Literary narrativisation of ‘patriotic history’: the case of Mashingaidze Gomo’s A fine madness

Abstract

ABSTRACTIn post- Zimbabwe, the ruling Zimbabwe African Union-Patriotic Front (ZANU PF) regime has appropriated liberation-war history and deployed it as a weapon to consolidate power and assert political legitimacy. The version of Zimbabwean history promoted by the Mugabe regime was narrow in perspective and commandeered by the governing party. While some scholars discuss patriotic history from a historical-political perspective, this article critically interrogates the patriotic narrative as represented in Mashingaidze Gomo's novel, A fine Madness. Most Zimbabwean writers of the post-2000 period have been critical of the Mugabe regime and dismissed the controversial land distribution program as a political move to keep the regime in power. However, Gomo embraces the Afro-radical, anti-imperialist stance of the Mugabe regime as a framework to interrogate the political and economic challenges not only in Zimbabwe but also in Africa as a whole. A fine madness can be read as a neo-nationalist, counter-discursive narrative that deploys the aesthetics of the patriotic discourse to reflect on the political and economic crises in Zimbabwe and Africa by extension. This article discusses how the text mobilises literary aesthetics to develop a ‘literary patriotic narrative’.