Postcolonial Zimbabwe Research Articles

Exploring conflicts between traditional Shona practises and post-colonial modernity in gender roles in Stephen Chifunyise’s Oh My Grandfather

This article explores the intersection of gender roles, traditional Shona culture, and colonial legacies in Stephen Chifunyise’s play Oh My Grandfather (2018). Set in post-colonial Zimbabwe, the play highlights generational conflicts within the Matanga family, reflecting broader societal struggles. It explores how patriarchal Shona traditions continue to dictate gender dynamics, which are largely oppressive toward women. The article focuses on the roles of Morgan and Dorcas, who navigate between these traditional expectations and modern, Western values, creating what Homi K. Bhabha terms a ‘Third Space’ of cultural hybridity. The article discusses how Chifunyise critiques rigid gender norms while advocating for a balance between preserving cultural heritage and embracing modern ideals, such as gender equality. By highlighting characters like Dorcas and Tandi, who resist oppressive traditions, the play suggests that cultural practices can evolve without perpetuating injustice. Ultimately, Oh My Grandfather provides a nuanced exploration of the complexities of cultural identity in contemporary Zimbabwe, advocating for an integration of tradition and modernity that promotes a more equitable society.

Memoirs of African farms: Land, settlement, and belonging in white life writing from Southern Africa

ABSTRACT Building on previous discussions of the plaasroman, or farm novel, this article establishes the autobiographical subgenre of the white, southern African farm memoir, drawing on texts and writers from the former Rhodesia and modern Zimbabwe (Daphne Anderson, Alexandra Fuller, Doris Lessing, and Muriel Spark). Anderson’s The Toe-Rags and Fuller’s Don’t Let’s Go to the Dogs Tonight are read here as indicative of the differences and continuities between successive cohorts of white life writers in southern Africa. While Anderson’s autobiography is markedly anti-imperial, later memoirists like Fuller offer a more ambivalent response to white belonging and land ownership in postcolonial Zimbabwe. When Fuller’s generation inherit the white farm from their predecessors, they return to this location to elide the controversial histories of colonial settlement. Ultimately however, these farms become microcosms of the doomed settler state, offering neither a permanent home, nor a secure future after the end of colonial rule.

The Mother Complex in Dambudzo Marechera’s Life and Works

Abstract Dambudzo Marechera, an iconic figure in Zimbabwean literature, is often celebrated for his avant-garde and confrontational literary style. His works, which reflect a tumultuous life marked by personal and political strife, also reveal a complex relationship with women. His upbringing in the slums of Rhodesia (now Zimbabwe) exposed him to poverty, violence, and racial tensions. Marechera’s mother, Masvotwa Venezia Marechera, was a maid, and he often depicted her in the context of Rhodesian violence and prostitution. His strained relationship with his family, especially his mother, is apparent in his works and biographical information on him. His relationship with his mother seems to have contributed to his ambivalent portrayal and understanding of women. This fraught connection with his mother hints at a mother complex, a psychological concept which describes a son’s emotional attachment and conflict with his mother. This study delves into the ‘Mother Complex’ as a recurring motif in Marechera’s narratives, examining how it shapes his life, characters, and themes. Drawing from Marechera’s own experiences and his relationship as reflected in his writings and Wild-Veit’s memoir, They Called You Dambudzo, this analysis explores the psychological and symbolic dimensions of the mother archetype as reflected in his literature and life. The discussion highlights how Marechera’s portrayal of motherhood—ranging from nurturing to oppressive—mirrors his ambivalent attitude towards maternal authority and the traditional roles assigned to women in society. Marechera conceives female characters as more than mere muses; they represent different facets of femininity and cultural identity. They evoke vulnerability and agency. The discussion considers the broader socio-cultural context of post-colonial Zimbabwe, where the mother figure often embodies the nation’s collective history and trauma. Marechera’s complex representation of motherhood and women serves as a critique of oppressive structures and a quest for agency amidst cultural dislocation.

Changing Relations Between Chiefs and ‘Subjects’ in Zimbabwe and Botswana

The article historically analyses the changing relations between chiefs, ‘subjects’ and the state in Zimbabwe and Botswana. Entirely qualitative, it reviews published and unpublished sources. The article utilises three interrelated theories: bureaucracy, legal pluralism, and political clientelism. African chieftainship predates the colonial period, although this era has fundamentally altered it. The article argues that in colonial Zimbabwe and Botswana, chiefs were bureaucratised and became state functionaries. This weakened them and compromised the age-old relations with their ‘subjects’. To navigate this intricate situation, chiefs thrived on their clientelistic relations with the colonial state and their ‘subjects’. The colonial state created a legal dual system. The chiefs played a critical role as the intermediaries between their ‘subjects’ and the state in a legal dual system. For instance, they collected taxes and maintained law and order. In postcolonial Zimbabwe and Botswana, chiefs have also become more accountable to the state and ruling parties than their ‘subjects’. In both countries, the state appoints, recognises, de-recognises and can depose a chief. Chiefs often complain of state’s subjugation, but this is understandable given the protection and benefits they receive from the state.

Precarity of the (Employed and Unemployed) Educated in Zimbabwe in Valerie Tagwira’s Trapped (2020)

Zimbabwean writer Valerie Tagwira’s novel Trapped (2020, Harare: Weaver Press) is set in Harare between the latter part of 2016 and November 2017, the period leading to the ousting of Robert Mugabe, the late former president of Zimbabwe, from power. The novel provides a glimpse into the lives of three protagonists, all of whom are university graduates, (un)employed, and forced to hustle for survival. Through these characters, Tagwira dramatises the condition of the educated and (un)employed in a dysfunctional economy and in the grips of a persistent crisis, which transforms them into “vagrants, vendors and criminals.” The overarching argument in this article is that the experiences of Tagwira’s characters are prisms through which to determine the effects—on the lives of the educated, both employed and unemployed—of Zimbabwe’s unprecedented and prolonged political and economic stagnation. Drawing on Guy Standing’s concept of the precariat and Michel de Certeau’s idea of the practice of everyday life, this article contends that Tagwira’s representation of the experiences of the educated, unemployed, and employed highlights the economic injustices that are rampant in postcolonial Zimbabwe.

Affirming the Operationalisation of James’s Philosophy of African Redemption in Education in a Postcolonial Zimbabwe

Affirming the Operationalisation of James’s Philosophy of African Redemption in Education in a Postcolonial Zimbabwe

Against the Marginalisation of Western Pedagogics in Postcolonial Zimbabwe

The current textual analysis juxtaposes Western pedagogics with Zimbabwe’s instructional methodology as currently encapsulated in the Curriculum Framework for Primary and Secondary Education for period 2015-2022. This framework is a principal document that continues to enshrine Zimbabwe’s education system while it undergoes review. Thus, the reflection estimates the applicability of Western pedagogics (as informed by Western philosophies) to Zimbabwe’s postcolonial education system. This undertaking comes against the background of Education 5.0 which occasioned the ongoing move by the Ministry of Higher and Tertiary Education, Innovation, Science and Technology Development [Mo HTEISTD] in collaboration with the University of Zimbabwe [UZ] to scrap Western educational philosophies like idealism, empiricism, pragmatism, progressivism and social reconstructionism from Zimbabwe’s teacher education syllabus. Hence, the author is explicitly perturbed by the imminent disregard of Western philosophies and their respective pedagogics as a result of the unmistakable over-exaltation of the heritage-based philosophy within Zimbabwe’s new teacher education syllabus yet to be implemented. In the process of juxtaposing Western pedagogics with Zimbabwe’s instructional methodology, the author observes strong congruence between the former and the latter. Notwithstanding a few points of divergence between Western pedagogics and Zimbabwe’s instructional methodology, the former is applicable to the latter. The current reflection, therefore, demonstrates beyond doubt that the idea of peripherising Western pedagogics (on the grounds that it is informed by Western philosophies)is more emotive than rational. This article, thus, implores the MoHTEISTD and the UZ to revisit with due sobriety their position of wanting to excise Western philosophies and their respective pedagogics, and consider restoring the same to their rightful place in Zimbabwe’s teacher education syllabus so that the country’s entire education sector remains of global resonance.

The Political Economy of Farmland Taxation in Colonial and Postcolonial Zimbabwe, 1914–32 and 1980–c. 2018

This article contributes to the existing literature on the political economy of Zimbabwe by focusing on a hitherto understudied area, land taxation. While scholars have written extensively on the political economy of land in general, not much is available on debates around its taxation. Those that have written on the land question have paid less attention to its taxation. Similarly, recent works on the colony’s fiscal system lack the scope for a detailed examination of the land taxation question. By analysing how different governments of the country operating within distinct historical contexts approached the question of land taxation reinserts land taxation in conversations around the political economy of both colonial and postcolonial Zimbabwe, particularly how politics and economics intersected in shaping policy formulation and implementation. During the colonial period, the main idea behind the imposition of land tax was to force absentee landowners and those who occupied land for speculative purposes to sell their land or develop it; however, the situation changed following the Fast Track Land Reform Programme in 2000. At that stage, the main objective for land taxation shifted from encouraging the selling of land for redistributive purposes to making resettled farmers utilise their land. In either case, land taxation and contestations around it provide another way of looking at the dynamics of state making in settler colonial and post-settler colonial contexts. The article relies on a wide range of sources that include parliamentary debates, newspapers, archival sources, and other political pamphlets and documents. A close analysis of archival sources shows how arguments for and against land taxation changed or persisted across the colonial and postcolonial historical epochs.

Musicking ubuntu/unhu Sustainability Human Rights and Social Justice Activism in the Chimurenga Music of Thomas Mapfumo

During the Second Chimurenga – Zimbabwe Liberation War – music was used to promote social justice and fight the oppressive colonial system. The struggle for justice for all was driven by the spirit of ubuntu/unhu, which embraces the capacity of indigenous African cultures to express humanity, respect, solidarity, and justice relevant to building an inclusive community. Chimurenga music, performed and popularised by Thomas Mapfumo who coined the term in the 1960s, played an important role during the liberation struggle, delivering messages on socio-political concerns, and engaging Zimbabweans on the issues of human rights, corruption, democracy, resistance, and economic transformation. This article discusses the use of Mapfumo’s Chimurenga music in post-colonial Zimbabwe as socio-political discourse and a dialogue generator for sustainability

The Ecumenical Conception of Public Life Praxis: The Case of Zimbabwe

This article discusses the ecumenical conception of public life praxis in postcolonial Zimbabwe as well as the church’s actions to salvage the deteriorating national crisis including the leveling of the political field in the early 2000s. The views of the church are derived from the experiences of the union of ecumenical church organizations formed in 2007 called the Zimbabwe Heads of Christian Denominations (ZHOCD). The ZHOCD, composes of the Zimbabwe Catholic Bishops Conference, the Evangelical Fellowship of Zimbabwe, the Zimbabwe Council of Churches, and the Union for the Development of Apostolic (and Zionist) Churches in Zimbabwe, Africa. The study uses literature, augmented by informal discussions that focused on how the church sought the protection of people’s lives. The study found that the ZHOCD intervened at various critical periods when public life began to degenerate due to state-induced corruption, election violence, and crime. In fact, the church built up specialist organizations to provide required humanitarian services as well as provision of advocacy and protection of human lives by confronting political oppression in Zimbabwe. This forced the ruling party to engage in a palace coup to retain political power in 2017. The article recommends that churches use their power to intervene when accountability institutions have failed because their impartiality to the exercise of political power allows them to perceive public life praxis with a neutral eye. It is further recommended that the ZHOCD needs to engage far and wide groups of Christian organizations of all persuasions if a comprehensive Christian and religious response to a good life can be achieved. The study concluded that it is only the church and other religious organizations that can understand and provide solace to people living in difficult conditions. Keywords: Ecumenism, Public Life, Zimbabwe

Representations of Ageing in Contemporary Zimbabwe: A Gerontological Reading of NoViolet Bulawayo's (2013) We Need New Names.

While many studies have interrogated the novel We Need New Names, on topics such as citizenship, migration, and transnationalism, there is still much more that readers can learn through interrogating the author's depiction of older adults' experiences of ageing in place, ageism, healthy ageing and intergenerational relationships in Post-colonial Zimbabwe. It is argued that in so far as ageing is concerned, the novel presents a very grim picture of older adults caught up and responding to the circumstances of a country in the throes of a deep social, political and economic crisis. Urban poverty is portrayed as a real challenge affecting Zimbabweans and so are the weak social bonds that connect the younger and older generations. Social gerontologists stand to benefit from studying this novel which clearly depicts the challenges of migration, urban renewal and development projects, and poverty on the most vulnerable of all populations - the older adults. The novel portrays the Zimbabwean economic crisis as not just an isolated phenomenon, but one of the processes of globalization, which creates opportunities, and improves people's lives while at the same time destabilizing the lives of older adults by not only severing connections with the younger generations but also with the departed ancestors in the hereafter. The novel provides an important contribution to our understanding of ageing issues in Zimbabwe as it goes against the grain by giving voice and space to older adults who are often ignored by mainstream media.

Human-Animal Relations and Livestock Disease Management in Postcolonial Zimbabwe, c.1980 to 2022

Abstract The history of livestock disease management strategies in colonial Zimbabwe has generally revealed uneven and racialised access to conventional veterinary facilities that favoured white- over black-owned livestock. In light of this context, this article examines the human-animal relationships that emerged in post-colonial Zimbabwe when access to such facilities was liberalised in a new era in which communal livestock owners still had broken interrelations with the state. In articulating this, it also explores factors that precluded communal livestock farmers from raising 'healthy' livestock. Using qualitative methods, it discusses how the postcolonial state failed to provide robust state veterinary services, and demonstrates communal farmers' agency amidst loss to epizootics and enzootics. As this study will show, livestock diseases and the challenges they posed significantly impacted on how humans (communal farmers) determined which animals to raise and how to raise them. It concludes that livestock diseases and the human-animal relationships that emerged out of the quandary posed by the former, had a negative impact on state-communal livestock farmer relationships, and promoted the continued relevance of otherwise officially despised livestock knowledge regimes in Zimbabwe's communal areas.

Relevance of Social Reconstructionism to Education in Postcolonial Zimbabwe

Relevance of Social Reconstructionism to Education in Postcolonial Zimbabwe

“Back to Sender”: Re-Visiting the Belief in Witchcraft in Post-Colonial Zimbabwean Pentecostalism

This paper is a critical analysis of the witchcraft beliefs in Pentecostalism in post-colonial Zimbabwe. While Pentecostals claim “a complete break from the past”, there have emerged new dimensions that show that the belief in witches and witchcraft is deeply entrenched among Pentecostals. It also brings to the fore the underlying aspects of the creativity and innovation that are informed by African spiritual or metaphysical realities. Research since 1980 (when Zimbabwe got her independence from the British) indeed confirmed the existence of witchcraft beliefs and practices, although it was heavily suppressed in the churches. This paper re-visits the belief in witchcraft activities in Pentecostalism through examining new avenues of expression in both older and newer Pentecostal churches. The newer Pentecostal churches, in particular, those founded after 2010, have demonstrated unique innovation in theology. Thus, the belief in witchcraft and witches warrants a fresh examination in light of these new developments. We, therefore argue that the emergence of diverse newer Pentecostal churches in the midst of strong older Pentecostal churches has opened new ways of negotiating the Bible and Shona culture.

Negotiating national identity in postcolonial Zimbabwe through a national dress

AbstractA national dress is a reflection of national consciousness towards the nation and its cultural heritage. Instead of simply being functional, a national dress is also a script that exhibits people's identities. This study examines how Zimbabweans identify with the national dress as a facet of achieving national identity. Qualitative research methods and Gramscianism were employed in the study. It is revealed that the majority of Zimbabweans fail to identify with the national dress due to political, cultural and economic reasons. The national dress is perceived as a campaign strategy being used by the state to achieve political expediency and to be seen as champion of moral as well as cultural regeneration. Some participants associate the dress with cultural imperialism and waste of resources. Very few participants take the dress as a positive step towards the decolonisation of cultural spaces and identities. Conclusively, the majority of Zimbabweans find the dress insignificant in their lives and in national identity construction.

‘Such a Thing Does Not Have a Name in his Country’: Entanglements of Diaspora and ‘Home’ Homes in the Zimbabwean Short Story of Crisis

ABSTRACT Home, crisis and migration have defined the experience and concept of being post-colonial Zimbabwe(an) for the past two decades. Much has been written about the post-coloniality of this entangled experience and about how, in particular, literary fiction re-discourses normative perspectives of the Zimbabwean crisis, the home, the unhomely and trans-national out-migration. Rarely considered a serious discursive site from which to (re)know the intricacies inhabiting versions, configurations and symbolisms of the concept of home (especially in the context of crisis and mobility), the Zimbabwean short story has largely remained underexplored. This article recentres the short story of migration (Farai Mpofu’s ‘The Letter’ and NoViolet Mkha’s ‘Shamisos’) in examining how, as socio-cultural and geo-political constructs, diaspora and ‘home’ homes manifest and orchestrate temporalities, processes, relations, attitudes, places, people, and discourses that shape a certain understanding of Zimbabwe as a contested post-colonial ‘home’. On the one hand, the protagonists in the stories live precariously in ‘refuge’ new homes (Botswana and South Africa respectively), and on the other, they attempt to make sense of their precarity through traumatic re-memories of their haunting ‘home’ home (Zimbabwe). We interpret this connection between these unstable ‘homes’ using a conceptual frame that we term ‘ambivalent continuum of precarity’, a concept we coined from the notions of ‘precarity of place’ and ‘continuum of precarity’ advanced by Susan Banki and Julia Ann McWilliams and Sally Wesley Bonet respectively. Our analysis of literary representations of the home(s) therefore focuses on their complex, multiple and shifting layers, signs, symbolisms and ontologies as constructs that reflect on the crisis of post-coloniality manifest in precarious mobilities and ambivalent homes.

Dynamics of Political Entrepreneurship among the Elites in Post-Colonial Zimbabwe

The political arena is now abounding with people who either live ‘off’ or ‘for’ politics. The ferocious competition for people’s votes is akin to economic competition and as this study submits, the politicians are just like business people. Both productive and predatory profit opportunities have pervaded the Zimbabwean political arena where politics is a type of business. Political positions have afforded some people access to economic resources, making politics the quickest way to untold and unending riches. As a result, the political landscape has invited abuse of power thereby decimating not the physical being but the entire moral fibre of the nation. This study shows how Zimbabwean political leaders have turned out to be the primary controllers and distributors of power and resources with the capacity to penetrate society politically and secure their hegemony. Reference is made to politicians belonging to the ruling party Zimbabwe African National Union-Patriotic Front (ZANU-PF) and the opposition Movement for Democratic Change (MDC), where politicians from either party have exhibited, though not uniformly, patterns of misconduct characteristic of political entrepreneurship. This paper applies the theory of the entrepreneur to political behaviour for the purpose of identifying political entrepreneurs and analytically distinguishing them from other government agents.

Exploring Africanisation of the University Curriculum in Zimbabwe: An Afrocentric Approach

Conversations about Africanisation of university curriculum are part of the epistemic crisis and efforts to debunk Eurocentric thinking characterised by binarisms, racial biases and discriminatory attitudes towards Africans. An Afrocentric perspective troubles conceptualisation of notions of African humanity vis-à-vis the vexing question of epistemological trajectories undertaken in postcolonial Zimbabwe. This study focuses on African efforts to design an African-oriented curriculum at university level. Analysis is provided of worrying issues in Zimbabwe’s curriculum, including the philosophy-guiding universities. This discussion is based on the premise that there is need to re-configure the African epistemic base from which Africans view and conceptualise the world.

“Working within the System”: The Case of Stephen Chifunyise’s Waiting for Constitution

This article investigates the writing techniques of one of Zimbabwe’s prolific playwrights, Stephen Chifunyise. By working within the system, this paper demonstrates how Chifunyise’s political plays are not overtly subversive, but liminal and uniquely tailored to critique the status quo in seemingly “balanced” political and social undertones. Chifunyise to some extent demonstrates the possibilities of working within an intolerant system without risking being censored, imprisoned or exiled, as has been the norm in postcolonial Zimbabwe. The article argues that in an ever-expanding unequal terrain of power and class, where fear and suspicion were palpable, and options narrowing from day to day, it was imperative for artists to innovate ways and means of protesting against the status quo. The study discusses the implications of covert and overt techniques in critiquing political excesses. It highlights how Chifunyise’s stylistic choices were able to navigate the constrictions of the rigid political environment created by the ever-growing narcissism of the ruling party, ZANU PF. The article attempts to evaluate the contributions of theatre towards issues of democracy, tolerance and good governance in Zimbabwe by positioning Chifunyise’s plays as theatre that was committed to the socio-political transformation of the Zimbabwean society.

Reconciliation without Justice: The State and the Invalidation of Victimhood in Post-colonial Zimbabwe, 1980–2017

Abstract This article calls for the location of victimhood rather than political convenience at the centre of Zimbabwe’s peace-building matrix. From the attainment of independence in 1980 to the military assisted end of President Robert Mugabe’s rule in November 2017, Zimbabwe’s episodic cycles of violence were concluded through elite bargained amnesty ordinances, state mediated reconciliation pronouncements and clemency orders that unconditionally benefitted perpetrators at the expense of victims. The forgive-and-forget ethic central to these routine and fractional peace building measures, I argue, not only disregarded the rule of law but negated victimhood and rendered justice divisible. Victims of politically motivated violence could not secure redress through the courts of law against amnestied perpetrators as this would amount to double jeopardy. The government withheld prosecutorial justice against perpetrators and disregarded reparations for victims. Within the national legislative framework ordinary legislators could not move motions compelling the government to compensate survivors of violence because only the vice-presidents and ministers could move motions that had the consequence of either depleting state revenues or causing the imposition of additional taxes on citizens. Considering that ministers who had the prerogative to move such motions served in cabinet at the behest of their intractable president they could hardly embarrass or contradict their principal. Essentially, the Robert Mugabe led Zimbabwean government established legal firewalls for perpetrators of politically motivated violence which ipso facto invalidated the quest for justice by victims of the country’s ever recurring cycles of violence. This authoritarian legalism disregarded victimhood and emboldened human rights violators.