flat screen TV, the stadium was looking 80% plus yellow – Brazil fans wearing their teams colors. A few sections showed red – for Morocco. I think I spotted the NYC Mayor, Zohrani Mamdani in RED.

Then Morocco scored. Even from the TV screen I could feel the silence in the stadium. Brazil, the World favorites were down 0-1 in favor of Morocco; thanks to a 21-minute chance conversion by Moroccan front-man striker I. Saibari. However this goal lead was not to be sustained for long.

When Vini Junior replied with a clinical finish on minute 32 I jumped off my seat and screamed. Fortunately I was not the only mad man in the bar. Apparently, something sparked in the darts section as I heard some shouts from there as well. I mistakenly thought those guys were just playing darts: but a soccer screen had surfaced I their area. I noticed that some eyes in the bar seemed distantly interested, like peeping Toms who don’t want the world to know they’re watching.

Then one gentleman of Italian descent approached my now empty side of the bar and sat besides me. Since there wasn’t any further shift in the scoreline, he managed to steal some conversation with me, whilst angling some activity on his smart phone. This guy gave an analytical explanation of the subdued atmosphere in the bar. Football (Soccer) was not his favorite sport, although he was a general lover of all sports. He started to compare all American sports to soccer. How the soccer players tended to feign injury in the dying minutes of the game, or when the going got tough, is what in his view turned off American fans. Soccer was the game US people kind of started with growing up until they logically moved on to basketball, baseball or American football.

By this time another fella had showed up in our area, sporting a Laker’s sleeveless T-shirt; courtesy of the sweltering summer heat. The bartender lady offered him another screen for basketball. He was rooting for the Knicks in the Knicks-Spurs NBA final. He said since the NBA game was not on yet, he’d ‘settle’ for the soccer ‘next door’. He was also fiddling something on his phone meanwhile, somewhat unperturbed by the proceedings between the yellow versus red.

Eventually the game ended 1-1, much to the relief of both the Brazil and Morocco fans, I guess!? It was time for me to vacate, a precaution in case I make an uneducated comment about things that should not be spoken concerning other sports that other folks love.

A tale of the complexities of navigating an intricate co-existence between man, animal and modern nature. In this encounter, creation converges to a place of survival of the fittest. Nature collides with modernity in a small-town community of North America.

A family of five migrates cross-country, Southward bound. Their journey kicks off on a New Year's eve at sunset. It is the beginning of a cold Winter. Having come straight from big city life, an abandoned and somewhat dilapidated homestead becomes the family's 'new' home: a new of a kind. Right from the start, drama awaits them, lurking on route to their destination. They race through the night; an enthralled escapade from the hustle and bustle of big-city lifestyle.

Their relocation bid is a 'just-in-time' antidote remediating the chaos of an embattled major metropolis. The story setting is a time when the nation is besieged by a mysterious plague. A Great Pandemic is wrecking havoc across the globe, terrifying the landmass and prompting an exodus of the people en-masse. As life unraveled in the small town, there were unexpected encounters between the elements.

Cohabitation with self-determined and arrogant creatures in a kind of 'small-town zoo' was anything but what the escapees yearned for. The Blake family took leave of the inner city hoping to exorcise themselves of their 'demons'. But those invisible spirits seemed to linger on everywhere, bedeviling their every attempt, if they dared to find tranquility.

Decipher the code in the text, mint out your own interpretation and find your own narrative of the story that is to your heart's content.

Because, in the mind of the author : a stretch of imagination or the lack thereof, is the aberration separating possibilities from reality.

This book was written by Sokonzapi Mashava during the years 2022 to 2023 as a tribute to all those people fighting for a better life for themselves and their family. The story is ‘sculpted’ artistically by the author as a true testament to his ‘masonry’ expertise. The story is a ‘spiced up’ version of the author’s real experiences moving to a new neighborhood in Central New York from Boston, Massachusetts. For real, for real - including Mark the Chuck. There is a touch of enlightened humor which is a reflection on the author’s innermost emotions at particular moments in his exploration of new horizons.

Artificial Intelligence, Industrial Automation and Robotics Technologies are impacting the workplace in a way never seen before. Big technology firms such as the social media giants, car production plants, food and retail chains are repositioning their offerings in light of the new technology capabilities. They are re-adjusting their labor count and tightening the hiring methods.

What is very clear is that no industry has completely figured out how to balance new technologies against their human resources requirements. There is a struggle to identify industrial use cases for AI technologies and the digital revolution.

As the technology evolves so does the functional roles of workers in the workplace. Behind this technological disruption is data sourced in the marketplace. Machine Learning is the process of analyzing data and coming up with algorithms and models that give insights usable in commercial applications.

Take the case of a farmer who wants to control pests at his farm. Traditionally, the farmer would have to move around their field, do manual inspections on the land and crop and provide an assessment of the situation. Interventions involved workers moving around the field spraying pesticides. Such chores are now being replaced with drones equipped with powerful cameras. These machines can conduct an aerial survey of the land much faster and more effectively than what humans could achieve. Based on the data the same drones can be used for applying pesticides. All of this activity is done remotely. The engine powering these drones is controlled by software algorithms driven by AI technology.

In very much the same way, every aspect of work and lifestyle is not spared the changes of this new technology. Homes become automated with AI driven intelligence. Call centers harness robotic agents for handling a large proportion of customer calls, only escalating the few that might otherwise require a human response. Drones are being used for fast foods takeouts delivery. Doctors are using robotic precision in complex surgery procedure. Some people are even preferring robotic pets for companionship. There is no limit to what this technology can do.

This begs the question: what role are humans going to have in the future of work? What will be the new AI affected job titles? Will AI controlled machines completely replace the human workforce? If people loose their jobs and income due to the new technology revolution, how is the economy going to function? If people do not have money, who is going to buy the products produced by these fully autonomous industries?

To me this points to an obvious shift in the way we work. In the industrial food chain, producers need consumers who can purchase their products. Simple answer to this paradox is that consumers will be paid to consume products. Their roles will change from workers to quality control and consumption associates.

If people become physically in-active due to this ‘couch-potato’ kind of job description, then I see another important work role emerging out of the woodwork. Fitness trainers will suddenly become the most sought after service providers in the next world of work. As getting off the couch becomes increasingly difficult, since most of the new ‘work’ can be done enjoying a movie on the couch; suddenly keeping people fit becomes a premium service requiring creative psychological skills and persuasive techniques.