Fending for Ourselves

Description

Zimbabwe celebrated its independence just over 40 years ago. While the nation is no longer young, its population certainly is: over 60% are under the age of 35. Understanding youth perspectives and experiences is therefore vitally important. Fending for Ourselves reviews the recent histories and realities of youths in Zimbabwe, offering a distinguished range of authors exploring issues of education, employment and work, the urban experience, involvement in the informal economy, mental health, and political activity. Importantly, the collection examines successive generations of youth in Zimbabwe to show how ideas, experiences and reactions to the social, political, and economic context have shifted over time.

Many of the issues affecting youth over the past 40 years have been traumatic and distressing – physical and mental abuse, declining employment and educational opportunities, poverty, ill-health and loss of hope – but this collection underlines the agency and resilience of Zimbabwe’s young people, and how they have found ways to navigate the political, social, and economic terrains they occupy.

Sujets

• African Studies
• Ethnic Studies
• Social Science
• Sociologie, société et politique
• Social sciences

Informations

• Publié par: Weaver Press
• Date de parution: 08 octobre 2021
• Nombre de lectures: 0
• EAN13: 9781779224026
• Langue: English
• Poids de l'ouvrage: 4 Mo

Extrait

FendingforOurselves

Fending for Ourselves

Youth in Zimbabwe 1980-2020

Edited by

Rory Pilossof

Published by Weaver Press, Box A1922, Avondale, Harare. 2021 <www.weaverpresszimbabwe.com>

© Each individual chapter the author. This collection Weaver Press 2021

Typeset by Weaver Press Cover Design: Danes Design

The publishers would like to express their gratitude to the CEADZ Consortium for their support in the publication of this book.

All rights reserved. No part of the publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system or transmitted in any form by any means – electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise – without the express written permission of the publisher.

ISBN: 978-1-77922-400-2 (p/b) ISBN: 978-1-77922-401-9 (ePub) ISBN: 978-1-77922-402-6 (PDF)

iv

About the Authors

Contents

vii

Introductory Section 1 . Introduction –Rory Pilossof 1 2. Young Postcolonials: Youth in Zimbabwe 1980-2020  Michael Bourdillon and Ross Parsons 8 3. Born free, but everywhere in chains: What has happened  to the youth of Zimbabwe since 1980?  Tony Reeler 26

Education 4. Education in Zimbabwe from 1980-2000  Brian Raftopoulos and Rory Pilossof 5. Selling a False Dream: Youth, Education and  Employment in Zimbabwe  Felix Maringe and Alfred Masinire

48

71

State and Youth 6. State Youth Programmes in Zimbabwe, 1980-2017  Ivo Mhike 93 7. A brief history of urban youths in Zimbabwe, the  îrst 40 years  Timothy Scarnecchia and Eric Makombe 110 8. ‘Youth Politics’  Simbarashe Gukurume and Marjoke Oosterom 135 9. ‘Subverting Controls’: Historicising the Multi-dimensions  of Female Youth Sexuality in Post-colonial Zimbabwe  Ngonidzashe Muwonwa 158

Work 10. Youth in Artisanal Gold Mining Eve Musvosvi Chandaengerwa and Michael Bourdillon

v

173

Fending for Ourselves: Youth In Zimbabwe 1980-2020

11. . Stranded and Straddling: Youth in Zimbabwe’s Agricultural sector, 1980-2020  Toendepi Shonhe and Rangarirai Gavin Muchetu 191 12. The Politics of Age, Gender and Sexuality in  Zimbabwe’s Popular Economies  Rekopantswe Mate 220 13. Youth and Informality  Marjoke Oosterom and Simbarashe Gukurume 241 14. Conclusion –260Rory Pilossof

vi

About the Authors

Michael Bourdillonwent to school at St George’s College, Harare, and subsequently studied Social Anthropology at the University of Oxford. He taught for 25 years in the Department of Sociology, University of Zimbabwe. He has also taught in the University of Calabar, Nigeria, and has directed the Child and Youth Institute in Dakar at the Council for the Development of Social Science Research in Africa. He has been practically involved in interventions for street children and for working children, and has continued to research and publish widely in the îeld of childhood studies, especially on children’s work and on children in poverty. Eve Musvosvi Chandaengerwais a lecturer in Sociology at Midlands State University. After graduating in sociology at the University of Zimbabwe, she was awarded an MSc at UZ and a PhD at the University of Pretoria. Her research interests include youth and child rights, socio- cultural anthropology, and the anthropology of health and illness. She has published widely, and is actively engaged in a range of community- based activities. Simbarashe Gukurumeis a Senior Lecturer at Sol Plaatje University in the Department of Social Sciences. Prior to that he was a lecturer and faculty research chairperson at Great Zimbabwe University. Simbarashe holds a PhD from the University of Cape Town. His Masters in Sociology and Social Anthropology and BSc in Sociology were obtained from the University of Zimbabwe. His research focuses broadly on the sociology of youth, informality and informal economies, livelihoods, displacements, the ethnography of money, politics and social movements and Pentecostalism. Simbarashe has been a recipient of the Harry Frank Guggenheim Young African Scholars, and the Matasa Fellows Network awards. Eric Kushinga Makombea Senior Lecturer in the Department of is History, Heritage and Knowledge Systems at the University of Zimbabwe and a Research Fellow in the History Department at the University of the Free State. He holds a PhD in History from the University of the Witwatersrand. His broad research interests are in urban history, human economy and livelihoods, rural-urban linkages, and rural development.

vii

Fending for Ourselves: Youth In Zimbabwe 1980-2020

His articles have appeared inGlobal EnvironmentandEssays in Economic & Business History. Felix Maringeis a Professor of Higher Education and former Head of the Wits School of Education. He researches international education and leadership in circumstances of multiple deprivation in different educational settings. His key contribution in this îeld is the Poverty, Antecedents, Curriculum and Teaching and Learning (PACT) model developed as both an analytic and evaluative model for interrogating the challenges of leading educational institutions in circumstances of multiple deprivation. Alfred Masinireis Senior Lecturer and Head of the Curriculum Division in the School of Education at the University of the Witwatersrand. His research focuses on rural education, as well as gender and teacher development in rural schools. At the core of his work, he maintains a strong commitment to rurality and social justice. His most recent publications areRurality, Social Justice and Education in Sub-Saharan Africa Volume I: Theory and (with Amasa P. Ndoîrepi)Practice in Schools and Rurality, Social Justice and Education in Sub-Saharan Africa Volume II: Theory and Practice in Higher Education. Rekopantswe Mateis a Senior Lecturer in the Sociology Department, University of Zimbabwe, where she teaches development studies, youth studies and popular culture. She does research on social change and how it affects generational and gender relations. Her publications include journal articles, book chapters and encyclopaedia entries on young people and women in Zimbabwe. Ivo Mhike is a postdoctoral fellow with the International Studies Group at the University of the Free State. His PhD thesis focused on the state constructs of childhood and deviance in colonial Zimbabwe. His research interests include youth cultures in the colonial and post- colonial state, economic change and the transformation of the family unit. He is working on a monograph entitledDegeneracy and Empire: Childhood, Youth and Whiteness in Colonial Zimbabwe, 1900-c.1960 for the Palgrave Studies in the History of Childhood. Ivo has also taught at the University of Zimbabwe in the Economic History Department. Rangirai Gavin Muchetu is a political economist who specialises in rural and agricultural development. He obtained his PhD in Global Society Studies from Doshisha University, Kyoto, and is

viii

currently studying farmer cooperatives in Shiga Prefecture, Japan, as a postdoctoral fellow. His thesis focused on issues faced by agrarian societies after Japanese and Zimbabwean radical land reforms. His interest is in the forms and character of the collective-action mechanisms utilised to combat post-reform market contradictions. As the realities of unavoidable land reforms settle in southern Africa, it becomes vital to explore such debates to proffer lasting solutions. Ngonidzashe Muwonwaan academic and multi-media producer is interested in youth identities and popular culture. His youth-centric research utilises participatory methods which resonate with young people’s embedded attitudes, desires and practices which normally challenge and subvert adult-constructed normative ideologies of youth. He strongly believes that young people in Zimbabwe and the rest of Africa are precariously perched at the intersection of tradition and modernity, and therefore a non-prohibitive framework of understanding what it means to be a young adult needs to be incorporated in all youth studies to appreciate youth agency and competencies while reducing their vulnerabilities. Marjoke Oosteromis a research fellow at the Institute of Development Studies, University of Sussex. She has a background in comparative politics and her research concentrates on the effects of violence, conict and repression on civic and political participation; civic space; and popular and collective action. Her speciîc expertise is in youth politics; political socialization; the politics of the informal economy; and youth employment and empowerment in fragile and conict affected settings. Her research is concentrated on Zimbabwe and Kenya. Marjoke leads the IDS Research Strategy on ‘Youth Employment and Politics’, which encompasses a diverse portfolio of interdisciplinary research projects. She regularly advises donors, policy actors and international organisations that fund and implement governance and youth-focused interventions in Sub-Saharan Africa. Ross Parsons did his undergraduate studies at the University of Zimbabwe, and his postgraduate work at a variety of institutions including Boston College, the Tavistock Clinic and Johns Hopkins University. He has been a senior lecturer in Anthropology and Psychology at Africa University and has extensive experience as a psychotherapist, writer and social researcher. His publications include

ix