Conclusion: Political Imprisonment and Memorializing Zimbabwe’s Liberation Struggle

Abstract

Given the prominence of other histories of political imprisonment such as those in South Africa during the anti-apartheid movement and other places, it is surprising that, before this book, such a history was absent for Zimbabwe. Among Zimbabweans, memories of the anti-Rhodesian liberation struggle revolve around the guerrilla war only, perhaps reflecting the dominant state narrative that reifies the war and actively silences other narratives of the anticolonial struggle. Whereas Nelson Mandela’s nearly three-decade incarceration at Robben Island in South Africa has acquired a central place in the popular memories of the anti-apartheid movement in South Africa, the penal experiences of leaders such as Zimbabwe’s current president, Robert Mugabe, are substituted by the guerrilla experience, which underscores the dominant state narrative of the liberation struggle. The liberation war has so far been the centerpiece of nearly all the narratives, scholarly and popular, about Zimbabwe’s nationalist struggle.