VERSIONS AND SUB-VERSIONS: TRENDS IN CHIMURENGA MUSICAL DISCOURSES OF POST INDEPENDENCE ZIMBABWE

The term chimurenga comes from the name of a legendary Shona ancestor, Murenga Sororenzou. Believed to be a huge man with a head (soro) the size of an elephant's (renzou), Murenga was well known for his fighting spirit and prowess, and legend has it that he composed war-songs to encourage his soldiers to continue the fight against their enemies in pre-colonial Zimbabwe. In the 1970s, African freedom fighters in bases in Tanzania, Mozambique, and Zambia, and some local Zimbabwean artists struggling for Zimbabwe's independence, derived inspiration from Murenga's fighting spirit and composed songs in a genre that they called chimurenga. The word chimurenga refers to war or the struggle against any form of tyranny, and songs that capture the sentiment of war and the longing for freedom became chimurenga music. Blacks in Zimbabwe talk of chimurenga in the singu- lar (chi+murenga), but there have actually been various (Zvi+murenga) fought on different cultural sites during and after colonialism. Chimurenga protested the colonial exploitation of Africans and also criticized the oppression of women in African society. Some critics of Chimurenga music think that there is only one version of chimurenga, and have mistakenly reported its demise in 1980. After Zimbabwean independence, chimurenga continued as a ve- hicle for criticizing corruption, poor governance by new leaders, and delays in redistributing land to the African masses. Post-independence (and invariably male) Zimbabwean singers with various levels of political consciousness, using different linguistic strategies, have cre- ated alternative versions of chimurenga that attempt to generate a local discourse of freedom in an era of globalization and corporate organizations that, in effect, controls the production and distribution of chimurenga

Vroue, nasie en verwoording in Sharai Mukonoweshuro se Shona-romans

Die doel van hierdie artikel is om die fiktiewe voorstelling van vroue in twee van Sharai Mukonoweshuro se romans, naamlik Ndakagara Ndazviona en Akafuratidzwa Moyo, te verken. Tradisionele Shona verwagtinge van hoe ’n vrou moet optree, skryf die rolle voor wat van vroue verwag word om in die samelewing te speel. In ’n koloniale konteks soos die voormalige Rhodesië het kolonialisme wette in die gewoontereg bedink wat vroue verder gedegradeer het tot sosiale posisies soortgelyk aan dié van minderjariges. Hoewel die nasionalistiese stryd in wese bedoel was om vryheid te waarborg vir alle Swart mense, ongeag van geslag, het die manlike elites Swart vroue as hul minderwaardige ‘ander‘ gekonstrueer. In hierdie artikel word geargumenteer dat Sharai Mukonoweshuro se romans worstel met hierdie manlik-goedgekeurde stereotipes. Maar, soos getoon word, Mukonoweshuro se wyse van weerstand teen vroulike stereotipes is ambivalent; die skrywer skep jong vroue wat die patriargie aan die een kant uitdaag, en aan die ander kant, ou vroue wat die ondenkbare doen om hulle eie seuns te vergiftig

From Harare to Rio de Janeiro : Kukiya-Favela organization of the excluded

This article, based on ethnographic research conducted with people in Brazil and Zimbabwe, reports organization/management experiences and narratives of poor and marginalized people of the south. South embodies the organizational struggle, survival skills and resilience of marginal and urban outcasts that inhabit inner cities, townships and slums. The article employs the notion of kukiya-favela organization, i.e. the organization of the excluded, to engage with them in order to: give voice to those who dwell at the margins of organization studies; make their narratives part of a subject that retains an elitist position; and re-address the Eurocentric management/organization discourse that imposes a legitimate justification for exploiting, excluding and labelling them as organization-less and urban outcasts of society. The article concludes that despite their marginality and exclusion they are able to construct local diverse meaningful (organizational) identities that can represent them with dignity in their struggle for justice and basic human rights. Finally, it reflects on the contribution this has for us, in organization studies, by opening new spaces for the study of organization[al] (lives) not from positions of ‘above’ or ‘against’ but ‘with’ (Gergen, 2003: 454)