The struggle for land in the Shona novel: Allegory, seizure and betrayal

Abstract

Most studies of the Zimbabwean novel have focused on texts written in English. Metropolitan scholars largely ignore those written in Shona. However, Shona novels contain a wealth of discourse on the question of land and, while they lay a claim to the redistribution of land to benefit the black majority, they also speak against land appropriation by elites alone. In these novels, beginning with the foundational nationalist text, Solomon Mutswairo's Feso, and ending with a novel from 2005 (when the contemporary land appropriation was almost complete), the complex nature of questions related to land and social justice is both articulated and contested.