Second Chimurenga Research Articles

From Politicization to Vigilance: The Post-war Legacies of Wartime Victimization

Following regime change, how does wartime victimization shape political attitudes and participation in the long run? I argue that it increases post-war political vigilance: greater sensitivity to illiberal politics and poor governance, but with dampened effects on participation under authoritarianism due to greater fear of harm. I examine Protected Villages (PVs) in the Zimbabwe Liberation War (1972–1979). PVs, a Rhodesian counterinsurgency strategy, was a large-scale and violent resettlement program that intensified politics’ role in civilian lives. I map PV-affected areas within pre-war and current-day administrative divisions, and estimate a difference-in-discontinuities regression to identify PVs’ long-run effects. PV-affected areas report greater sensitivity to the country’s illiberal politics and are more critical of poor government performance today. Contrary to existing literature however, I find no evidence of increased political participation and pro-social behavior in the long run, nor hardened support for the ruling party—whom these areas had once supported during war.

Insights Into the Impacts of Guerrilla Violence in Shaping War-Time Relationships in Rural Zimbabwe, 1966–1979

Using Zaka, a district located in Masvingo province, this study scrutinises the nature and dynamics of Zimbabwe's liberation war in the countryside. It focuses on the memories of the liberation war in Zaka to demonstrate how guerrilla violence defined guerrilla–civilian relations in rural Zimbabwe. The study shows that the liberation war in the countryside was a struggle for power, domination and influence right from the peasants, chimbwidos and mujibhas (young female and male guerrilla assistants respectively) to the lowest-ranked guerrilla up to the top general.

The Development of Christian Care Aid in Zimbabwe: The Case of Matabeleland Region, 1967-c.1990

The organisation, Christian Care, was formed during Zimbabwe's liberation war in 1967 to disburse emergency aid to victims of the war and political repression. From 1967 to about 1990, it provided emergency relief and charity aid to victims of war and the marginalised people in Zimbabwe. This article explores the development of Christian Care aid from its inception to around 1990, tracing the changes over time. It shows how Christian Care managed to respond to the situation on the ground even when such an agenda was not in line with what the government of the day practised. Between 1967 and 1980, Christian Care's aid was largely emergency based, assisting war victims with food, clothes and money. After 1980, the nature and composition of aid changed to development projects such as drilling of boreholes, construction of schools, clinics and dams and assisting communities to set up income generating projects like market gardens. Using a qualitative research methodology with predominantly archival sources, I explore the development of Christian Care aid in the Matabeleland region of Zimbabwe, demonstrating how the organisation provided assistance to the repressed and marginalised.

The representation of women in ZANU and ZAPU propaganda during the Zimbabwe War of Liberation

ABSTRACT This article considers the ways in which women were presented in the propaganda of ZANU and ZAPU during the conflict in Rhodesia. In doing this it seeks to build upon existing studies of women, however with a greater focus upon the media output of the nationalist organisations than has previously been the case. In doing so, it shows how ZANU and ZAPU sought to use the experiences of women for their own purposes, as well as how they developed a particular form of public feminist thought, rooted outside that in the West. It also highlights the tensions which existed within the propaganda and ideology of the two groups, whereby women had to be both powerless victims and at the same time significant political and military agents. In doing this it shows how it was difficult for them to create a single narrative of women’s liberation during the Zimbabwe Liberation War.

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

Control, Coercion, and Cooptation

AbstractThis article examines how rebels govern after winning a civil war. During war, both sides—rebels and their rivals—form ties with civilians to facilitate governance and to establish control. To consolidate power after war, the new rebel government engages in control through its ties in its wartime strongholds, through coercion in rival strongholds where rivals retain ties, and through cooptation by deploying loyal bureaucrats to oversee development in unsecured terrain where its ties are weak. These strategies help to explain subnational differences in postwar development. The author analyzes Zimbabwe's Liberation War (1972–1979) and its postwar politics (1980–1987) using a difference-in-differences identification strategy that leverages large-scale education reforms. Quantitative results show that development increased most quickly in unsecured terrain and least quickly in rival strongholds. Qualitative evidence from archival and interview data confirms the theorized logic. The findings deepen understanding of transitions from conflict to peace and offer important insights about how wartime experiences affect postwar politics.

The Zimbabwean war of liberation as a humanitarian and environmental tragedy : an ecocritical interrogation of Shimmer Chinodya's Harvest of Thorns

The Zimbabwean war of liberation as a humanitarian and environmental tragedy : an ecocritical interrogation of Shimmer Chinodya's Harvest of Thorns

Spiritual Temporalities of the Liberation War in Zimbabwe

This paper contributes to our understanding of the spiritual and invisible aspects of African military landscapes through a historical and ethnographic study of Zimbabwe liberation war guerrillas' spiritual practices. Guerrillas mobilized and deployed their spiritual beliefs and practices in the execution of the 1970s liberation war against well equipped Rhodesian forces, and in subsequent deployments as members of the post-colonial national army. Guerrillas' understanding of their landscape of deployment as spiritual influenced their engagement with it's physical materials such as trees and caves and wild animals as active objects representing the ancestors. The paper argues that the spirituality of African military landscape challenges dominant western conceptualizations of military landscapes as passive sites that are dominated and shaped by violent military activities. Spirituality makes African military landscapes active and affective beyond the dictates of human [militay] action, therefore shaping and controlling ways in which the military engage with it.

Names, labels, the Zimbabwean Liberation War veteran and the third Chimurenga: the language and politics of entitlement in post-2000 Zimbabwe

ABSTRACTThis article investigates the Zimbabwean Liberation War veterans’ naming and labelling of individuals and groups opposed to the Fast Track Land Reform Program (FTLRP) in post-2000 Zimbabwe. As instruments of political coercion, the two processes participated in the production of images of individuals and groups opposed to land expropriation, particularly white farmers and political opponents in the Movement for Democratic Change (MDC), that were at once grotesque and indicative of the polarized nature of political discourse in post-2000 Zimbabwe. The article evinces that naming and labelling participated in the articulation of the Zimbabwean Liberation War veterans’ sense of entitlement to land, resources and preferential treatment by the post-2000 Zimbabwe African National Union-Patriotic Front (ZANU-PF) government of Robert Mugabe. Using the Zimbabwean Liberation War context in which post-2000 Zimbabwean political culture of framing reality in exclusionary terms finds its roots and inspiration, the article explores how veterans of the Zimbabwean Liberation War used names and labels to categorize people and phenomena, separating so-called patriots from exploiters and sell-outs. The discussion also explicates how the Zimbabwean Liberation War veterans held themselves up as yardsticks of commitment to patriotic citizenship in the context of a perceived ZANU-PF war against neo-colonialism.

Unsettled spirits, performance and aesthetics of power: the public life of liberation heritage in zimbabwe

ABSTRACTThis paper investigates how meanings of liberation heritage have been constructed and institutionalised in Zimbabwe, and how this has elicited responses from local communities. While most treatises on liberation heritage have focussed on the politics of election of heroes and heroines or the contested meanings and symbolism of sites, archives or objects associated with liberation heritage, this analysis, drawing from the Zimbabwean context, examines the strategies used to frame ideas and practices around liberation heritage. The article brings together different practices centred around the Zimbabwean liberation war, where practices around burials became a way of renewing the legitimacy of the state in a period of increasing economic and political turmoil in post 2000 Zimbabwe. The selected curatorial projects and state sponsored commemorations or rituals, show that the conferment of official heritage status to spaces, sites, routes or personalities associated with liberation wars provides space for public performance of the state’s narrative of the past, conferring it with an accentuated visibility in the public sphere. The paper highlights the strategies deployed and the language used to entrench the liberation war narrative as part of official heritage, all choreographed and performed at burials, visitations, rituals and other commemorative practices. While the configuration of the war past as official heritage confers visibility to the state, it also produces a fractured and highly contested heritage complex, stimulated by emerging counter practices that resist state-sponsored forms of memorialisation. The production of heritage in post-2000 Zimbabwe points to the intensifying politicisation of heritage in times of increasing economic and political tensions. The developments foreground the fluid and ever-changing nature of the uses of heritage and are a demonstration of how tropes of heritage continue to take a central role in contemporary politics in Southern Africa.

Exploring the Role of Spirituality in Coping With War Trauma Among War Veterans in Zimbabwe

Spirituality affects people’s well-being and can be used to cope with traumatic experiences. The present study explored the role of spirituality in coping with war-related trauma among war veterans who fought in the Zimbabwean war of liberation between 1966 and 1979. Sixteen in-depth interviews and two focus group discussions were conducted using a semistructured interview guide. Data were analyzed using thematic content analysis. The study revealed the following seven themes that pointed to the role of spirituality in coping with war trauma: connectedness with ancestors, spirit mediums help to cope with fear, spirit of war, role of war songs and dances, spirituality and unity, spirit mediums helped with moral issues, and believing in God. The study recommends the need to be culturally sensitive to understand an individual’s coping responses when faced with war-related trauma.

Time as Myth, Time as History in Afrophone Novels on Ujamaa (Tanzanian Socialism) and the Second Chimurenga/Umvukela (Zimbabwean Liberation War)

A central discussion in African Philosophy concerns the “African concept of time,” famously theorized by John S. Mbiti. Mbiti makes a distinction between a circular and a linear concept of time, associating the former with Africa and the latter with the West. Critical of such essentialist binaries, this article develops a nuanced understanding of the concepts of time and history expressed in two categories of novels in three African languages: Ujamaa novels in Swahili (Tanzania) and Chimurenga/Umvukela novels in Shona and Ndebele (Zimbabwe). While Ujamaa novels often operate on a circular concept of time, the Zimbabwean novels are based on a view of time as linear progress. The article argues that these concepts of time are determined by the genre conventions of the novel and the tale and that the adoption and hybridization of these genres has been decisively impacted by the state ideologies in Tanzania and Zimbabwe.

Masculinities and Femininities in Zimbabwean Autobiographies of Political Struggle: The Case of Edgar Tekere and Fay Chung

SummaryBecause masculinities and femininities are socially and culturally constructed, they often play significant roles in constructing identities and distinguishing one another. Femininities and masculinities therefore play a key role in nation-building and in the sustenance of national identities. In this article I explore, through the autobiographies of two luminaries of Zimbabwe's liberation war, how individual politicians configure their own gender identities and consequently the masculine and feminine identities of others. I posit that the autobiographical mode allows for intimate gendering of the liberation discourse. I also argue that Tekere celebrates the heroic masculine self, preferring military femininities to domestic ones. He privileges his own masculinity while “feminising” Robert Mugabe. Chung debunks the perceived manliness of political struggle and its representations by hailing the participation of women in the struggle for liberation. Her narration of their femininity is in relation to the nation and is structured around the struggle for national liberation, female emancipation and nation-building. Typical of female life-writing, Chung exhibits a relational sense of identity in which the autonomous self is subordinate to or subsumed in the collective. Hers becomes a projection and celebration of heroic femininities. I conclude this article by asserting that masculine and feminine identities in Zimbabwe's political discourse remain bound up with the historical processes of colonial and nationalist liberation struggles.

O'Gorman, Eleanor. The front line runs through every woman: women and local resistance in the Zimbabwean liberation war. xv, 192 pp., maps, tables, bibliogr. Woodbridge: James Currey, 2011. £17.99 (paper)

O'Gorman, Eleanor. The front line runs through every woman: women and local resistance in the Zimbabwean liberation war. xv, 192 pp., maps, tables, bibliogr. Woodbridge: James Currey, 2011. £17.99 (paper)

The Front Line Runs through Every Woman: women and local resistance in the Zimbabwean liberation war by Eleanor O'Gorman Woodbridge: James Currey, 2011. Pp. xv+192, £17·99 (pbk)

The Front Line Runs through Every Woman: women and local resistance in the Zimbabwean liberation war by Eleanor O'Gorman Woodbridge: James Currey, 2011. Pp. xv+192, £17·99 (pbk)

The front line runs through every woman: women & local resistance in the Zimbabwean Liberation War

The front line runs through every woman: women & local resistance in the Zimbabwean Liberation War

The Dilemmas of Liberation in Southern Africa: The Case of Zimbabwean Liberation Movements and Botswana, 1960–1979

This article analyses the dilemmas which the liberation struggle in Southern Africa, and specifically the Zimbabwean war of liberation, presented both for the many Zimbabwean refugees in Botswana and for the Botswana government. As a neighbouring state of both Rhodesia and South Africa, Botswana sought to follow a policy of diplomacy in resolving conflicts between the minority white regimes and the liberation movements and balancing the different pressures on it: on the one hand, it opposed the use of Botswana as a base from which political violence could be employed against neighbouring states; on the other, it opposed regimes that denied their citizens basic human rights and sought to show solidarity with them by offering political sanctuary to ‘genuine’ refugees from Zimbabwe. This strategy, however, had only limited success and created numerous tensions and contradictions of policy. Rhodesian security agents operating in Botswana were a serious danger to refugees, the Botswana government and the leaders of the liberation movements. Moreover, the policy invited a number of armed incursions from Rhodesia and South Africa. At the same time, the Botswana government's approach to the question of the accreditation of representatives of liberation movements seriously disadvantaged the movements, whilst its deportation of Zimbabweans considered to be ‘undesirable’ jeopardised their lives and created frustration and despair among freedom fighters and the leaders of liberation movements. Nor did it always smooth relations with other African neighbours: thus, for example, the treatment of refugees held at Francistown in transit to Zambia led to misunderstandings between the Zambian and Botswana governments. In the light of these tensions, it is argued here that whilst Botswana did not support the use of violence to liberate Zimbabwe in the early years after its independence in 1966, it gradually moved towards accepting the inevitability of armed struggle in the early 1970s.

Rethinking the Boundaries of the Nation: Histories of Cross Border Mobility and Zimbabwe's New 'Diaspora'

This article explores the role of cross-border mobility in the history of Zimbabwean nationalism. It does so with the purpose of raising the following question. If modern territorial nationalist ideas in Zimbabwe and elsewhere have developed partly through transnational flows of people, ideas and connections, is it possible to write a national history that is sensitive to context, plurality and contestation through a narrative that is restricted by state borders? By confining the narrative to the space within state borders, does one inadvertently reinforce the idea of a natural and singular national unity and belonging? To think through this question, the article briefly revisits the historiography of labour migrancy and approaches to the politics of exile and solidarity during Zimbabwe's liberation war before exploring the implications of the growth of an international 'diaspora' during the recent crisis.

The Civil War Roots of Military Domination in Zimbabwe: The Integration Process Following the Rhodesian War and the Road to ZANLA Dominance

This article addresses the issue of what happens after a civil war ends. In particular it traces the development of political authoritarianism from an initial multiparty democracy and military integration following a civil war to one-party control and the breakdown of civil security following the rise of an alternative opposition. The post-conflict situation within Zimbabwe shows clearly how one faction was able to use their position to dismantle and incorporate opposition groups into a one-party state, despite considerable violence between former allies over seven years. A narrative history of the process and its aftermath provides a valuable insight into how these processes developed and the implications of actions taken during an integration process itself for subsequent political development.

Discipline and Punishment in ZANLA: 1964–1979

Discipline is a subject more referred to than examined in the history of Zimbabwe's liberation war. While there are references to the administration of punishment in specific circumstances or, more often, contemptuous remarks by Rhodesian soldiers regarding the unprofessional conduct of guerrillas in general, few studies have investigated the systematic deployment of disciplinary structures in Zimbabwe's guerrilla movements. Drawing on internal sources, this article explores this subject by focusing on the Zimbabwe National Liberation Army (ZANLA), the armed wing of the Zimbabwe African National Union (ZANU), in the 1960s and 1970s. These sources show that there was a thin line between the party and its army. The rules governing both were mutually interchangeable under the principle that the ‘vanguard party’ should guide the gun. The orthodox view regarding the ‘triumph of the military’ in ZANU is confirmed, but the article goes further to demonstrate how the ZANU High Command gained the capacity to determine the management of discipline and the administration of punishment such that it was, in practice, the gun that guided the party. With time ZANU became highly militarised. The article identifies three phases of this process. Towards the end of the war, and after ZANU and ZANLA had undergone a series of internal crises, they faced a serious challenge of ‘anarchism’ in the operational zones. This required ZANU's renewed Central Committee to organise a strategy to restore order. This strategy, spearheaded by the Departments of Defence and of the Commissariat, inadvertently elevated these two units as the party's most influential and powerful organs, a legacy that haunts ZANU to this day.