Reimagined rural–urban landscapes and Zimbabwean cultural identities in Zimunya's country dawns and city lights

Abstract

This article seeks to explore the ways in which Zimunya constructs Zimbabwean rural and urban landscapes and cultural identities at a time when the city is making inroads into the rural terrain and the rural hinterland is encroaching into the city. I argue that even though Zimunya seems to blame the white man's culture for ‘contaminating’ the rural landscape and cultural identities and seeks to purify his home space, the tale unfolding in the poetic narratives suggests that his society also changes with time. It might not be possible for his society to behave and relate to each other in accordance with pre-capitalist values as existing social and economic conditions have changed. Contrary to existing formalist criticism of Zimunya's poetry such as those posited by Zhuwarara, R. (1985, Introduction. In M. Zimunya (Ed.), Country dawns and city lights. Harare: Longman) who views the rural African society as both overshadowed and threatened by city life, a place which symbolises a civilisation whose capacity to brutalise seems infinite, I argue that both the rural and urban African people have the capacity to ‘resist’ the metropole culture creating a new identity or a system of relations and representations which is not fixed, but dynamic and continually recomposes and redefines itself.