The Moral Law of Ngozi Crime in Two Zimbabwean Novels: The Case of Emmanuel Ribeiro’s Muchadura (1967) and Solomon Mwapangidza’s Rebel Soldier (2013)

Abstract

The modern Western-inspired Literature and Law movement has inspired African works of art in which the creative imagination perceives itself as a form of moral law. In Africa, a literature and law movement has given rise to dynamic discourses of human rights. Human rights scholars have then tended to read imaginative works with a legal handbook on the side to try to verify the veracity of legal acts in works of art. In these legal-literary perspectives, the question regarding the extent to which the literary imagination imagines itself as a source of indigenous law is undervalued. This current desktop study examines what can be gained by prefacing African and indigenous literature as the point of departure when debating the elements of a contemporary literature and law movement in Africa. My unit of analysis consists of two novels, Muchadura (You shall confess) by Emmanuel Ribeiro, and Rebel Soldier (2013) by Solomon Mwapangidza. My argument is that in the two novels the narrativisation of the ngozi crime challenges current understandings of transitional justices such as retributive, compensatory, restorative, distributive, and emancipatory justices and denies the stability ascribed to them in African legal scholarship.