At independence in 1980, Zimbabwe's black majority govemment adopted a policy of reconciliation as a strategy of transfoiming black-white relations which for over ninety years had been characterised by relations of stark inequality. The effect of the policy of reconciliation was further enhanced by the formation of a government of national unity which included in its cabinet some members of the white minority regime. Theatre in Zimbabwe since 1980 has, in the main, been a response to these policies of reconciliation, non-racial development and socialism. Thus an analysis of Zimbabwean theatre is in many ways an assessment of the successes and obstacles in the development of a non-racial and socialist culture in Zimbabwe. Since 1980 a number of trends in Zimbabwean theatre have developed. The first trend is that of theatre that had its roots in the liberation struggle in guerrilla camps in Mozambique and Zambia and inside the country's liberated zones. This is the theatre used by combatants to articulate the people's role and aspirations in waging a war of liberation. It was used to effectively tell the story of colonial occupation and the revolutionary history of the people's resistance since 1896. In the liberated zones inside the country, an all-night song-dance-political rally called Pun1gwe became the medium for the dramatisation of the people's struggle (Chinlur eniga) and the inevitable defeat of colonialism in Zimbabwe. This dynamic use of the diverse and popular forms of indigenous performing arts, for instance traditional dance, ritual dances, poetic recitation, chants, slogans, songs and story-telling enabled the combatants to mobilize the peasants to articulate their opposition to the settler white minority regime, and to consolidate the peasants solidarity with the liberation struggle despite the punitive strikes by the forces of the Smith regime. The Pungwe enabled the combatants to concretise the ideology of socialism as an instrument of transferring political and economic power to the indigenous people of Zimbabwe. In some ways, the new artistic experience forged largely in the guerrilla camps was not fully exploited once the war had ended. At independence, theatre artists who had been involved in the use of theatre as a revolutionary tool for articulating both the experience and the ideological dynamics of the liberation struggle returned home from Mozambique, Zambia, Tanzania, Europe, America and many African countries. Those who had been pioneers of this radical and innovative theatre were, upon their return home, either appointed to senior government positions or