White Narratives: The depiction of post-2000 land invasions in Zimbabwe

Irikidzayi Manase

Description

The post-2000 period in Zimbabwe saw the launch of a fast track land reform programme, resulting in a flurry of accounts from white Zimbabweans about how they saw the land, the land invasions, and their own sense of belonging and identity. In White Narratives, Irikidzayi Manase engages with this fervent output of texts seeking definition of experiences, conflicts and ambiguities arising from the land invasions. He takes us through his study of texts selected from the memoirs, fictional and non-fictional accounts of white farmers and other displaced white narrators on the post-2000 Zimbabwe land invasions, scrutinising divisions between white and black in terms of both current and historical ideology, society and spatial relationships. He examines how the revisionist politics of the Zimbabwean government influenced the politics of identities and race categories during the period 2000-2008, and posits some solutions to the contestations for land and belonging.

Informations

• Publié par: NISC (Pty) Ltd
• Date de parution: 29 décembre 2016
• Nombre de lectures: 0
• EAN13: 9781920033491
• Langue: English
• Poids de l'ouvrage: 1 Mo

Extrait

Dedication
For my late father
to whom I dedicate this book
About the Series
The African Humanities Series is a partnership between the African Humanities Program (AHP) of the American Council of Learned Societies and academic publishers NISC (Pty) Ltd * . The Series covers topics in African histories, languages, literatures, philosophies, politics and cultures. Submissions are solicited from Fellows of the AHP, which is administered by the American Council of Learned Societies and financially supported by the Carnegie Corporation of New York.
The purpose of the AHP is to encourage and enable the production of new knowledge by Africans in the five countries designated by the Carnegie Corporation: Ghana, Nigeria, South Africa, Tanzania, and Uganda. AHP fellowships support one year’s work free from teaching and other responsibilities to allow the Fellow to complete the project proposed. Eligibility for the fellowship in the five countries is by domicile, not nationality.
Book proposals are submitted to the AHP editorial board which manages the peer review process and selects manuscripts for publication by NISC. In some cases, the AHP board will commission a manuscript mentor to undertake substantive editing and to work with the author on refining the final manuscript.
The African Humanities Series aims to publish works of the highest quality that will foreground the best research being done by emerging scholars in the five Carnegie designated countries. The rigorous selection process before the fellowship award, as well as AHP editorial vetting of manuscripts, assures attention to quality. Books in the series are intended to speak to scholars in Africa as well as in other areas of the world.
The AHP is also committed to providing a copy of each publication in the series to university libraries in Africa.
* early titles in the series was published by Unisa Press, but the publishing rights to the entire series are now vested in NISC
AHP Editorial Board Members as at January 2019
AHP Series Editors:
Professor Adigun Agbaje * , University of Ibadan, Nigeria
Professor Emeritus Fred Hendricks, Rhodes University, South Africa
Consultant:
Professor Emeritus Sandra Barnes, University of Pennsylvania, USA (Anthropology)
Board Members:
1 Professor Akosua Adomako Ampofo, Institute of African Studies, Ghana (Gender Studies & Advocacy) (Vice President, African Studies Association of Africa)
2 Professor Kofi Anyidoho, University of Ghana, Ghana (African Studies & Literature) (Director, Codesria African Humanities Institute Program)
3 Professor Ibrahim Bello-Kano, Bayero University, Nigeria (Dept of English and French Studies)
4 Professor Sati Fwatshak, University of Jos, Nigeria (Dept of History & International Studies)
5 Professor Patricia Hayes, University of the Western Cape, South Africa (African History, Gender Studies and Visuality) (SARChI Chair in Visual History and Theory)
6 Associate Professor Wilfred Lajul, College of Humanities & Social Sciences, Makerere University, Uganda (Dept of Philosophy)
7 Professor Yusufu Lawi, University of Dar-es-Salaam, Tanzania (Dept of History)
8 Professor Bertram Mapunda, University of Dar es Salaam, Tanzania (Dept of Archaeology & Heritage Studies)
9 Professor Innocent Pikirayi, University of Pretoria, South Africa (Chair & Head, Dept of Anthropology & Archaeology)
10 Professor Josephat Rugemalira, University of Dar-es-Salaam, Tanzania (Dept of Foreign Languages & Linguistics)
11 Professor Idayat Bola Udegbe, University of Ibadan, Nigeria (Dept of Psychology)
* replaced Professor Kwesi Yankah, Cental Univerity College, Ghana, co-editor from 2013–2016
Published in this series
Dominica Dipio, Gender terrains in African cinema , 2014
Ayo Adeduntan, What the forest told me: Yoruba hunter, culture and narrative performance, 2014
Sule E. Egya, Nation, power and dissidence in third-generation Nigerian poetry in English , 2014
Irikidzayi Manase, White narratives: The depiction of post-2000 land invasions in Zimbabwe , 2016
Pascah Mungwini, I ndigenous Shona Philosophy: Reconstructive insights , 2017
Sylvia Bruinders, Parading Respectability: The Cultural and Moral Aesthetics of the Christmas Bands Movement in the Western Cape, South Africa , 2017
Michael Andindilile, The Anglophone literary-linguistic continuum: English and indigenous languages in African literary discourse , 2018
Jeremiah Arowosegbe, Claude E Ake: the making of an organic intellectual , 2018
Romanus Aboh, Language and the construction of multiple identities in the Nigerian novel , 2018
Bernard Matolino, Consensus as Democracy in Africa, 2018
Babajide Ololajulo, Unshared Identity : Posthumous paternity in a contemporary Yoruba community, 2018

Originally published in 2016 by Unisa Press, South Africa under ISBN: 978-1-86888-825-2
This edition published in South Africa on behalf of the African Humanities Program by NISC (Pty) Ltd, PO Box 377, Grahamstown, 6140, South Africa www.nisc.co.za
NISC first edition, first impression 2019
Publication © African Humanities Program 2016, 2019 Text © Irikidzayi Manase 2016, 2019 All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or any information storage or retrieval system, without prior permission in writing from the publisher.

ISBN: 978-1-920033-47-7 (print) ISBN: 978-1-920033-48-4 (PDF) ISBN: 978-1-920033-49-1 (ePub)
Book Designer: Lubabalo Qabaka Project Editor: Tshegofatso Sehlodimela Copyeditor: Kathryn-Jean Gibbs Typesetting: Thea Bester-Swanepoel Cover Image: Janaka Dharmasena, used under license from Shutterstock.com


The author and the publisher have made every effort to obtain permission for and acknowledge the use of copyright material. Should an inadvertent infringement of copyright have occurred, please contact the publisher and we will rectify omissions or errors in any subsequent reprint or edition.
Contents
Dedication
Acknowledgements
1. Introduction: Imaginaries of Land and Belonging
2. The Post-2000 Zimbabwe Crisis and the Writings about the Land
3. Witnessing the Land Invasions in African Tears and Beyond Tears
4. Memory-making and the Land in Graham Lang’s Place of Birth
5. Divided Worlds in House of Stone
6. Vulnerable Identities and Child-parent Relations in The Last Resort
7. The Crisis, Animals and Activism in Innocent Victims
8. White Belonging and Identity in Zimbabwe in the Twenty-first Century
References
Index
Acknowledgements
I benefited from assistance and support from institutions, friends and colleagues in writing this book. I would like to especially acknowledge the American Council of Learned Societies (ACLS) African Humanities Program (AHP) for the Postdoctoral Fellowship grant that assisted me in writing this book. I also thank the ACLS AHP team for inviting me to a manuscript-writing workshop in Ghana, for their rigorous manuscript publishing competition and their awarding of funds to publish this book, and I would especially like thank Barbara van der Merwe, the AHP Secretariat at the Johannesburg office, for all the logistical support, encouragement and quick responses to my emails.
A number of individuals played an important role in the writing of this book. I thank my brother-in-law, Edwin Mungadzi, for giving me Cathy Buckle’s memoirs in 2003; this opened my eyes to the growth of the body of white narratives about the post-2000 land invasions. A number of colleagues read the manuscript and offered valuable criticism. I want to thank Robert Muponde in particular for his insightful criticism. I also thank Michael Wessels, Francis Garaba, Terrence Musanga and Tendai Mupanduki for their assistance in different ways as well as encouraging me to soldier on with the writing of the book. My special thanks to Wendy Willems and Rory Pilossof for sharing some of their work which added value to my research and writing.
Finally, I would like to thank my wife and children for the support they gave me during the period of researching and writing this book.
1
Introduction Imaginaries of Land and Belonging
In this book I draw on Alexander’s (2007:183) view which links land with the construction of identities, the formation of classes and the crafting of artistic principles and spiritual meanings. Through a literary analysis of selected memoirs, fictional and non-fictional texts I describe the nature and effects of the post-2000 Zimbabwe land invasions, referred to as the ‘fast track land reform programme’ by the Zimbabwe government. The book examines the diverse nature of the narratives and perceptions about land, belonging and the way in which the Zimbabwe government influenced the politics of identities through a revision of identification and race categories (Brubaker and Cooper 2000) during this turbulent post-2000 period. It also considers issues about white narratives on land and belonging, well aware of the existence of a huge body of conflicting studies and public perceptions on the causes, justification and impact of the land invasions and the subsequent fast track land reform programme in Zimbabwe. This book therefore seeks to answer a number of questions such as: Why was there a flurry of white Zimbabwean narratives about land? How are the land invasions represented in these white narratives? How are perceptions about belonging treated in these texts? What are the solutions offered to the contestations for land and belonging in these white narratives?