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Heritage and allegiance: a history of Njelele sacred place in Matobo hills from the 1960s to the present
No full textThis thesis was an investigation into the conflicts at Njelele sacred place. There had been intense conflicts between various stakeholders over the control and management of the shrine from at least the 1960s to the present. This thesis therefore argue that even though there are many causes of conflicts at Njelele like quest for political control over the shrine, attempts by the post –colonial government to politicize the shrine, ethnicisation or tribalisation of the shrine, cultural transformation of the shrine over the past years, scarcity of resources, interdependence of people who wish to achieve different goals the contests over the control of the shrine can largely be attributed to colonialism. Most of the causes can be traced back or had their roots in the colonial period. There were both direct and indirect impacts on the shrine and these impacts fuelled conflicts at the shrin
Environmental change and mass violence: Tokwe Mukorsi and food security in rural Mwenezi, Zimbabwe
No full textThis study seeks to identify features of environmental change in Mwenezi District and explore approaches to food security in the face of natural disasters with the aim of unmasking mass violence that occurred as a result of the flooding of Tokwe Mukorsi Dam. Mwenezi is a multicultural district comprising the Nambia, Shona, Ndebele, Venda and Shangani ethnic groups who are intermingled yet each has strong cultural traits. The District, which falls in Zimbabwe’s geographical region 5, which receives very little rainfall, has faced numerous environmental challenges. As a result of little food resources and given the recent flooding disaster at Tokwe Mukorsi Dam, the District is prone to mass violence where it comes to resource sharing.
Network referencing was used to select 40 respondents among members of Mwenezi District to respond to a self-administered questionnaire interview schedule. Respondents of 40 years and above, and who have stayed in the District for more than 30 years were considered credible and had experienced sufficient environmental changes and episodes of mass violence. Six interviewees (3 males and 3 females) aged 60 and above, among the victims were selected and interviewed. The kraal heads (or chiefs), the district agricultural research and extension (AGRITEX) officer, the District environmental management (EMA) officer, World Vision and CARE non-governmental social welfare organisation officers were interviewed for their expert ground experience on environmental change and food security in the District. Direct observation
was used to ‘ground truth’ evidence of environmental change. Evidence of environmental change include silted rivers, extinct plant, animal and bird species, failure of some traditional crops, shortages of pastures, firewood and water. Observation was that flooding at Tokwe Mukorsi Dam created huge scarcity and human rights problems in the district. It is recommended that the Government of Zimbabwe should demonstrate a will power to help Mwenezi people cope with disaster and get back on their lives managing their food issues
Intra-urban mobilities and the depiction of the city in Zimbabwean fiction as reflected in Valerie Tagwira’s uncertainty of Hope (2006)
No full textThis article explores intra-urban mobilities and the depiction of the city in contemporary Zimbabwean literature as reflected in Valerie Tagwira’s Uncertainty of Hope. It shall be argued that intra-urban mobilities are closely related to the depiction of the city as a heterogeneous space that is unevenly constituted. This unevenness is influenced by economic and political factors and translates into the realm of the social and symbolic as some spaces are projected as “safe†and “respectable†while others are conceptualized as of “ill repute†and “threat†to the security, morals, and safety of its inhabitants. However, the boundaries between “safe†and “threatening†spaces are constantly transgressed by Zimbabwean urban dwellers in their day to day struggles for survival in a harsh and unrelenting economic and political climate. This political and economic environment has resulted in most Zimbabweans being insecure as testified by heightened intra-urban mobilities. Furthermore, the insecurity and intra-urban mobility are exemplified by the creation of unstable identities premised on fear, anxiety, and restlessness that characterize the lives of most urban dwellers
Imagi(ni)ng post-independence Zimbabwe: political transition and the rhetoric of transformation in the liberation war literature.
No full textThe article seeks to stimulate debate about Zimbabwe’s liberation struggle, with a special
focus on engagements in and around the rhetoric on the transformation that the transition of the promises of independence would usher in. It further asserts that the principal aim of the struggle was the rhetoric of land redistribution in the post-independence era imbued in the current dialectic between transition and transformation. With this research, it is hoped that such stimulation on the rhetoric of transformation on the African continent as depicted
through African literature’s subsequent contributions reveal a deeply contested terrain which fosters the development of a balanced account of the struggle for the benefit of posterity. This selected war literature mirrors a period of national reconstruction that is characterised by writers who register not only the joys and pains of national rebirth, but writers who begin to constitute a critical consciousness embedded within the context of developmental politics. This literature laments the failure to fulfill most of the aspirations after Zimbabwe’s independence. It examines the consequence of the regression of the liberation movement into nationalism that focused on the transfer of power from the Rhodesian regime to the African nationalists, rather than the transformation of society to realise the ideals of the liberation struggle. This left all the despotic Rhodesian institutions and statutes intact and this could hardly have facilitated the outcome of what the struggle stood for. It is intriguing that the common liberation war rhetoric deliberately eulogises the contribution of the war veterans who negate what the liberation movement stood for before and after independence. It is through this rhetoric of transition and transformation that Zimbabwe’s current socio-political dire straits are no more than the inevitable consequence and outcome of two decades of misguided economic policies founded on populism, politics of patronage, mismanagement, incompetence and corruption
Heritage and allegiance: a history of Njelele sacred place in Matobo hills from the 1960s to the present
No full textThis thesis was an investigation into the conflicts at Njelele sacred place. There had been intense conflicts between various stakeholders over the control and management of the shrine from at least the 1960s to the present. This thesis therefore argue that even though there are many causes of conflicts at Njelele like quest for political control over the shrine, attempts by the post –colonial government to politicize the shrine, ethnicisation or tribalisation of the shrine, cultural transformation of the shrine over the past years, scarcity of resources, interdependence of people who wish to achieve different goals the contests over the control of the shrine can largely be attributed to colonialism. Most of the causes can be traced back or had their roots in the colonial period. There were both direct and indirect impacts on the shrine and these impacts fuelled conflicts at the shrin
Abel Muzorewa’s security force auxiliaries (SFAS) during and after the war of liberation in Hurungwe district, Zimbabwe
No full textThe Security Force Auxiliaries (SFAs) who actively fought for Bishop Abel Muzorewa in Zimbabwe’s war of liberation and their experiences remain a grey area in Zimbabwean historical studies. Their voices in the history of the armed struggle are conspicuously absent. Where they appear, they are simply castigated as those of sellouts, imperialist stooges, and traitors who are better ignored. Rhodesian writings which largely celebrate counter-insurgency also ignore the role of the Security Force Auxiliaries. What exist are ‘namings’ and ‘otherings’ such as ‘dzakutsaku’, ‘huruyadzo’ and ‘Pfumo Revanhu’ that are dependent on the enunciator’s ideological position. This thesis therefore fills an important gap in Zimbabwean political history through a focus on a neglected historical subject—that of SFAs in particular, and the manufacturing of political identities in general. At the centre of this thesis are such pertinent questions such as whom these SFAs were, why and how they were created and the role they played in the war. A case study of Hurungwe district is used because it was one of those complex theatres of war in which ZIPRA, ZANLA, Selous Scouts, Security Force Auxiliaries and regular Rhodesian colonial forces operated and competed for the ‘hearts and minds’ of the people. What is emerging from this thesis is that SFAs were generally recruited by force from mujibhas, hastily trained and often deployed to their areas of origin to fight against guerrillas while at the same time bringing back and defending colonial civil administration that was targeted by guerrillas for sabotage. One of the findings of this thesis, that will certainly disturb those who have accepted the idea of a popular anti-colonial liberation war, is the positive perception of auxiliaries as a force that indeed protected the people. This explains why, in part, there was no widespread violence against them in Hurungwe after 1980 and why at the end of the war SFAs were fully integrated into their families. This finding, however, does not discount the political challenges met by SFAs as their wartime role and identities continued to haunt them in post-war Zimbabwe. Thus, the thesis ends with an analysis of the postindependence national reconciliation and military integration which largely ignored SFAs. The exclusion of SFAs is part and parcel of the construction of political identities into insiders and outsiders as well as patriots and sellouts. Through this research, the SFAs’ version of Zimbabwe’s bush war is unveiled in order to fill an academic lacuna on blacks who fought against ZAPU and ZANU during the liberation war. The thesis deconstructs the role of such people as sellouts who were determined to block Zimbabwe’s independence. This is a historical study that draws its data from oral interviews with former SFAs and wartime civilians, archival as well as published and unpublished sources
An encounter with the enigma: Some philosophical reflections on Hosiah Chipanga’s music
No full texthttp://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/18125980.2015.1031455,Hosiah Chipanga is dubbed one of the most controversial musicians to have emerged in post-independent Zimbabwe. His music strongly condemns acts of corruption, avariciousness, bribery, nepotism and political power struggles that threaten to tear apart the moral fibre of the Zimbabwean society. Through the songs “Gushungoâ€, “Dafi†and “Vatsigiri vanguâ€, Chipanga attempts to salvage truth and sanity out of the “debris†of moral laxity that makes some Zimbabweans fail to go beyond their own limitations. This epistemic search for
the “truth†makes Chipanga’s music generate new levels of social, economic and political consciousness at a time when all hope on redeeming Zimbabwe from possible self-destruction seemed to have been lost. Through what one can call “painful political truth†and “liberation theologyâ€, Chipanga calls forth for Zimbabweans to reflect upon their lives and desist from the habit of “blame shifting†by confronting the problems that afflict them
Theorising Mandela
No full textNelson Mandela can be said to be the most celebrated leader so far to have emerged from the African continent. He has been variously written about in literary works and history books, differently presented in [auto] biographies and the mainstream media [newspapers and television], fictionalized and actualised in film, immortalised through art work such as painting and sculpture. In liberal- driven South African and western media, Mandela is/was presented as a ‘messiah’, a superhuman character, a humanist, a philanthropist, and a persona who works as an ideal model for what should constitute modem African political leadership. Yet in some academic circles Mandela is viewed as “a terrorist-turned-politician†(Willcock, 2013: 1), a political and ideological ‘construct’ of the western world; a framed 'dramatis persona ’ by the western media to project and deepen the colonialist agenda in Africa. This article seeks to theorise Mandela and in the process draw some justifications to the worthiness or the shallowness of labels attributed to Mandela as a symbolic figure that embodied the values of “Africanness†and “ubuntuism†or as an “African Cyborg†that was created and controlled by the western world. The article also attempts to locate and expose to the surface the different layers of present day South African challenges—which can be attributed to the legacy left by Mandela, but are often concealed by the ruling government under the carpet of “Rainbow Nation†and a blind celebration of “National reconciliationâ€
Evaluating authorial ‘objectivity’ and ‘stancetaking’ in reporting the making of a new constitution in Zimbabwean newspapers
No full texthttp://www.tandfonline.com.access.msu.ac.zw:2048/doi/abs/10.1080/02500167.2015.1011178,Zimbabwe held ‘fresh’ elections on July 31, 2013 under a new constitution. This was in line with the provisions of the Global Political Agreement (GPA), a political power-sharing compromise signed between Zimbabwe's three main political parties, following the heavily disputed 2008 harmonised presidential and parliamentary elections. The GPA established in Zimbabwe a Government of National Unity (GNU). On the road to making a new constitution, political differences and party politicking always seemed to take precedence over national interest. This political polarity in Zimbabwe resulted in the heavy polarity of the media, especially along political ideological grounds. The new constitution-making process and all its problems received heavy coverage in almost all national newspapers. This article analyses the discourse-linguistic notion of ‘objectivity’ in ‘hard’ news reports on the new constitution-making process by comparing the textuality of ‘hard’ news reports from two Zimbabwean national daily newspapers: the government-owned and controlled Herald and the privately owned Newsday. Focusing on how language and linguistic resources are used evaluatively in ways that betray authorial attitudes and bias in news reporting, the article examines how the news reports uphold or flout the ‘objectivity’ ideal as explicated through the ‘reporter voice’ configuration, and within Appraisal Theory
Where state order created conflict and lawlessness: an analysis of the impact of the Native Land Husbandry Act and Policy of Community Development in Bikita (1951-1965)
No full textUsing Bikita as a case study, this paper aims at analyzing the Native Land Husbandry Act (NLHA) of 1951 and the policy of Community Development and why these policies were met with massive opposition. We argue that the two policies, concerned with reshaping the social and economic order of the reserves
actually heightened conflicts between and among individuals, families and communities. Land disputes between village heads, headmen and chiefs became common as they competed and jostled for land. Lawlessness spread into the countryside as peasants confronted government officials and defied state
orders. These developments threatened settler rule and so NLHA was abandoned in 1962, to be replaced by the policy of Community Development. Again, it was hoped that community development would bring order and stability in the countryside by dampening peasants‟ protests and nationalist activities.Unfortunately for the colonial state, community development had the unforeseen consequence of furthering rural opposition
as both nationalists and the rural peasants perceived the policy as apartheid in disguise. Development of nationalism and the growing articulation of African grievances about land is another theme explored in the paper. We argue that nationalists capitalized on these African grievances to politically mobilize rural masses. Events of this period (1951-1963) are an important feature of Zimbabwe`s social, economic and political
history considering the fact that these developments continue to shape the socio-economic and political dynamics of the country