CONTESTING NARRATIVES: CONSTRUCTIONS OF THE SELF AND THE NATION IN ZIMBABWEAN POLITICAL AUTO/BIOGRAPHY by TASIYANA DZIKAI JAVANGWE Submitted in accordance with the requirements for the Degree of DOCTOR OF LITERATURE AND PHILOSOPHY In the subject of ENGLISH At the UNIVERSITY OF SOUTH AFRICA PROMOTER: PROFESSOR M.T. VAMBE SEPTEMBER 2011 DECLARATION I, Tasiyana Dzikai Javangwe, Registration number 4494-152-8, hereby declare that this thesis is my own original work, has not been submitted for any degree or examination at any other university, and that the sources I have used have been fully acknowledged by complete references. This thesis is submitted in fulfilment of the Doctor of Literature and Philosophy Degree in the Department of English at the University of South Africa. Signature......................................Date.............................. SUMMARY This study is an interpretive analysis of Zimbabwean political auto/biographical narratives in contexts of changing culture, race, ethnicity and gender identity images of the self and nation. I used eclectic theories of postcolonialism to explore the fractured nature of both the processes of identity construction and narration, and the contradictions inherent in identity categories of nation and self. The problem of using autobiographical memory to recall the momentous events that formed the contradictory identities of self and nation in the creative imagination of the lives of Ian Smith, Maurice Nyagumbo, Abel Muzorewa, Joshua Nkomo, Doris Lessing, Fay Chung, Judith Garfield Todd, Tendai Westerhof and Lutanga Shaba have been highlighted. The study concluded that there are narrative and ideological disjunctures between experiencing life and narrating those experiences to create approximations of coherent identities of individual selves and those of the nation. The study argued that each of the stories analyzed in this study contributed a version of the multiple Zimbabwean narratives that no one story could ever tell without being contested by others. Thus the study explores how white Rhodesian auto/biographies depend on the imperial repertoire to construct varying, even contradicting, images of white identities and the Rhodesian nation, which are also contested by black nationalist life narratives. The narratives by women writers, both white and black, introduced further instabilities to the male authored narratives by moving beyond the conventional understanding of what is ‘political’ in political auto/biographies. The HIV and AIDS narratives by black women thrust into the public sphere personalized versions of self so that the political consequence of their inclusion was not only to image Zimbabwe as a diseased society, but one desperately in need of political solutions to confront the different pathologies inherited from colonialism and which also have continued in the post-independence period. KEY TERMS • Political auto/biography, • self identity, • nation, • representation, • autre-biography, • postcolonial, • subjectivity, • social constructionism, • imagined community, • dis/eased identities, • marginality ACRONYMS ANC- African National Congress OAU- Organization of African Unity ZANU PF- Zimbabwe African National Unity- Patriotic Front PF-ZAPU- Patriotic Front- Zimbabwe African People’s Union RF- Rhodesian Front UFP- United Federal Party UDI- Unilateral Declaration of Independence USA- United States America ZANLA- Zimbabwe African National Liberation Army ZIPRA- Zimbabwe People’s Liberation Army PCC- People’s Caretaker Council FROLIZI- Front for the Liberation of Zimbabwe NDP- National Democratic Party UANC-United African National Council CIA Central Intelligence Agency ZUM- Zimbabwe Unity Movement MDC- Movement for Democratic Change ZPT-Zimbabwe Project Trust HIV/AIDS- Human Immuno-Deficiency Virus/ Acquired Immuno-Deficiency Syndrome STI- Sexually Transmitted Infection ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS This study was made possible through the financial support generously extended to me by the UNISA Financial Aid Bureau. I am greatly indebted to them for the assistance. I am also very grateful to my supervisor, Professor M.T. Vambe for the inspiration, intellectual mentorship and encouragement that made the completion of this study possible. To Dr. Nhamo Mhiripiri, I say thank you for the honest criticism, inspirational support and for availing your intellectual resources to my disposal. My gratitude also goes to the Executive Dean of the Faculty of Arts at Midlands State University, Professor Charles Pfukwa, whose moral and professional support enabled me to pursue my studies and attend to work obligations without conflict. I also thank colleagues in the Department of English and Communication at Midlands State University, namely Hazel Ngoshi, Elda Hungwe, Terrence Musanga, Francis Mungana, Cuthbert Tagwirei and Ernest Jakaza, for standing in for me whenever study duty called. To the Midlands University Library staff in general and Mr. A. Makandwa in particular, I convey my sincere thanks for the assistance. Finally, to my wife, Elenia, I say you are the fountain from which I continue to replenish my zeal for more knowledge. I also dedicate this work in memory of my departed father, Dzikai Javangwe, who passed on in the midst of this intellectual endeavor. To Tatenda, Tivonge and Takudzwa, shandai nesimba TABLE OF CONTENTS CHAPTER ONE: INTRODUCTION 1 Introduction 1 1.0 Background to the Study 1 1.1 Statement of the Problem 3 1.2 Key Questions Upon which Study is Based 4 1.3 Research Objectives 7 1.4 Understanding Auto/biography 8 1.5 Defining ‘Political’ Auto/biography 10 1.6 The Self in Auto/biography 14 1.7 Justification of the Study 16 1.8 Theoretical Framework upon which Research is Based 19 1.9 Research Methods and Methodologies 22 1.10 Chapter Delineation 24 1.11 Conclusion 27 CHAPTER TWO: LITERATURE REVIEW 2.1 Introduction 28 2.2 The Evolution of Auto/biography 30 2.3 Theoretical Issues in Auto/biography 34 2.4 Auto/biography and Self Identity in Western Scholarship 36 2.5 African Conception of Auto/biography 43 2.6 Critical Scholarship on Zimbabwean Auto/biography 46 2.7 Conceptions of Nation 51 2.8 Conclusion 63 CHAPTER THREE: RHODESIA- THE SELF AND NATION 3.1 Introduction 64 3.2 Ian Douglas Smith-Bitter Harvest-The Great Betrayal and the Dreadful Aftermath 64 3.2.1 Clearing Spaces: Entrenching White Settlerism in Rhodesia 64 3.2.2 The Making of the Political Self in Ian Smith’s Bitter Harvest 83 3.3 Peter Godwin- Mukiwa: A White Boy in Africa 90 3.3.1 The Dis/eased Other and the Self 90 3.3.2 Difference and Deference in the Construction of Rhodesian-ness 103 3.3.3 Negotiating the Self in the Rhodesian War and After 107 3.4 Conclusion 111 CHAPTER FOUR: ZIMBABWE- THE SELF AND NATION IN BLACK AUTHORED AUTO/BIOGRAPHIES 4.1 Introduction 114 4.2 Maurice Nyagumbo- With the People 116 4.2.1 Sketching Space for the Self in Colonial Rhodesia 116 4.2.2 Re-imagining Belonging: Victimhood as the Basis of the Nation 122 4.2.3 The Feigned Opossum Act- Self Propping and National Consciousness 125 4.2.4 The Constructed-ness of Nyagumbo’s With the People 132 4.3 Abel Tendekayi Muzorewa- Rise Up and Walk 137 4.3.1 Denomi/Nation- Institutionalizing Self Identity 137 4.3.2 Undermining Rivalry, Fortressing Images of Self 146 4.4 Joshua Nkomo- The Story of my Life 151 4.4.1 Telling the Story of the Self from the Pedestal of Political Sainthood 151 4.4.2 In Defence of the Edifice: Redeeming Concepts of Self and Nation 163 4.5 Edgar Tekere- A Lifetime of Struggle 172 4.5.1 Locating the Self on the Historical Continuum- The Past, the Present and the Future 172 4.5.2 The World Revolves the ‘I’ Axis 176 4.6 Conclusion 186 CHAPTER FIVE: CONTRADICTIONS IN WHITE RHODESIAN/ZIMBABWEAN AUTO/BIOGRAPHERS 5.1 Introduction 188 5.2 Doris Lessing- Under my Skin 190 5.2.1 Entrenching the Self in Opposition 190 5.2.2 Narrating the Self from the Fringes of Nation and Empire 198 5.2.3 Black Subaltern Narrative in Under my Skin 204 5.3 Fay Chung- Re-Living the Second Chimurenga 205 5.3.1 Mountain Dogs and the Condition of Double Marginality: The Fate of the Migrant in Rhodesia 205 5.3.2 Chung and the Narrative of Marginality from China 206 5.3.3 Chung and the Narrative of Radical Transformation in Rhodesia 210 5.3.4 Ideological Ambivalences in the Construction of Self and Nation 212 5.3.5 Chung and the Narrative of Socialism in Zimbabwe 214 5.3.6 [S]heroes in Vain: The Location of Women in Colonial and Postcolonial Zimbabwe 218 5.4 Judith Todd- Through the Darkness 221 5.4.1 Rhodesia’s Outcasts: Possibilities of New Selfhoods 221 5.4.2 Todd and the New Zimbabwe Narrative 230 5.4.3 The Gukurahundi Narrative in Through the Darkness 232 5.4.4 The Hollowness of the New Thing: Views of the Zimbabwean Nation in Through the Darkness 234 5.4.5 The Construction and Re-imagination of Ethnicity 238 5.5 Conclusion 241 CHAPTER SIX: DISEASED IDENTITIES: BLACK ZIMBABWEAN WOMEN AND THE AUTO/BIOGRAPHICAL HIV/AIDS NARRATIVE 6.1 Transcending Generic Ambivalences and Definitional Ambiguities 244 6.2 Global Perceptions of Africa, Women and HIV/AIDS 259 6.3 Tendayi Westerhof- Unlucky in Love 252 6.3.1 Gender, Race and the Politics of HIV/AIDS in Unlucky In Love 252 6.3.2 Personality cultism as pathology 261 6.4 Lutanga Shaba- Secrets of a Woman’s Soul 266 6.4.1 In the Throes of a Collective Syphilis: The Image of Zimbabwe 266 6.4.2 Gender Violence as Contagion 276 6.5 Conclusion 278 CHAPTER SEVEN: CONCLUSION: ZIMBABWE AND THE PARADOXICAL MODES OF SELF WRITING 281 Bibliography 293 Chapter One: Introduction 1.0 Background to the study Zimbabwe gained independence from Britain in 1980 following intense military struggle and diplomatic efforts. The birth of the Zimbabwean nation, just like any other nation, was accompanied by conscious political and cultural efforts to consolidate its existence.