Black Zimbabweans Research Articles

Access and Quality in Education in Resettlement Schools: The Case Study of Zvivingwi Secondary School in Gutu District, Masvingo Province in Zimbabwe.

In Zimbabwe, the discourse on access and quality in education has been a raging one since the colonial days of bottlenecks and outright discrimination against black Zimbabweans in education. The doors to education were declared open to all at independence in 1980 with the new Zimbabwe government’s enunciated policy of education for all. It is an uncontested fact that strides were made soon after independence to address issues of quality and access in education. However, with the prosecution of the fast track land reform programme the dream for access and quality in education became a nightmare. Whilst trust schools, boarding schools, urban and some rural day schools have a comparative advantage in terms of resources like infrastructure and qualified and relatively motivated human resource, emerging resettlement schools bear the brunt of hastened and impromptu establishment. It is the contention of this paper that resettlement schools like Zvivingwi, established in the last decade, are a facade of the schools envisioned by many Zimbabweans at independence. These schools reel from abject shortage of everything except pupils. It would be recommended that government should show creativity in mobilising resources to intervene, failing which, most of the resettlement schools like Zvivingwi, risk closure as public confidence in them wanes. The researcher made use of a questionnaire and interviewed critical stakeholders at the school like headmaster, teachers, parents, pupils and education officers. School records and other critical documents were also made use of.

Mining with a ‘Vuvuzela’: reconfiguring artisanal mining in Southern Zimbabwe and its implications to rural livelihoods

The rural landscape of Zimbabwe has dramatically changed in the last decade. Zimbabwe inherited a racially biased land ownership pattern at independence in 1980 and 20 years on efforts by the state to address the colonial land imbalances have been largely unsuccessful. In 2000 the Zimbabwe government embarked on a controversial rapid land redistribution exercise that saw vast tracts of land previously owned by white commercial farmers taken over and distributed to mostly black Zimbabweans. Some authors have argued that there is no single story of the Fast Track Land Reform and Resettlement programme because of the myths and realities spread by the media. It is important to note that what happened in one province might not be similar to the other. Rural dwellers in the countryside had for years depended on agrarian livelihoods and the fact that more land had been availed by the state meant better livelihoods. However, this article argues that in spite of a widened horizon to pursue agrarian activities many people have actually drifted away from on-farm to off-farm livelihoods. This is true in the case of southern Zimbabwe where a large number of rural dwellers have chosen artisanal gold mining as a pathway in realising a livelihood. This article therefore focuses on the expansion of artisanal gold mining in southern Zimbabwe; particularly in southern Matabeleland. Using fieldwork as a method of data gathering, the article unravels the development of artisanal mining in this region and how it has been reconfigured after the hosting of the Soccer World Cup in South Africa 2010. In particular it shows how the metal detector technology (the Vuvuzela) availed by the hosting of the Soccer World Cup has found its way to the region and changed the gold panning process. Conclusions drawn from a detailed PhD study revealed that a significant number of southern Zimbabwe gold panners have adopted the metal detector technology as a way of expanding their trade.

Agrarian and life style change in Zimbabwe: From colonization to the formation of government of national unity

In a predominantly agricultural country like Zimbabwe, the problem of land reform has naturally been one of the most important subjects of political campaigning and economic turmoil. Zimbabwe’s land distribution was racially highly skewed towards whites before land reform and the status quo was not politically, socially or economically sustainable. This has been the state of affairs since the British reform of 1890. It is this inequitable distribution of land that prompted the black people to take up arms and fight for independence. At independence, the government of Zimbabwe decided to embark on the land reform programme. It is therefore of paramount importance not to overlook the events of the then Rhodesia at colonization through to the independent Zimbabwe at the Fast Track Land Reform stage. This article therefore provides the untold story of Zimbabwean agrarian change from colonial times to the present. It clearly explains how land rights of both the whites and the black Zimbabweans were damaged by the government of Rhodesia and later by the government of Zimbabwe.

Doris Lessing, Feminism and the Representation of Zimbabwe

This article examines the complex intertwinements of feminism, anti-colonial Marxism and imperialism in the work of the recent Literature Nobel Prize winner Doris Lessing, particularly in her writings on colonial Africa and the travelogue African Laughter. The article outlines the implications of these intersections for the representation of Zimbabwe against some political, aesthetic and epistemological developments in Lessing's oeuvre. Through a reading of African Laughter, the article argues that a crucial tension is at stake between Lessing's political project of giving voice to black Zimbabweans and the western female protagonist as the authoritative subject of this project. The aim is to render an innovative perspective of Doris Lessing's status as a feminist icon, which she gained in the wake of her acclaimed novel The Golden Notebook (1962), by proceeding from postcolonial feminist scholarship .

The influence of racial and environmental factors on EEG photoparoxysmal responses in Zimbabwe.

This study examined the influences of environmental and racial factors on the incidence of EEG photoparoxysmal responses (PPRs) to intermittent photic stimulation (IPS) in a multi-racial population exposed to seasonal variations in sunshine intensity. The records of patients referred for EEG examination in Harare, Zimbabwe were screened for the presence of PPRs to IPS. The age, sex and racial classification of patients manifesting PPRs were studied. The relationship between sunshine duration and intensity and the frequency of PPRs was also studied. EEG records of 16,496 patients referred for EEG examination were studied. Of these, 136 patients (0.8%) showed PPRs to photic stimulation. The highest age-specific PPR (2.0%) occurred in the 16-20 year age group. The race-specific PPRs were 1.5% for white patients, 1.18% for Asian patients, 0.36% for colored patients and 0.09% for black patients (chi3[2] = 95.21, P = 0.001). The incidence of PPRs did not show any significant variation with the mean monthly sunshine duration (P = 0.8254) or with the mean monthly sunlight radiation (P = 0.2631). The findings of this study support a role for genetic rather than environmental factors in the relative rarity of PPRs in black Zimbabweans.

Abject spaces, transnational calculations: Zimbabweans in Britain navigating work, class and the law

Opportunities for migrants in Britain have become increasingly differentiated by hardened legal barriers, restricted access to asylum and filtering by selected skills. This article explores the effects of this differentiation on diaspora formation, social mobility and class identities. It takes the case of one of the UK's largest new African migrant groups – black Zimbabweans – who mostly come from middle class/elite backgrounds, but who have ended up in unskilled and informal work, as well as securing professional posts in Britain. The article asks whether, and in what sense it might be useful to talk of the polarised opportunities created by legal status in terms of emerging class differences and challenges to class identities. It dwells on the subjective experience of those in irregular legal circumstances, whose loss of status in Britain has been particularly acute, drawing on theoretical debates on abjection and dehumanised ‘bare life’ that speak directly to the popular discourses and language in which those doing menial work and lacking papers spoke about their experiences and place in Britain. As some have, however, maintained their class position both at home and in intergenerational terms, the article highlights the transnational calculations that continue to render even illegal unskilled work in the UK attractive, and underlines the importance of discussing abjection in terms of the relations of power and processes that create legal spaces of exclusion rather than as a putative underclass. Notwithstanding such calculations, the article highlights the importance of legal status and inequality within migrant groups in shaping the dynamics of new diaspora communities in Britain.

Politicization of land reform in Zimbabwe: impacts on wildlife, food production and the economy

Land reform is a major Southern Africa issue. Land reform, to rectify its inequitable distribution between white and black Zimbabweans, became radicalized by President Robert Mugabe and his political party ZANU‐PF as a means to stay in power. This has had adverse impacts on food production, conservation, use of wildlife, and both national and regional economies. Ill‐considered internal and regional policies that result in economic ruin and uncontrollable immigration by the poor, hopeless disenfranchised masses could end any hope for an African Renaissance. This would harm South Africa, and prevent it from providing the benefits of development to Africa’s people.

Becoming Postcolonial: African Women Changing the Meaning of Citizenship

Becoming PostcolonialAfrican Women Changing the Meaning of Citizenship Patricia McFadden (bio) In the early 1980s Zimbabwe was touted as a nation that held the promise of a resolution to the seemingly intractable problems of de-colonization and stability in southern Africa. As is true throughout the southern Africa region specifically, and the continent in general, the notion of stability was defined in direct relation to the maintenance of classed and/or raced interests within Africa. In Zimbabwe, a country where 1 percent of the population owned more than 70 percent of the land at independence, the most difficult problem was that of land—the most critical resource of the postcolonial Zimbabwean society. To resolve it, a deal called the Lancaster House Agreement (see appendix page 19) was reached in 1979 between the new ruling class of Zimbabwe, which included Robert Mugabe, the independent country's first prime minister, and the British government. The agreement made provisions to establish a land fund, financed by the British and United States governments, which would compensate willing white farmers who sold their land to be redistributed among blacks. However, resistance from the white settler community eventually resulted in the state appropriating many of the farms, but fewer than 70,000 peasants were resettled on them, and the great majority of the land fell into the hands of government officials and wealthy elite black businessmen. Accusing President Robert Mugabe of corruption, the British withdrew aid [End Page 1] from the land grant program; sanctions were imposed on the country; and Zimbabwe became embroiled in internal political opposition and a land and economic crisis in which the majority of blacks remain desperately impoverished and disenfranchised. Masquerading as a constitution, the Lancaster Agreement was in reality a means to retain the privileges of the white settler elite and the ruling, if impoverished, black elite ruling class at the expense and exclusion of the majority of Zimbabweans. In the twenty-first century, we are confronted with the reality of both the collapse of neocolonialism and the need to craft new social and political systems that will fulfill the needs of millions of African people, including African women, who, by and large, were excluded from the benefits of independence. Zimbabwe provides an excellent example of how the transition to a postcolonial society has given rise to new sociopolitical challenges, and how, in particular, the twenty-first-century women's struggles can lead us to a new framework in meeting them. I position women's resistance agency for rights and entitlements, and their engagements with the state, at the center of this notion, because they are at the cutting edge for the emergence of a different politics on the continent, which can lead to all citizens living the wholesome lives promised by the extraordinary moment of change that independence provided. While the neocolonial dispensation that followed the Lancaster Agreement afforded many Zimbabweans with some, limited, social, educational, and economic benefits, it fell short of the transformative changes needed to shift the society from one embedded in exclusionary state and legal practices to one that provides all citizens access to the most fundamental resource in the society—arable land. The fact that these changes have not taken place is evidenced, in part, by the fact that the lifestyle of the white commercial farmer has remained largely untouched by the continued marginality of millions of poor Zimbabweans who exist on the edges of his numerous farms (sometimes running into hundreds of thousands of acres). The assumption of the white farmer that he could continue to live as though black Zimbabweans had readily given up the memory of resistance against brutal racist repression and murder and the indignities of having had to live under white dominion was in and of itself a stupid self-delusion. But this is what most white settlers wanted and thought they got through British intervention. Consequently they continued to exploit the labor of hundreds of thousands of black farm workers, most of whom the [End Page 2] Zimbabwean state considered outsiders and who were not protected by any labor legislation, nor were they allowed to register as citizens of the new state. Among these hundreds of thousands...

Cancer survival in a southern African urban population.

This paper provides the first comprehensive population based cancer survival estimates from the African continent. Five-year absolute and relative survival estimates are presented for black and white Zimbabwean patients diagnosed with cancer in Harare, Zimbabwe between the years 1993 and 1997. The survival of black Zimbabwean cancer patients are among the lowest ever reported from population based cancer registries. For most cancer sites, white Zimbabwean patients have much higher survival than black Zimbabweans, except for lung and colorectal cancer, for which the estimates are similarly poor. Race specific comparisons to cancer patients in the United States show that Zimbabwean patients have much lower survival than American cancer patients and that the gap between black Zimbabwean patients and black American patients is broader than between white Zimbabwean and white American patients. Access to and the ability to pay for medical care may be a very important barrier to better survival for the majority of black Zimbabwean patients and the most important cause for the very low cancer survival in this population.

The Novel in a House of Stone: Re-categorising Zimbabwean Fiction*

There are three bodies of novelistic texts that today's Zimbabwe could claim to have produced before independence: novels written by black Zimbabweans, and by white settlers, in their native languages, and those authored by black authors and written in English, published mostly in exile. Since independence in 1980, these three novelistic groupings have been studied in some detail, but critical analyses have always focused on one or two groupings. This article argues for the need to study Zimbabwean fiction in all three groupings systematically and comparatively. Furthermore, it attempts to outline a methodology capable of inflecting race/language binaries with categories of a different order and origin. At the heart of this methodology is an appropriation of the concept of literary function, informed by the work of M. M. Bakhtin, J. Mukarovsky´ and A. Flaker. The article's first section outlines the problem and its context. The second section provides a reading of the pre-independence period in the history of the Zimbabwean novel, as seen through categories related to language and race. The third section attempts to 'collapse' these categories by relating them to the functional and discursive formations of the same period. The final section applies the formations outlined in previous sections to representative novels by Peter Armstrong, Stanlake Samkange and Stanley Nyamfukudza.

Bialveolar protrusion in a Zimbabwean sample

This study was undertaken to assess dentoalveolar relationships in a well-balanced sample of adult black Zimbabweans. Lateral cephalograms of 25 men and 25 women 18 to 38 years of age with Class I occlusions were obtained from the University of Zimbabwe. Twelve angular and 6 linear measurements were analyzed, and men and women were compared with the Student t test. No statistically significant difference was noted between the 2 sexes. The Zimbabwean sample had a low Frankfort-mandibular plane angle (19.6° ± 5.5°) with a receding chin as shown by the negative Pog-NB measurement (−0.7 ± 1.5 mm). Both the maxilla (SNA = 88.5° ± 4.7°) and the mandible (SNB = 83.3° ± 4.4°) were prognathic, and the ANB difference was large (5.3° ± 2.7°). The maxillary incisors were more upright compared with those of white people as measured by the angle of the maxillary incisor to NA line (20.6° ± 7.7°), while the mandibular incisors were severely proclined (IMPA = 105.8° ± 6.0°, L1-Apog = 6.9° ± 2.7°, L1-NB = 37.6° ± 4.9°), and this proclination was considered to be compensatory to the prognathic maxilla. (Am J Orthod Dentofacial Orthop 2003;123:133-7)

Dambudzo Marechera's Black Sunlight: Carnivalesque and the subversion of nationalist discourse of resistance in Zimbabwean literature

Summary This paper examines Black Sunlight (1980), a novel by Dambudzo Marechera, in the light of critical reappraisal of narratives of national resistance in the 1990s in Zimbabwe. Black Sunlight was published in 1980, the year of Zimbabwe's independence when most black Zimbabweans viewed the coming of that independence as the vindication of Nehanda's prophecy that her “bones” shall rise and Africans will rule themselves. Novelists such as Edmund Chipamaunga in A Fighter For Freedom (1983) and Garikai Mutasa in The Contact (1985), were to use their fiction to fabricate, justify and present nationalist resistance as the “natural”, and uncontestable ideology of decolonisation in Zimbabwe. In contrast, in Black Sunlight, Marechera is radically singular in his use of the carnivalesque in order to resist ideologies of Zimbabwean cultural nationalism based on single notions of the “African image”. This paper argues that the subversion of nationalist discourse of resistance in Zimbabwean literature that Marechera authorises in Black Sunlight stems from the author's desire to generate narratives of postcolonial resistance which encourage literary open‐endedness, and incompleteness as a strategy to anticipate cultural change. This project enables the author to construct an idiom of resistance that is aware of the provisionality of the values it underlies.

The ‘unsaying’ of indigenous homosexualities in Zimbabwe: mapping a blindspot in an African masculinity

Many black Zimbabweans believe that homosexuality was introduced to the country by white settlers and is now mainly propagated by ‘the West’. The denial of indigenous homosexual behaviours and identities is often so strong that critics have been quick with accusations of homophobia. Yet those critics unfairly impose a rather crude and ultimately unhelpful analysis. Without denying that violent forms of homophobia do exist in Zimbabwe, the invisibility of indigenous homosexualities has more complex origins. This article examines the many, overlapping discourses that are constructed into the dominant ideology of masculinity and that contrive to ‘unsay’ indigenous male‐to‐male sexualities. It seeks in that way to gain insight into the over determination of assertively masculinist behaviour among Zimbabwean men today. It also draws lessons for researchers on the importance of interrogating the silences around masculinity.

Phenotype and genotype analysis of debrisoquine hydroxylase (CYP2D6) in a black Zimbabwean population. Reduced enzyme activity and evaluation of metabolic correlation of CYP2D6 probe drugs.

Debrisoquine hydroxylase (CYP2D6) is responsble for the oxidative metabolism of many clinically used drugs. Since this enzyme has been poorly studied in the southern part of Africa, we examined the CYP2D6 phenotypes and genotypes in 103 unrelated black Zimbabweans. Phenotyping for CYP2D6 activity was done using debrisoquine and metoprolol as probe drugs by measuring the urinary metabolic ratio (MR) of parent drug to metabolite concentration ratios. Genotyping was done using polymerase chain reaction (PCR), restriction fragment length polymorphism (RFLP), single-strand conformation polymorphism (SSCP) and sequencing analyses with respect to CYP2D6 variants of interest. Phenotyping with debrisoquine revealed two poor metabolisers (PMs), whereas 5 subjects out of 94 were PMs using metoprolol as probe drug. Genotypes predictive of the poor metaboliser status were observed for the two subjects who were PMs with both probe drugs, whereas no mutations could explain the PM phenotype for metoprolol among the three remaining subjects, a fact possibly explained by lack of compliance in metoprolol intake. There was a moderate correlation of 0.67 between the debrisoquine and metoprolol metabolic ratios in the 89 subjects who were extensive metabolisers for both probe drugs. The median values for the metabolic ratios for debrisoquine and metoprolol as probe drugs were 1.00 and 1.35, respectively, which are higher than those observed in Caucasian populations. This is indicative of a decreased capacity for metabolism of CYP2D6 substrates by Zimbabweans compared to Caucasians. Evaluation of the DNA samples for the known allelic variants CYP2D6A, CYP2D6B, CYP2D6C, CYP2D6D or CYP2D6Ch1 yielded no explanation for these results.

Characteristics of anti-A and anti-B in black Zimbabweans.

Sera from young, black, group 0 Zimbabwean blood donors were screened for anti-A and anti-B haemolysins. Nearly one fifth of the sera were found to be strongly haemolytic for either A or B cells or both. Some of the sera were titrated for agglutination in saline before and after treatment with dithiothreitol. Serum dilutions beyond the endpoint of agglutination were further tested by the indirect antiglobulin technique using specific anti-IgM and anti-IgG sera. More than 60% of the strongly lytic sera had high titres of IgG (> or = 64). The IgM and IgG concentrations both of anti-A and anti-B were correlated and these levels were in turn correlated with haemolytic activity.

Characteristics of Anti-A and Anti-B in Black Zimbabweans

Sera from young, black, group 0 Zimbabwean blood donors were screened for anti-A and anti-B haemolysins. Nearly one fifth of the sera were found to be strongly haemolytic for either A or B cells or both. Some of the sera were titrated for agglutination in saline before and after treatment with dithiothreitol. Serum dilutions beyond the endpoint of agglutination were further tested by the indirect antiglobulin technique using specific anti-IgM and anti-IgG sera. More than 60% of the strongly lytic sera had high titres of IgG (≥ 64). The IgM and IgG concentrations both of anti-A and anti-B were correlated and these levels were in turn correlated with haemolytic activity.

Antihypertensive effects of low doses of hydrochlorothiazide in hypertensive black Zimbabweans

The antihypertensive effects of low doses of hydrochlorothiazide have not been examined in black African hypertensive patients although hydrochlorothiazide is commonly used as first-line therapy. The antihypertensive effects of hydrochlorothiazide in a daily dose of 6.25, 12.5, 25 and 50 mg were examined in 19 black Zimbabwean hypertensive patients in a double-blind, random order, placebo-controlled, cross-over trial. The mean systolic blood pressure on placebo was 170.2 mmHg (95% CI ± 9.0 mmHg) and on daily doses of hydrochlorothiazide decreased to: 161.1 mmHg (95% CI + 10.0 mmHg) on 6.25 mg; 156.6 mmHg (95% CI ± 8.6 mmHg) on 12.5 mg; 154.9 mmHg (95% CI ± 8.5 mmHg) on 25 mg and 149.1 mmHg (95% CI ± 9.2 mmHg) on 50 mg. The mean diastolic blood pressure on placebo was 101.4 mmHg (95% CI ± 5.0 mmHg) and decreased to: 98.0 mmHg (95% CI ± 5.7 mmHg) on 6.25 mg; 96.1 mmHg (95% CI ± 4.5 mmHg) on 12.5 mg; 93.6 mmHg (95% CI ± 5.3 mmHg) on 25 mg and 90.5 mmHg (95% CI ± 3.9 mmHg) on 50 mg. Hydrochlorothiazide in doses of 25 mg and 50 mg decreased systolic and diastolic blood pressure and the 12.5 mg dose decreased systolic blood pressure significantly more than placebo. We conclude that in this population maximum antihypertensive effect is not seen with the lower doses of hydrochlorothiazide and 25 mg is an appropriate starting dose for most patients.

HLA frequencies in Black Zimbabweans

One-hundred-and-nineteen normal Black Zimbabweans were typed for HLA antigens. We found a close similarity between the HLA antigen frequencies in Zimbabweans and Black South Africans (Xhosa), another Bantu-speaking group. The only significant differences noted were for HLA-Aw36, -Bw53, -Cw6, -DR4 and -DQw3 (p less than 0.01). The most common HLA haplotypes in significant positive linkage disequilibrium in the two groups were different. The differences that were noted may be due to gene flow from the San to the Black South Africans, since it is thought that the Zimbabweans had little if any contact with the San.

The association between HLA and rheumatoid artlmtis in Zimbabwean Blacks

HLA-A, B, C, DR and DQ typing was done on 26 black Zimbabweans with rheumatoid arthritis and the respective antigen frequencies were compared with those in a group of 119 normal individuals from the same ethnic background. Only the DR4 antigen was significantly increased in frequency in the patients, confirming the association with this disease seen in other Black African populations.

Systemic lupus erythematosus in Zimbabwe.

Systemic lupus erythematosus (SLE) was diagnosed in 31 black Zimbabweans over a six year period. Renal involvement (71%) was more common and photosensitivity (16%) and serositis (23%) less common than in the United States. Lymphopenia (48%) was the commonest haematological abnormality. Unusual complications included subarachnoid haemorrhage, cardiac rhythm disturbance, portal and superior mesenteric vein thrombosis, and a non-Hodgkin lymphoma. Tuberculosis was a common differential diagnosis that was difficult to exclude. Nine patients (29%) died within one year of diagnosis. SLE is being recognised more commonly in Zimbabwe.