One morning in early April, at the start of Zimbabwe’s contested election, Chaka Ngwenya was one of the many Zimbabweans in New York City anxiously awaiting news from back home.

“I don’t know what’s happening in our country,” he said of the possibility that President Robert Mugabe’s 28-year polarizing rule might soon come to an end. “But I think it could be a good thing.”

The only difference: Ngwenya was live and on air, broadcasting from a tiny room on the second floor of the Salvation Army Church in Harlem.

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