Abstract
This article explores the post-colonial national identity formation using place names that commemorate the nation’s past in Zimbabwe. Place name alterations that the new political elites implemented at independence in 1980 were aimed at disassembling relics of the deposed regime and craft a new national identity. The commemorative landscapes of Harare, as a national capital, constitute a strategic medium in the constitution of national identity. Ethnicity dominated the political landscape in Zimbabwe. The two main political parties, the Zimbabwe African National Union (ZANU) and Zimbabwe African People’s Union (ZAPU), have been aligned with the two supertribes, Shona and Ndebele, respectively. The article explores how the ruling ZANU (PF) government whose leadership was largely Shona used a meta-narrative modelled around discourses of exclusionary autochthony and a partial presentation of the liberation war history that projected ZAPU as having made an insignificant contribution to the liberation war to construct a national identity. It concludes that the use of exclusionary definitions of belonging and a one-sided presentation of the war past that projected ZANU as having contributed more to the liberation war entrenched Shona ethnic chauvinistic tendencies and propagated ZANU (PF) political hegemony. Using the theoretical lens of critical toponymy, the article argues that politically motivated place renaming efforts usually select from the past aspects that serve present political purposes.
Highlights
Zimbabwe attained political independence on 18 April 1980, ending the liberation war that had been raging since 1966
The present study examines how Zimbabwe African National Union (ZANU)-PF ensured that names of commemorated heroes from the Zimbabwe African People’s Union (ZAPU)/Zimbabwe People’s Revolutionary Army (ZIPRA) side remained a type of ‘subjugated toponymy’
Mugabe’s foreword in Martin and Johnson’s The struggle for Zimbabwe: The Chimurenga War (Mugabe 1981, iii) champions the monolithic crusade that cast ZANU (PF) as the protagonists in the liberation war which states: In writing the history of our struggle, the authors are compelled by historical reality to trace the revolutionary process through ZANU’s history. This is unavoidable because the armed struggle pace of the revolution was set by ZANU and Zimbabwe National Liberation Army (ZANLA), while credit must be given to ZAPU and ZIPRA for their complementary role
Summary
Zimbabwe attained political independence on 18 April 1980, ending the liberation war that had been raging since 1966. Just like any other country, especially in Africa, is multi-ethnic and multicultural This complex ethnic and cultural composition poses a challenge for new governments when faced with the inevitable process of constructing an inclusive national identity. 533) defines ethnocracy as an antithesis of inclusive nationalism because it conceptualises national identity in terms of the majority ethnicity, ‘leading to a form of cultural despotism which manifests itself in the elevation of some ethnic histories, symbols, and heroes into national ones’ Given this nature of the nation-building project in Zimbabwe, this study interrogates how the elite-controlled commemorative place renaming system fitted into this ethnocratic scheme of nation-building. This article intends to fill this void in existing onomastic scholarship in Zimbabwe by exploring the political aspects of the exclusionary aspects of national identity and nationalism
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