This study examines how Zimbabwe handled Cyclone Idai, a disaster that occurred in March 2019 and the COVID-19 pandemic that started in December 2019 worldwide but had its first case recorded in Zimbabwe in March 2020, separating the two hazardous events by one year. The study argues that if a community is affected by consecutive events in the same manner, with more or less the same impacts, its either the community is incapacitated to improve or no learning or efforts are being made to improve on Disaster Risk Reduction (DRR), thus, many critical areas need to be revisited in terms of policy formulation, implementation, preparedness and response to disasters. Disaster management is a continuous on-going process that should improve temporally as an individual, household, community or nation utilises past events to make an improvement on forthcoming similar quagmires. Through the use of desktop research, events analysis during the disasters, and interviews, the study found out that the state of the country’s disaster preparedness still need to be improved to be proactive rather than reactive, the nation responded better to COVID-19 than to Cyclone Idai leaves a lot to be desired since the institutions are always caught unaware and not ready for these catastrophic events. Recommendations are therefore made that great improvement should be done in disaster policy formulation, and implementation to involve different stakeholders from all walks of life for effectiveness so that people and infrastructure is saved from destruction.