Zimbabwe: Liberation, Unity and the Making of a Party State 1961-2017

By Gerald Chikozho Mazarire

Zimbabwe was imagined by its colonisers as a unitary concept, too unique to be incorporated into the Union of South Africa in the 1920s and the special part or nerve-centre of a short-lived federation between 1953 and 1963 that would have incubated a Central African British Dominion. It was anticipated as such by its African liberators who rallied around the name ‘Zimbabwe’ in their many organisations as both a gesture of belonging to that state and a tribute to identifying with the struggle for this common aspiration. Zimbabwe was therefore historic and authentic. Yet Zimbabwean nationalism was far from ever a united endeavour throughout the entire journey of national liberation and armed struggle, even so, in the attempt to consolidate the much sought after nation state after independence. This lecture documents the foundations and transitions of the many projects towards unity in the making of Zimbabwe in their fractions and fissions and how this enabled the emergence of a dominant political party that continues to deploy the metaphor of unity for self-preservation. It argues that while this project eventually centred around the Machiavellian methods of its long-time post-independent leader, Robert Mugabe, in the joint quest of making a nation-state and controlling his party, it has many generational and structural contradictions that remain unresolved even after his demise.

Dr Mazarire (University of Birmingham) is a historian of Southern Africa with a special interest in various forms of African orality as they are expressed by different communities in rendering their experiences over time and space. He works mainly on Zimbabwe where he has used predominantly oral methods to trace ‘pre-colonial’ identities, nationalism, liberation memories and land restitution struggles.

 Image credit: Jekesai NJIKIZANA / AFP