Academic literature on the topic 'Postcolonialism – Zimbabwe'

AbstractThis paper discusses hybridity as a strategy of survival for those caught between the languages of their colonization and their indigenous languages and also illustrates how, through hybridization, postcolonial subjects use colonial languages without privileging colonial languages. Drawing on Bakhtinian notions of hybridization, this paper shows colonial and indigenous languages contesting each other's authority, challenging and unmasking the hegemony of English and to some extent Shona. Ndebele and Shona are indigenous languages spoken in Zimbabwe, Africa. However, this paper conceives the relationship of English and Ndebele as not always contestatory but as accomodating. Using Ogunyemi's (1996) notion of palaver, the paper extends our understanding of hybridity as marking both contestation and communion. Of particular significance is the way in which English is criticized even in the using of it in Amakhosi plays. This analysis of hybridity highlights the contradictoriness of colonized identity and establishes and confirms the idea of a hybridized postcolonial cultural and linguistic identity.

ResumenDoris Lessing, one of the most significant postcolonial writers, made her debut as a novelist with The Grass Is Singing (1950). The novel examines the relationship between Mary Turner, a white farmer’s wife, and her black African servant in Rhodesia (now Zimbabwe) during the 1940s. The novel does not only deal with racial politics between whites and blacks, but also explores feminist issues. Moreover, the description of Mary Turner merits closer examination on account of Lessing’s incomparable depictions of the female psyche in the midst of restrictions imposed by gender, race and class. Core themes of the novel include a failed marriage, the sexual obsessions mainly on the part of whites, and the fear of black power and revenge which still obtain today while the British Colonial past is only a memory.Key words: Rhodesia, feminism, racism, colonialism, postcolonial, social issues Titulo en español: The Grass Is Singing de Doris Lessing: una apología de la sociedad de Rodesia como drama postcolonial psicosocialResumen: Una de las escritores poscoloniales más relevantes, Doris Lessing, comenzó su carrera como novelista con The Grass Is Singing (1950). La novela examina la relación entre María Turner, esposa de un granjero blanco y su sirviente negro africano en Rodesia, actual Zimbabue, durante la década de los años 40 del pasado siglo. La novela no sólo trata de la política racial entre blancos y negros, sino también explora temas feministas. Sin embargo, la descripción que Lessing nos proporciona de Mary Turner aporta una perspectiva única, un examen detenido de la psique femenina en medio de situaciones de raza, sexo y sexo, la raza y problemática social. Los motivos internos de la novela nos muestran una temática en torno a un matrimonio fracasado, la obsesión por la sexualidad, mayoritariamente por parte de los blancos, y el miedo al poder negro y a la venganza; algo todavía muy válido en la actualidad cuando el pasado colonial británico sólo permanece como un legado.Palabras clave: Rodesia, feminismo, racismo, colonialismo, postcolonialismo, temas sociales.

The study critically examines public art in postcolonial Zimbabwe‘s cities of Harare and Bulawayo. In a case by case approach, I analyse the National Heroes Acre and Old Bulawayo monuments, and three contemporary sculptures – Dominic Benhura‘s Leapfrog (1993) and Adam Madebe‘s Ploughman (1987) and Looking into the future (1985). I used a qualitative research methodology to collect and analyse data. My research design utilised in-depth interviews, observation, content and document analysis, and photography to gather nuanced data and these methods ensured that data collected is validated and/or triangulated. I argue that in Zimbabwe, monuments and public sculpture serve as the necessary interface of the visual, cultural and political discourse of a postcolonial nation that is constantly in transition and dialogue with the everyday realities of trying to understand and construct a national identity from a nest of sub-cultures. I further argue that monuments and public sculpture in Zimbabwe abound with political imperatives given that, as visual artefacts that interlace with ritual performance, they are conscious creations of society and are therefore constitutive of that society‘s heritage and social memory. Since independence in 1980, monuments and public sculpture have helped to open up discursive space and dialogue on national issues and myths. Such discursive spaces and dialogues, I also argue, have been particularly animated from the late 1990s to the present, a period in which the nation has engaged in self-introspection in the face of socio-political change and challenges in the continual process of imagining the Zimbabwean nation. Little research focusing on postcolonial public art in Zimbabwe has hitherto been undertaken. This study addresses gaps in this literature while also providing a spring board from which future studies may emerge.
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The present dissertation will analyze the relations established between the Body, the Land and the Memory in three novels of the Zimbabwean poet and novelist Chenjerai Hove: Bones (1988), Shadows (1991) e Ancestors (1996). The study of the novels revealed the deep relation that the natives of Rhodesia, nowadays called Zimbabwe, had with their lands and their ancestors. The objective of this paper is to present the profound changes that happened in the culture of the Shona ethnicity after the arrival of the colonizers and the missionaries in the end of the XIX Century. The perspective adopted to this criticism observes in each of the novels the characters’ native bodies in a intense struggle between two misbalanced forces that used to be the fundaments of the ancient Zimbabwean reality. In one side there is the Land, considered holy because of its mystical aspect. The Land carries the umbilical cords of every newborn and the bones of all deceased, and it is the home of the ancestors, called Pasí. On the other side rest the Ancestors, responsible for the accumulation of knowledge. The Ancestors represent the collective memory of the Shona people; they connect the individuals to nature due to their transcendence. With the Ancestors each Shona can talk to the land and be heard through the religious ears of their ancient forefathers. However, when the colonizers arrived, called those without knees because of their pants, they imposed, with violence, a whole new culture to that ancient model of existence. This work will evaluate the consequences of the imposition of the colonizer’s culture, present in every page of each novel; what caused the loss of local religious traditions, deeply rooted moral behaviors, farming techniques and so many other aspects of the colonized culture. For the Body, the physical violence, the imposition of the English language and the prohibition of the local dialects; for the Land, the new and imported profit-driven farming cultures; for the Memory, the imposition of Christianity. Because of those material and immaterial wounds the new generations are forced to recover their ancestors’ memory by recreating an updated version of their past. Following this track, this study also dedicates its pages to the observation of the subaltern and peripheral position of the black Zimbabwean woman, being sexually and intellectually discriminated by the patrilinear system in a society that must evolve to solve their own cultural problems of discrimination as well as those created by the colonization.
A presente dissertação irá analisar as relações estabelecidas entre o Corpo, a Terra e a Memória em três romances do poeta e romancista Zimbabuense, Chenjerai Hove: Bones (1988), Shadows (1991) e Ancestors (1996). O estudo dos romances revelou a profunda relação que os habitantes da antiga Rodésia, hoje Zimbábue, tinham com suas terras e com seus ancestrais. O objetivo deste trabalho é apresentar as profundas mudanças que ocorreram na cultura da etnia Shona, depois da chegada dos colonizadores e missionários, no final do século XIX. A perspectiva adotada por esta crítica observa em cada um dos corpos dos personagens nativos uma intensa luta entre duas forças desequilibradas, que costumavam ser o fundamento da realidade ancestral do Zimbábue. De um lado tem-se a Terra, considerada sagrada por seu aspecto místico. A Terra carrega os cordões umbilicais de todos os recém-nascidos e os ossos de todos os que já se foram, ela é a casa dos ancestrais, chamada por eles de Pasí. Do outro lado estão os ancestrais, responsáveis pelo acúmulo de conhecimento. Os ancestrais representam a memória coletiva do povo Shona; eles conectam os indivíduos à natureza através de sua transcendência. Com os Ancestrais, cada Shona pode conversar com a terra e ser escutado através dos ouvidos místicos de seus pais espirituais. No entanto, quando chegam os colonizadores, chamados de aqueles sem joelhos, por causa de suas calças, eles impuseram, através da violência, uma cultura totalmente nova para aquele modelo ancestral de existência. Esta dissertação avalia as consequências da imposição da cultura do colonizador, presente em cada página de todos os romances, o que causa a perda das tradições religiosas locais, comportamentos morais profundamente enraizados, técnicas de manejo da terra, e tantos outros aspectos da cultura colonizada. Para o Corpo, a violência física, a imposição da língua inglesa e a proibição dos dialetos locais. Para a Terra, nova técnicas de cultivo do solo e de manejo de animais, direcionadas para o lucro. Para a Memória, a imposição do Cristianismo. Por causa dessas feridas materiais e imateriais, as novas gerações são forçadas a recuperar sua memória ancestral através de uma recriação atualizada de seu passado. Seguindo essa trilha, este estudo também se dedica a observação da mulher negra zimbabuense, sendo discriminada sexual e intelectualmente por um sistema patrilinear em uma sociedade que deve resolver seus próprios problemas culturais de discriminação, assim como aqueles legados pela colonização.

Through a close reading of Tsitsi Dangarembga’s Nervous Conditions, this essay shows the key links between the novel and Frantz Fanon’s major works. In addition to providing a deeper understanding of Dangarembga’s narrative as a whole, it takes into particular consideration the em­bedded criticism of colonialism in the text. The psychological conditions implied by the title play a central role: the essay shows how these conditions relate to the colonial situation and how refusing to consent to subjugation can be understood as radical criticism of colonial, Christian, as well as patriarchal superstructures as well as forming clear opposition to the colonial institution. The analysis is primarily based on Fanon and his comprehension of other theorists. It also draws on the ideas of Homi K. Bhabha, which will provide an additional level of understanding regarding questions about colonial identities in general, and Dangarembga’s characters Tambu, Nyasha, and Babamukuru in particular.

Taking an interdisciplinary approach, this research explores Zimbabwean literary and other cultural texts within the broader context of the construction of identities and the politics of inclusion and exclusion in nationalist and oppositional discourses. It also analyzes two texts by major non-Zimbabwean African writers to examine the thematic links between Zimbabwean and other African writing. Through combining historical, anthropological and political approaches with postcolonial, postmodern and feminist critical theories, the thesis explores the ways in which African writing and performance represent alternative histories to official versions of the nation. It further investigates questions of gender and their significance in nationalist discourses and shows how writing on war, trauma and healing informs and develops readers’ understanding of the relationship of the past to the present. Considered together as a coherent body of work, the published items submitted in this thesis explore how Zimbabwean and other African writers, through re-visioning history and writing from oppositional or marginal positions, intervene in political debates and suggest new transformative ways of constructing and negotiating identities in postcolonial societies.

Doctor of Philosophy A Doctoral Thesis submitted to the School of Language, Literature and Media Studies, Faculty of Humanities, University of the Witwatersrand, Johannesburg, South Africa; in fulfillment of the requirements for the award of PhD in Media Studies 2015
This study blends critical discourse analysis with ethnographic inquiry into the nature of discursive constructions of subaltern identities in postcolonial contexts of news production by mainstream news organisations in colonial and post-independence Zimbabwe. The main thrust of the study was to establish continuities and disjunctures in newsroom cultures of production in colonial and in post-independence situations in which marginalized former colonial subject populations are caught up. It employs a multidimensional synchronic and diachronic case study approach where one newspaper organization specifically The Herald’s coverage of episodic forced removals of subject populations is studied across different historical moments. The paper’s coverage is then critically compared and contrasted with that of other newspapers then in existence and contemporaneously operating at that time. The selected historical moments of forced removals were only heuristically chosen to the extent that they demonstrated the greatest potential for drawing media attention and thus present an opportunity for the ordinary subaltern populations to appear in the news. The content analysis generally tended to demonstrate that the same canibalesque evident in the newsification of subjects of colonial domination was pretty much evident in the way news in the post-independence period constructed the subalternity of marginalized groups. The institutionalization of the so called universal news values tend towards symbolic annihilation of subaltern ways of knowing. The newspaper as a cultural form, this study established, remains ill-suited and instrumentalised to serve the ends of emancipation and empowerment. The press in Zimbabwe retain many traces of its colonial parentage with serious negative ramifications for their claim to a democratic function

This thesis conducts postcolonial readings of 1 Kings 21:1-29 within the context of the struggle for land in Zimbabwe. It is an attempt to investigate the historical and sociological contexts of Zimbabwe and Ancient Israel. The thesis traces the land issue trajectory across both the colonial and post-colonial terrain of Zimbabwe. In the process, this thesis identifies four key moments which it considers as major in the struggle for land in Zimbabwe, which are: the historical moment of the colonization of Zimbabwe; the moment of the Second War of Liberation; the moment of the independent Zimbabwe; and the moment of the current land invasions and land grabbing in Zimbabwe. The thesis has made an attempt to explain the significance of land in Ancient Israel, in an endeavour to understand why Naboth the Jezreelite would not easily succumb to Ahab`s demand for his family land. In this way the Naboth story is located within its socio-historical context. It has also demonstrated that the advent of the monarchy introduced a tributary socio-economic system which replaced the egalitarian social order. In addition, this dissertation has shown that the monarchy introduced land expropriation in Israel and Judah, which was a departure from the inalienability of land, a concept very popular with pre-monarchic Israel and Judah. The issues of the abuse of power and the injustice that was prevalent under both the united as well as the divided monarchies were also discussed At the end, the thesis has attempted to bring the context of the struggle for land in Zimbabwe in dialogue, contrapuntally with the context of the confrontation over land between Ahab and Naboth the Jezreelite, that is, allowing both similarities and differences to manifest or emerge in this dialogue, so that a complete interpretation of the text may be achieved by allowing the context and the text to interrogate and investigate each other.
Thesis (M.Th.)-University of KwaZulu-Natal, Pietermaritzburg, 2008.

This study looks at the construction of white identity within postcolonial conflict in Zimbabwe. Is it possible to be white and African? And how will the white African look when his identity as 'privileged' is stripped from his/her? This study also challenges the church to respond to the endemic violence by finding ways of bringing hope and healing. The role that trauma plays in our ongoing narratives is explored along with ways to exit these cycles without re-traumatizing large sectors of the community who are considered 'outsiders'. It ends with questioning the usefulness of 'white' and 'race', except as a political construction that benefits those in power to be able to tap into past historic pain and injustice.
Philosophy, Practical & Systematic Theology
M. Th. (Practical Theology (Pastoral Therapy))

Bibliography: leaves 215-230
This thesis uses a postcolonial framework to analyse the construction and representation of identities of Shona women in selected black and white Zimbabwean-authored fiction in English published between 1890 and 2015. The study traces meanings associated with Shona women’s identities as ascribed by dominant powers in every epoch to create narratives that reflect the power dynamics. The thesis argues that identities are complex, characterized by various intersections such as race, gender, class and ethnicity. Shona women have to negotiate their identities in various circumstances resulting in shifting multiple identities. The thesis focuses on how such identities are represented in the selected texts. Findings reveal that the colonial project sought to write the Shona women out of existence, and when they appeared negative images of dirt, slothfulness and immorality were ascribed to them. These images continued after independence to justify male dominance of women. However, the lived experience of women shows they have agency and tend to shift identities in relation to specific circumstances. Shona women’s identities are dynamic and multifarious as they aim at relevance in their socioeconomic and political circumstances. Representations of Shona women’s identities are therefore influenced by the aim of the one representing them. All representations are therefore arbitrary and must be interrogated in order to deconstruct meaning and understand the power dynamics at play. The works analysed are Olive Schreiner’s Trooper Peter Halket of Mashonaland (1897), Doris Lessing’s The Grass is Singing (1950), Yvonne Vera’s Nehanda (1993), Cythia Marangwanda’s Shards (2014), Valerie Tagwira’s The Uncertainty of Hope (2006), Violet Masilo’s The African Tea Cosy (2010), Eric Harrison’s Jambanja (2006), Dangarembgwa’s The Book of Not (2006), Christopher Mlalazi’s Running with Mother (2012) and Brian Chikwava’s Harare North (2009).
English Studies
D. Litt. et Phil. (English)