Zifikile Gambahaya

Tonga Orature as Historical Record: An Afrocentric Exegesis of the Dialectics Between African Human Factor Agency and the European Enslavement of Place

The article critically examines the history of the Tonga people’s experiences of civilization and displacement from their life-affirming geographical location as enunciated through their oral forms, particularly, songs and other forms of reminiscence. The experiences of the Tonga people of Zimbabwe are largely overlooked in scholarship because they are considered one of the so-called minority groups, meriting little or no attention at all. Informed by an Afrocentric approach, in which it is “valid to posit Africa as a geographical and cultural starting base in the study of peoples [of Africa and] of African descent,” the article brings out an understanding of African orature as a redoubtable expression of the African classical past and the subsequent subversion and decimation of African human factor agency as a result of the European enslavement of place. In this regard, the authors contend that Africologists would do well to study African people’s orature, as it often reflects their story from their own perspective.

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.

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).