Urther Rwafa

Representations of Matabeleland and Midlands disturbances through the documentary film Gukurahundi: A Moment of Madness (2007)

In the post-independent Zimbabwe, to mention the word ‘Gukurahundi’ is to make a reference to a taboo subject matter. The word ‘Gukurahundi’ invokes profound and bitter memories, torture and murder of more than 20,000 people – mostly of Ndebele origin, in Matabeleland and parts of Midlands. The killings were carried out between 1982 and 1987 by North Korean-trained Fifth Brigade that operated under the auspices of the new government. Gukurahundi: A Moment of Madness (2007) produced by Zenzele Ndebele is a documentary film that memorialises and tells harrowing stories of torture and murder during the times of Gukurahundi. This documentary is also a counter-narrative to monolithic explanations to Gukurahundi atrocities. There is a species of writing that is so narrow that the writing collapses everything to do with the killings to a Shona versus Ndebele dichotomy. In its limitedness, the writing insinuates that all Shona people were involved, and therefore should be made to account for Gukurahundi atrocities. Through Ndeleles documentary, this article contends that this kind of writing is as lethal as Gukurahundi itself because the writing essentialises ‘ethnicity’ and ‘tribal hatred’ as centres of struggle that should dominate the discourses of Gukurahundi.

An encounter with the enigma: Some philosophical reflections on Hosiah Chipanga’s music

ABSTRACT Hosiah Chipanga is dubbed one of the most controversial musicians to have emerged in post-independent Zimbabwe. His music strongly condemns acts of corruption, avariciousness, bribery, nepotism and political power struggles that threaten to tear apart the moral fibre of the Zimbabwean society. Through the songs “Gushungo”, “Dafi” and “Vatsigiri vangu”, Chipanga attempts to salvage truth and sanity out of the “debris” of moral laxity that makes some Zimbabweans fail to go beyond their own limitations. This epistemic search for the “truth” makes Chipangas music generate new levels of social, economic and political consciousness at a time when all hope on redeeming Zimbabwe from possible self-destruction seemed to have been lost. Through what one can call “painful political truth” and “liberation theology”, Chipanga calls forth for Zimbabweans to reflect upon their lives and desist from the habit of “blame shifting” by confronting the problems that afflict them.

Playing the Politics of Erasure: (Post)Colonial Film Images and Cultural Genocide in Zimbabwe

Summary Cultural genocide is much maligned and often simply ignored. Yet it is an epistemic condition powerful enough to cause a physical elimination of a targeted “tribe” or group of people. The aim of this article is to highlight cultural genocide and explore how this type of genocide was used in images in European colonial films to destroy or “erase” some important cultural and traditional activities of black people in Africa. It also critically examines how images in some postcolonial films, directed and produced by white film-makers, are used to perpetuate cultural genocide. Special reference will be made to the film Strike Back Zimbabwe (2010), produced by white film-makers, which insinuates the possible assassination of Zimbabwes president. This article will argue that it is critical to study the nature and manifestations of cultural genocide, which is often relegated to the margins, as a way of understanding the genesis of this condition.

Song and the Zimbabwean film, Flame (1996)

ABSTRACT The Zimbabwean film Flame (1996) encountered its public life in a controversial way. Its producer Ingrid Sinclair aimed to produce a film that would reveal the seamy side of Zimbabwes liberation war, the rape of women being the central motive to the narrative plot of the film that sought to symbolically ‘overthrow’ the regimes of heroic images that the armed struggle had monopolised itself. Some ex-combatants, mainly from the ZANLA wing, staged a demonstration against what they perceived as the films spectacular representation of excessive violence committed on female guerillas by male guerillas. The Zimbabwe African National Union Patriotic Front (ZANU PF) government felt uneasy with sections of the film that underplayed the representation of heroic aspects of the struggle. Each of the contestatory narratives focused on the content of the film defined in racial and gendered power relations. One aspect that is underplayed is the critical retrieval of the contest between primary and secondary genres of orality in the film. The aim of this article is to foreground these aspects underlining the ambiguous role of popular songs within the film. Elements of primary orality in the film work to deny the potential domination of verbal, visual and audiovisual aspects that make-up Flames secondary orality. Meanwhile, a case can be made and revealed that song genre simultaneously affirm and contest the collective identities that nationalist, patriarchal ideologies as well as the female centred narratives of the film seek to command for themselves as the authentic textual correlate of the Zimbabwean liberation struggle. The result is intriguing in that none of the narratives in Flame are allowed to settle as the only ideological absolutes defining the psyche of the liberation movement.

Media and development: the politics of framing gender struggles in the postcolonial zimbabwean shona films

Summary To frame gender struggles is to set an agenda on what people should think about it in respect of the contradictory roles that men and women play in society and culture. In this article, three films in the Shona language – Mwanasikana (1995), Kapfupi (2009) and Nhasi tave nehama (1993) have been sampled out to explore gender struggles inherent in the Zimbabwean society. The premise of this article is rooted in the ideological doubleness of the word framing as both restrictive as well as an instrument for liberation. Framing gender in the discourses of these three films calls attention to perceiving gender struggles in certain ways and in the process manifesting as far as possible the buried narratives that are otherwise obscured in manipulated forms of representing life. It is the duty of film critics to retrieve these silenced and “other” readings because of their potential to suggest to the audiences some alternative opinions and reactions. I advance in this article that while a frame can impose what should be thought about, it does not necessarily dictate how audiences interpret its text(s). This dialectical relation of framing implied in the restriction-liberating dimension of a frame, that emerges as it were from the struggle of verbal and visual images inside a frames boundaries, actually can predispose audiences to want to delve for alternative images of how men and women are depicted in the Shona film.

Song and political satire in the play, The Honourable MP (1987)

ABSTRACT Post-independence Zimbabwe, like some other countries in Africa, is a space disfigured by greedy, unfulfilled promises, corruption and political discontentment. The play, Honorable MP by Gonzo Musengezi subtly captures Zimbabwes socio-political environment with its pot-bellied politicians who drain the national coffers, abuse young girls and abandon the electorate only to surface towards election time. Honourable MP (1987) uses the language of political satire and irony embedded in song and dramatic performance to move its story ahead. What this article analyses through song are levels of conceptualizing political greediness and intolerance that the play Honourable MP evokes. To analyse the songs in the play Honorable MP, Bhakhtins (1984) theory of carnivalesque and laughter of the market-place are invoked to poke fun at and satirically bite at the spectacle of the excessive greed and consumerism of the powerful, and also mock some of the reactionary tendencies of the oppressed.

Textualizing the visual and visualizing the text

ABSTRACT In the absence of the international coverage of the Rwandan genocide, most international audiences came to know the Rwandan tragedy through the film, Hotel Rwanda, which was directed by Terry George, and which came out in 2004 – ten years after the genocide of 1994. The film is a chilling visual account of how nearly one million Tutsis were massacred by Hutu extremists in the span of nearly 100 days. However, following on the “heels” of the production of Hotel Rwanda, Paul Rusesabagina and Tom Zoellner published An ordinary man: the true story behind “Hotel Rwanda” (2006) a book that claims to tell the “truth” behind the film. The question then is: How much of what happened in the Rwandan genocide in 1994 was Hotel Rwanda authorized to tell and not to tell? This article does not seek to confirm whether or not what the film depicts corresponds point for point with what is in the book. Rather, using Derridas concept of “iteration”, this article explores the dynamics that exist when a subject or theme narrativized in one form is repeated in another. The article then links iteration, which produces différance in textual meanings to Bakhtins idea of the “chronotope” as a place of encounter in genres of popular culture. The article argues that films construct meanings during moments of enunciation and that these meanings can significantly alter the narratives contained in a novel on the same theme. A novel can elaborate what film time may not achieve in a limited time-span, while a film can also offer transgressive meanings through its visual language that words on the page of a novel may not be able to animate.

‘Hear our Voices’: Female popular musicians in post-independence Zimbabwe

Abstract Whenever Zimbabwean music is debated in the country or outside, the reflections tend to centre on established male singers such as Thomas Mapfumo, Oliver Mtukudzi, Simon Chimbetu and others. Female singers are on the margin of theoretical works despite the fact that Susan Mapfumo, Dorothy Masuku and Stella Chiweshe have been singing from the 1950s, through the 1970s and certainly up to the present day (in the case of Stella Chiwese). In Zimbabwe today, the performances and creativity of new female singers such as Mbuya Madhuve, Chiwoniso Maraire and Fungisai Zvakavapano2 steal the musical charts. And yet very little research has been done on their work in order to explore the phenomenon of a female singing culture and to explain how they contribute and give shape to the contours of Zimbabwes national culture. The main aim of this article is to consider the musical contributions of Mbuya Madhuve and Chiwoniso Maraire to the debates on democracy in Zimbabwe. These singers have been neglected even in those studies that have analysed the songs of women such as Stella Chiweshe, Dorothy Masuku and Susan Mapfumo (Kwaramba 1997, Vambe 2004, Makwenda 2005). In analysing the lyrics of Mbuya, Madhuve and Chiwoniso we do not try to link the lives of the singers to their creativity.3 We argue, instead, that what female singers intend their songs to mean, and how these very songs are received by the listening audience, constitute the arena of national culture formation. 2Fungisai Zvakavapano is a well-known gospel singer. An analysis of gospel music in Zimbabwe is the subject of an article to be published in 2007. 3See Viet-Wild, F. 1993. Teachers, preachers and non-believers: A social history of Zimbabwean literature. Harare: Baobab Books. This book uses authors’ biographical details to read meaning into their works of art. The approach is dated and undermines a concerted effort to understand the actual works of art.

Culture and Religion as Sources of Gender Inequality: Rethinking Challenges Women Face in Contemporary Africa

Summary The aim of this article is to explore how the contentious issues of culture and religion remain sources of gender inequality and oppression for most women in Africa. Culture refers to the “learned and ideational aspects of human society” (Jenks 1993: 9). In its subjectivity, culture carries the illusion of shared concerns and values in the face of the real and contentious divisions that exist among classes, gender, race and ethnic groups. Religion refers to what people believe in; their spirituality and how this shapes peoples relation with each other and with God – the Almighty. In this article, the concept of “gender” shall be taken to mean roles that are ascribed to men and women. More often than not, these roles can be presented as if they are “fixed”, “unchangeable” and “incontestable”. Culture, religion and gender are problematic terminologies that merit analysis within the context of how these are used in some African communities to justify the oppression of women. In this endeavour, the article will pay special attention to how factors such as biblical notions of the creation of man, polygamy, cultural beliefs on spirit mediums, education, violence, forced marriages, women and property ownership, as well as cultural practices such as circumcision have informed cultural and religious decisions to justify the oppression of women in contemporary Africa. The central argument of this article is that since culture and religion are socially constructed, the manner in which they define gender roles in Africa can be challenged. The idea is to interrogate, deconstruct and demystify gender stereotypes that are constructed by culture and religion to discourage women from participating fully in the development of contemporary Africa.

Tapestries of hope : film, youths and HIV/AIDS in Zimbabwe and South Africa

In Zimbabwe, the marauding effects of the human immunodeficiency virus and acquired immunodeficiency syndrome (HIV/AIDS) are felt in almost all families, among different age groups, class lines, races and creed. The effects are debated and discussed, and different intervention measures are suggested using various forms of media. The communication-science-based interventions and advocacy promoted through film are an integral part of biomedically based scientific research into understanding the nature and manifestations of HIV/AIDS. However, it is worrisome that in most of the research, debates and discussions that focus on HIV /AIDS, adults take the centre-stage. This practice of speaking for youths, and not to and with them, denies the reality that youths are agents of social change whose ‘‘voice’’ and action can have the capacity to transform society for the better in the face of HIV /AIDS. In Zimbabwe, one methodological approach that youths can use to debate and spread the message about the devastating effects of HIV/AIDS is film. In the Zimbabwean section, this article singles out the short film The sharing day (2009) as an informative and communicative tool that features youths dramatising narratives of hope, pain and sorrow as they are confronted by the reality of HIV/AIDS. In the South African section of the article, the abcnews.com documentary (2001) on Xolani Nkosi Johnson’s struggle with HIV/AIDS is used to signal hope. The article critiques documentary filmmaking on Johnson, using criteria such as youth involvement (Harrison et al. 2010; Wang 2006), effectiveness of the message (Hanan 2009) and bonding and bridging social capital (Foulis et al. 2007).