Zimbabwean writer Simbarashe Steyn Kundizeza denies using artificial intelligence (AI) to write “The Blue Fighter”, the story that won the 2026 Caine Prize for African Writing and its £10,000 ($13,000) award.
The Caine Prize opened a review after The Atlantic published an article on Sunday, October 11. Journalist Vauhini Vara wrote that the AI-detection tool Pangram flagged almost the entire story as AI-generated. Only the epigraph passed as human. Pangram rated all 25 earlier Caine-winning stories, and Kundizeza’s 2021 story “The Whistleblower”, as human-written.
Vara also pointed to “not X, but Y” sentences, as well as many metaphors and aphorisms in the story. She said the style differs sharply from his 2021 work. She wrote that Pangram wrongly labels human text as AI about once in 24,000 cases, and she said she may be wrong.
Kundizeza answered on X. “For the avoidance of doubt, I wrote The Blue Fighter,” he wrote. He said he has a documented history of the story’s origin and posted a timeline of how he developed it. He told the BBC a poem by South African writer Vangile Gantsho, about her father building fish tanks, inspired the story. He added details from his own family around 2002, when Zimbabwe’s economic troubles began. His father, an accountant, quit his job to grow tomatoes. He also said writers can change style and improve over five years.
Caine Prize board chair Ellah Wakatama said the prize will interview the judges, reread the story and speak with Kundizeza about his methods. She said Kundizeza will send documents on his drafts, and the prize is in contact with The Shallow Tales Review, which first published the story. She rejected Pangram as the final judge and called it “not yet tested”. She said any accusation needs proof that does not come from a machine.
The prize has announced no finding and has not withdrawn the award. Kundizeza remains listed as the winner. His agency told Vara it is confident the story is his work.
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Many African writers have criticized the article. Wale Lawal, founder of the Lagos-based magazine The Republic, called it “crazy, racist and wildly unethical”. Nigerian publisher Modupe Daramola said Pangram is itself AI-powered and asked why its result should count as final.
The case follows two others this year. In June, the Commonwealth Foundation cleared all flagged winners of its short story prize after a month-long review. Canadian-Haitian author Thélyson Orélien withdrew from France’s Goncourt prize over AI allegations he denies.
 to write "The Blue Fighter", the story that won the 2026 Caine Prize for African Writing and its £10,000 ($13,000) award.){kind=link}