Zimbabwe’s Hanging Tree

Histor

Rooted and winged, keeping traditions without being traditional : Zimbabwean women's ancestral, historical and contemporary agency in Afrocentric development

ii, 261 leaves ; 28 cm.Includes abstract.Includes bibliographical references (leaves 247-261).This thesis weaves literal, interpretive and metaphoric threads to give a glimpse into African women's ancestral, historical and contemporary agency as lived and experienced in Zimbabwe. Utilizing Afrocentric and feminist literature and African orature, it historicizes and contextualizes the legacy of the ancestor and spirit-medium Mbuya Nehanda who was lynched by the British for co-leading resistance against colonization. African women's agency and participation is traced in pre-colonial and colonial societies, particularly during the second Chimurenga --liberation struggle. Three case studies investigate post-independence women's agency: (1) the new government's Ministry of Cooperatives, Community Development and Women's Affairs; (2) the Zimbabwe Women's Resource Center and Network; (3) the development and feminist yardsticks used to measure rural African women. The study concludes by theorizing the legacy of the ancestor, exploring possibilities of developing bodies of scholarly African indigenous feminist knowledge from legendary ancestors like Mbuya Nehanda and African women's everyday experiences

Ancestor worship, just who is worshipping whom?, theoretical and methodological reflections on power and knowledge about Africa

grantor: University of TorontoThis thesis reflects on conceptual, theoretical and methodological issues pertaining to the study of African knowledge systems, with a particular focus on Spirit mediumship in Zimbabwe. Utilizing various texts of historiography and ethnography, the study reflects on the following issues: (a) power and the knowledge production processes; (b) what is history in Africa and who defines it? (c) the rituals of literature reviews and the ordering of (African) knowledge in academia; and, (d) gender, language and research methodology as technologies of power in African history. Key arguments are: (i) studying African phenomena, like Spirit mediumship and Ancestor worship using Western paradigms and languages is itself a form of Western Spirit possession and Ancestor worship; (ii) theoretical and Western language choices exclude the vast majority of continental African people from meaningfully engaging in and contributing to historical knowledge production; and, (iii) the challenge of demystifying and de-colonizing academic knowledge theories and methodologies used in the study of Africa.M.A