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While much of the current research in sociolinguistics primarily traces othering ideologies and practices to the colonial era, it is also necessary to examine how the attainment of independence did not mark “the end of history” to borrow Francis Fukuyama's vocabulary. The advent of the COVID-19 in China and its insidious spread across the world exposed exclusionary logics and practices firmly engrained in Cartesian structure of humanity. This structure retains dichotomies between the Global South and Global North in the postcolonial contexts. Zimbabwe being situated in the Global South provides a suitable context to comment on binary politics in the public health communication domain. The existing incapacitated public health system in Zimbabwe mired the obtainability of essential medicines and equipment during the outbreak of the coronavirus disease, a situation that aggravated public panic. Public awareness of the pandemic was much desired to save the population from the scathing rage of COVID-19. Yet, the accessibility to this essential information was regrettably hampered on by vexed language choices that privileged the use of English language and neglected Zimbabwe's indigenous languages. Thus, COVID-19 rekindled the onerous task to objectively reflect on the language question against the background of stubborn global power matrixes, colonial linguistic frontiers, and geopolitics of globalization in the 21st century. Drawing from linguistic human rights and decolonial theorizations, this study argues that the COVID-19 pandemic generated sites of language inquiry to quiz abyssal thinking and provide discursive contours around (in) equalities and linguistic subjectivities of the Zimbabwean people. The study concludes that it is imperative to seriously invest in multilingual capacities in preparation for future public health pandemics.
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