Itai Muwati

The zimbabwean liberation-war novel in shona: An analysis of the symbolic value of the guerrilla as legitimating discourse of nation

Summary The article discusses the Shona war novel published in the early 1980s as an avatar of human-factor content for the fledgling nation. It particularly draws corroborative evidence from selected Shona war narratives published between 1980 and 1985, a time when Zimbabwe attained political independence. While this novel has largely received negative criticism, the article advances the contention that it was/is legiti-mating discourse of the new nationalist government at independence in 1980. The nationalist government needed state-centred narratives that would sanctify its rulership, and obviously the liberation war provided an undisputed source for such narratives, and this trend remains unchanged up to this day. In this regard, the Shona war novel manipulates history for nation building and national identity formation purposes as well as the fortification of a heroic tradition. It achieves this by creatively blending history, myth and legend in a manner that defines the past, present and future trajectory of nation in terms that negate withdrawal and resignation. This makes it inseparable from the painstaking search for and enunciation of ennobling human-factor content and values. Without appropriate human-factor orientation, both the integrity of the nation as well as efforts aimed at nation building would be a far-fetched possibility. The article also points out that the Shona war novel played such a role because its production was controlled by the state-funded Literature Bureau.

An analysis of selected Shona children's songs: Philosophical perspectives on child development

ABSTRACT Over the years childrens songs have been at the core of the physical and cognitive development of a child. They aid in the childs understanding of his social and physical environment and, needless to say, they provide entertainment that helps soothe his or her soul. Indubitably, childrens songs have undergone metamorphosis commensurate with the dynamism of life and historical developments. Hence, using an analytical approach, the article seeks to highlight the transformation in childrens songs, and the impact the new songs have on the physical and cognitive development of a child.

Representations of the body as contested terrain: The Zimbabwean liberation war novel and the politics of nation and nationalism

The article raises insights on the politics of representation, nation and nationalism in Zimbabwe, as these are linked to the 1970s war against colonial settlerism. They are also at the centre of the contest for political power. In this endeavour, it particularly discusses fictive representations of the body, both male and female, as embodiments of the ideas of nation and nationalism and the uses to which history is put in Zimbabwean politics today. The article shows that the liberation war historical narratives invest in the geography of the body, which is a vital resource for any given peoples visibility. In the early 1980s, a time when Zimbabwe attained political independence, the narratives cast the body as larger-than-life, healthy and steely. Narratives published in the late 1980s and beyond depict the body as tormented and vulnerable turf as a result of what the authors identify as the excesses of nationalism. The argument is made that the liberation war historical narratives, which are published in different historical epochs purposefully engage in selective forgetting and remembering. They ingeniously instrumentalize and operationalize the body as a slate for inscribing historical content and ideology. Thus, the contesting uses to which the body is put in historical narratives on the war evince that historical narratives are a veritable stakeholder in the politics of history and the politics of contested hegemony in Zimbabwes recent politics.

Contesting ‘Patriotic History’: Zimbabwe's liberation war history and the democratization agenda

The article is an exegesis of the interface of liberation war history and democracy in the Zimbabwean polity. It draws corroborative evidence from an exclusively women authored historical narrative, Women of resilience: The voices of women ex-combatants (2000) published by Zimbabwe Women Writers (henceforth ZWW). Remarkably, the article observes that the exclusively women authored anthology on liberation war history offers an inventory of a gender based trajectory of memory, thus making gender one of the vital political resources in the nations democratization agenda as well as in contesting historical authoritarianism and reconfiguring historical and political discourse. The womens voices use the gender card to discursively destabilize and delegitimate official memory reconstructions, particularly at a time when liberation war history in Zimbabwe is being brazenly and aggressively deployed as a political resource. Seen in this light, the article further lays it down that renditions of Zimbabwes liberation war history and the meanings/interpretations of and contestations for democracy in Zimbabwes violent politics of contested hegemony are inalienable, inextricable and even fungible. The various contesting categories in the nation use and interpret history for different purposes. The state, represented by the nationalist party (ZANU [PF]) largely operationalizes history as legitimating discourse. On the other hand, the sidelined demographic categories contest narrow ‘patriotic history’ by engineering counter discursive historical accounts.

Woman with voice: An analysis of female agency in Dino Mudondo’s song, ‘Jatirofa’ and Josphat Somanje’s ‘Handibvume’

The article is an exegesis of Shona songs which canonise the mother as a centrepiece of agency and family-centred commitments in times when family integrity comes under threat. Remarkably, the woman is privileged with a voice in a manner that thoroughly debunks stereotypical identities of the Shona/African woman as a personification of victimhood, non-participation, frailty and marginality as epitomised by Eurocentric feminist conceptualisations of women. The songs advance a lyrical agenda which contours musha (home) as a major performance space among the Shona people in which the man, woman and child are judged on the basis of their ability to contribute and participate responsibly. Within this spatial-cultural zone, the woman is cast as a significant life force, courageously vocalising her position in re-arranging, reshaping, challenging and re-ordering familial dynamics. The ownership of voice is critical in human affairs as it is coterminous with the enlargement of options and possibilities in life, something that remains indispensable to human growth and survival. As argued in the article, this participatory inclination by the mother together with the unbridled ownership of voice in the affairs of the family is consistent with Shona epistemological and ontological assumptions. For that reason, the discussion pivots on Africana Womanism, an African-centred paradigm on gender.

‘Toponymic commemoration is not for one sex’: the gender politics of place renaming in Harare

Abstract This article adds to discussions on gender and collective memory. During the war, the nationalist movement was generally gender inclusive. This collective discourse was driven by the need for forming a united front against colonialism. However, this inclusive aspect ceased to exist in the post-independence because post-colonial policies were sexist. After the attainment of independence, the government made attempts to commemorate the war through an extensive place renaming process, among other efforts. Through analysing the place renaming process, this article interrogates the government’s commitment to gender equality and women’s empowerment when it consciously ignores other fronts in which women are marginalised. However, the place renaming process in Zimbabwe shows a nation which is imagined and invented along patriarchal discourses. This article analyses the renaming of the built environment, paying particular attention to streets and buildings in Harare because much of the renaming was done on these two components of the humanly constructed environment. The role of place names as components of the cityscape merits scholarly interrogation because they are neither politically neutral nor innocent. Place names, being part of a political regime’s assemblage of symbols of power, usually further the interests of the politically powerful in the society.

Children’s songs and human factor development: A comparative analysis of Shona children’s songs and imported English nursery rhymes

The article juxtaposes Shona children’s songs and English nursery rhymes in order to unravel the contesting human factor values and epistemological codes and modes of socialisation. It largely approaches the songs as cultural texts that are quintessentially an expression of the ethos and culture of a people. These cultural texts embody a set of values that underpin consciousness and performance. Anchoring the discussion on the fundamentals of the human factor approach, and within the broader matrix of Afrocentricity, the article contends that in neocolonial Africa, children’s socialisation is a contested site. The exposure of children to cultural texts from disparate cultural zones creates a fundamental human crisis. This is precisely the case because the two categories of songs advance diametrically variant and irreconcilable codes of cognitive enrichment. For instance, English nursery rhymes are part of the discursive infrastructure for solidifying European hegemony. They impose a foreign and alien memory which potentially dislocates children’s consciousness. This is manifest in the manner in which ‘London’ and other symbols of the Western order are canonised. On the other hand, indigenous Shona children’s songs provide a functional and value-laden curriculum of life and instruction. The symbolism is drawn from the Shona people’s lived and livable experiences.

Negotiating space, voice and recognition: An analysis of the ‘District Song’ of the Tonga people of Binga, Zimbabwe

ABSTRACT The article discusses the operationalization of geography and history as both method and content in what the Tonga people of Zimbabwe refer to as the District Song. These furnish the axes operandi in the Tonga people’s abiding search for a dignity-affirming memory and other discourses of legitimation. In the face of potential delegitimation of presence and identity and also possible erasure of their history of civilisation, the District Song, composed in 1982, pulsatingly historicises Tonga presence and civilization through a tenacious and unequivocal claim of place. Using lyrical content, the song gives voice to the Tonga, thereby allowing them to tell their own story from the centrality of their perspective. Against this background, the article marshals the contention that the District Song locates Tonga identity in a geographical and spatial matrix in which the fast flowing Zambezi River is manipulated as both a marker of identity and unalloyed history of civilization. As such, the riverine nomenclatures, BasiDonga (People of the River) and Kasambabezi (Only those who know the River can bathe in it [because of crocodiles]) subjected to capricious mutilations and contortions resulting in nomennudum and nomendubium labels such as Tonga and Zambezi, respectively, symbolize the existential cataplexies of contemporary Tonga life. The article further demonstrates that Tonga identity and civilisation, which had subsisted on the Zambezi River, became dislocated through people’s displacement as a result of the flooding caused by the Kariba Dam built in the 1950s. The architectural figuration of the District Song inclines towards an epic, subtly reconstructing the pre-displacement, displacement and post-displacement eras.

A potentially dystrophic era: Analysing the lyrical sociology of selected sungura songs in Zimbabwe in the 1990s and beyond

Abstract This article provides an exegesis of selected sungura songs sung in the 1990s and beyond by some of Zimbabwes renowned musicians. Sungura is a Swahili word for rabbit. The word has become so naturalised in Shona to the extent that it now refers to a popular music genre sung mainly in indigenous languages. The beat is fast and furious and with a lot of emphasis on the footwork. The 1990s mark the incubation of new nation-state politics in which the subaltern overtly registers protestations against pauperising state policies. These protestations eventually explode in 1997 and intensify at the turn of the century, clearly marking ‘a paradigmatic rupture’ and solidifying the separation of the state from the citizens (Ndlovu-Gatsheni). As a result, sungura musicians operationalise art in expressing a national identity characterised by a brand of politics and economics triggering mass dystopia and dystrophy. Remarkably, these direct protests coincide with critical discourses coming from different literary artists and scholars, who also begin to articulate revisionist discourses that indict the nationalist ideologies. Among them are novels such as Pawns (1992), Echoing Silences (1997) and Mapenzi (1999). In the post-2000 era, there are numerous publications that begin to deconstruct the nationalist ideology with its penchant for heroism and unparalleled political and historical greatness. Among them are the Zimbabwe Women Writers authored Women of Resilience: The voices of women ex-combatants, Fay Chungs Re-living the Second Chimurenga: Memories from Zimbabwes liberation struggle), Raftopoulos and Mlambos Becoming Zimbabwe: A history from the pre-colonial period to 2008 and Edgar Tekeres A lifetime of struggle (2007).