Space, voice and authority : white critical thought on the Black Zimbabwean novel

All bodies of critical discourse on any given literary canon seek visibility through self- celebration, subversion of competing critical ideas and identification with supposedly popular, scientific and incisive critical theories. Thus, the literary-critical quest for significance and visibility is, in essence, a quest for „space‟, „voice‟ and „authority‟ in the discussion of aspects of a given literary corpus. This research explores the politics of „space‟, „voice‟ and „authority‟ in „white critical thought‟ on „the black Zimbabwean novel‟. It unfolds in the context of the realisation that as a body of critical discourse on „the black Zimbabwean novel‟, „white critical thought‟ does not only emerge in an intellectual matrix in which it shares and competes for „space‟, „voice‟ and „authority‟ with other bodies of critical thought on the literary episteme in question; it also develops in the ambit of Euro-African cultural politics of hegemony and resistance. Thus, the research sets out to identify the ways in which „white critical thought‟ affirms and perpetuates or questions and negates European critical benchmarks and cultural models in the discussion of selected aspects of „the black Zimbabwean novel‟. The investigation considers the fissures at the heart of „white critical thought‟ as a critical discourse and the myriad of ways in which it interacts with competing critical discourses on the „the black Zimbabwean novel‟. It derives impetus from the fact that while other versions of critical thought on „the black Zimbabwean novel‟ have received extensive metacritical discussion elsewhere, „white critical thought‟ remains largely under-discussed. This phenomenon enables it to solidify into a settled body of critical thought. The metacritical discussion of „white critical thought‟ in this research constitutes part of the repertoire of efforts that will help check the solidification of critical discourses into hegemonic bodies of thought. The research makes use of Afrocentric and Postcolonial critical tenets to advance the contention that while „white critical thought‟ on „the black Zimbabwean novel‟ is fraught with fissures and contradictions that speak directly to its complexity and resistance to neat categorisation, it is largely vulnerable to identification as part of the paraphernalia of European cultural and intellectual hegemony in African literature and its criticism, given its tendency to discuss the literature outside the context of critical theories that emerge from the same culture and history with the literary corpus in question.African LanguagesD. Litt. et Phil. (African Languages

Children's Literature, Child Engineering And The Search For An Ennobling Gender Paradigm

A ZJER article on children' s literature and child engineering.The article is an exegesis of selected works of Zimbabwean children’s literature in English. It discusses these works with a view to unravel perspectives on gender and child engineering. The conceptual and epistemological thrust in these works underlines the fact that they largely derive inspiration from and are coterminous with children’s oral narratives and games in which neither maleness nor femaleness is a handicap. This makes them an ideal sociological discourse and pedagogical resource in advancing knowledge on gender. Consequently, the article marshalls the contention that, though a neglected genre in Zimbabwean critical scholarship, written children’s literature is a befitting discursive instrument for the advancement of an ennobling gender consciousness and paradigm. It deconstructs the socially constructed identities of women as those who are permanently vulnerable and neurotically lacking the impetus to struggle and triumph. It conspicuously achieves this by depicting and locating girl children and mothers at the center of the struggle to transform weakness and vulnerability into strength. Thus, this kind of a curriculum on gender makes children’s literature critical in the investment of gender in nation building processes

The African Diaspora in continental African struggles for freedom: Implications on the criticism of African Renaissance literature

If African Renaissance literature is critiqued against the backdrop of historical narratives of global African commitment to collective African self-reclamation, it will be possible to entrench the strategic values that will expedite the fruition of an African Renaissance. In light of this realization, this article discusses the contributions of the African Diaspora towards continental African liberation from European colonial domination, with a view to theorizing the implications of this history on the criticism of African Renaissance literature. Focusing on Diasporan African agency in organizing Pan-African congresses, conferences and conventions between 1900-1950, this article argues that part of the critical consciousness on the basis of which African Renaissance literature should be discussed can be extracted from Diasporan African contributions towards continental African liberation.South African Journal of African Languages 2014, 34(1): 35–4

The body of the liberation guerrilla war veteran

Since the advent of Zimbabwe’s independence in 1980, bodies of veterans of the national liberation war have featured prominently in the southern African country’s politics, mainly at the service of the ruling Zimbabwe African National Union-Patriotic Front (ZANU-PF). This article explores the continuum of activities in which veterans’ bodies functioned as instruments which ZANU-PF relied upon in consolidating power in post-2000 Zimbabwe. It trains its lens on the agency of liberation war military veterans in the unfolding of the Fast Track Land Reform Programme (FTLRP), state funerals at National Heroes Acre and provincial heroes acres scattered across Zimbabwe, presidential send-offs and welcomes at Harare International Airport, marches in solidarity with ruling elites, and at ZANU-PF political rallies. In these spaces, bodies of war veterans functioned as vectors of partisan political views, purveyors of state-centric versions of the nation’s history, embodiments of an ideology of war and exemplars of state-sanctioned versions of patriotism. Operating in a context framed by the rise of vibrant political opposition to ZANU-PF’s political hegemony in the form of the Movement for Democratic Change (MDC), war veterans in post-2000 Zimbabwean politics served largely to contain forces that threatened the erstwhile revolutionary party’s power retention interests

Fighting for justice and freedom through music: The case of Thomas Mapfumo, Hosiah Chipanga and Leonard Zhakata, ca. 1988–2015

The pervasive contention in scholarship on contemporary Zimbabwe is that the quintessence of the post-independence Zimbabwean experience consists in unchecked political dictatorship and unprecedented economic regression. This contention derives from the fact that with the advent of independence in 1980, the Zimbabwe African National Union-Patriotic Front (ZANU-PF) regime that replaced the Rhodesia Front (RF) in the corridors of power embarked on a campaign to achieve political hegemony through the entrenchment of patronage, violence and corruption. However, this is not all that there is to the post-independence Zimbabwean narrative. As this article makes clear, the post-independence Zimbabwean experience also speaks to a pro-democracy struggle in which the authors of the Zimbabwean debacle are confronted on various platforms, particularly the protest songs of musicians such as Thomas Mapfumo, Hosiah Chipanga and Leonard Zhakata. Since the late 1980s, these musicians have been relentless in their criticism of the ZANU-PF establishment, its strong-arm tactics and self-image as the indispensable guardian of Zimbabwean interests. This article maintains that through euphemism, ridicule and overt criticism, Mapfumo, Chipanga and Zhakata forge an aesthetic of resistance that exposes and contests the institutionalisation of patronage, violence and corruption in post-independence Zimbabwe

Patriotic narratives on national leadership in Zimbabwe: Zimbabwe African National Union-Patriotic Front (ZANU-PF) and Movement for Democratic Change (MDC) song texts, ca 2000–2017

The national leadership question in post-2000 Zimbabwe can be examined using the rhetoric of the politicians involved and the song texts of their supporters. This article focuses on selected ZANU-PF and MDC song texts with a view to demonstrating that both ZANU-PF and MDC rely on the logic of mutual exclusion in policing interand intra-party national leadership contestations. Through an analysis of images and viewpoints deployed in the selected songs to depict the qualities of political leaders in ZANU-PF and MDC as antithetical, the article argues that the musicians’ reluctance and/or failure to rise above the myth of the leaders of their respective political parties as the best ever to emerge in Zimbabwean politics serves to oversimplify a highly intricate national political question. Inter alia, the article addresses the volition in scholarship on contemporary Zimbabwe to exclusively associate patriotic narratives with ZANU-PF, in addition to challenging Zimbabweans to think beyond identities that limit them as members of specific political parties