Episodes of Ambiguity: Steps Towards Socialism in Zimbabwe, 1980-1985

With the benefit of hindsight, and in light of the current crisis, a growing number of authors have concluded that Zanu (PF) and Robert Mugabe's relationship with socialism was never more than a cynical slogan employed to mobilise the masses. By contrast, this paper will argue that such interpretations are mistaken. Indeed, an examination of Zanu (PF)'s welfare initiatives in the period 1980-1985 uncovers 'episodes of ambiguity' pointing towards a possible socialist future. Yet as this paper also acknowledges, these moments coexisted with and were soon superseded by authoritarian alternatives. The particular nature of Zimbabwe in this period has been much debated. Both at the time and subsequently, many observers questioned why the country had failed to experience the socialist transformation that Zanu (PF) once promised, given the fact that in the early 1980s the government was implementing a type of socialism that was loosely constructed around welfare provisions. This paper revisits the early 1980s when Zanu (PF) to some extent engaged with socialism on more than a rhetorical level; when a socialist future seemed possible

Book review

Ushehwedu Kufakurinani, Elasticity in domesticity: White women in Rhodesian Zimbabwe, 1890- 1979, Leiden and Boston, Brill, 2019, paperback ISBN 978-90-04-37056-

Afrikanerdom, Archives, and Change: The Archive for Contemporary Affairs at the University of the Free State, South Africa

This article examines some of the core holdings within the Archive for Contemporary Affairs at the University of the Free State, Bloemfontein, South Africa. Prominent amongst this material are the papers of the National Party (NP), the political party that formalised the structures of apartheid. Paying particular attention to the papers of what Hermann Giliomee has termed ‘The Last Afrikaner Leaders’ alongside recently acquired material concerning post-colonial politics, we argue for the importance of this archive for scholars studying Afrikaner nationalism, at both national and regional level, the rationales and discourses of apartheid and the history of the country more broadly

Over the Hills to Sunlight Town

https://digitalcommons.library.umaine.edu/mmb-me/1202/thumbnail.jp

‘We wanted to be free as a nation, and we wanted to be free as women’: Decolonisation, Nationalism and Women's Liberation in Zimbabwe, 1979–85 1

This article examines one of the most intractable problems that a newly independent nation encounters; the dissonance between the rhetoric of a revolutionary movement and its subsequent treatment of women in nationalist and supposedly decolonial projects. In drawing on interviews and archival research carried out in periodicals, newspapers and Hansard, the article examines the optimism, disillusionment, and betrayal of Zimbabwe's women in the first decade of independence. Exploring women's variegated roles during the country's war of independence, this article argues that many women believed that their participation in national liberation would be a precursor to a broader programme of cultural and societal emancipation. Yet, as is shown, governmental thinking placed women as consumers and not producers of new nationalist culture. In particular, the grim reality of the situation was unambiguously shown just three years into independence through 'Operation Clean-Up', whereby thousands of women in Zimbabwe's main cities of Harare and Bulawayo were indiscriminately detained with state machinery arguing that the women were prostitutes, vagrants and beggars. A blatant effort to curtail women's autonomy in urban spaces, the machinations of 'Operation Clean-up' demonstrated an uneasy coherence between colonial and post-colonial thinking regarding the 'appropriate' place for women in the new nation

Practical Pedagogy for Embedding Drone Technology into a Business and Computing Curriculum

This paper outlines the design of an undergraduate module in "Applied Drone Technology‟ to enhance student engagement and learning of a new technology within a business school curriculum. It focuses on the development strategy and issues the team encountered when trying to create something outside the usual core computing and business curriculum. Although there are barriers and issues to integrating drones into a curriculum, it can be accomplished with proper planning and a strategic vision. The result was a module that can be used by students in a business school, but with the capability of being used by students in other academic units