Zimbabwe Review Issue 15/4 November 2015

ISSN 1362-3168 The journal of the Britain Society

In this issue ... 1 Chenjerai Hove: obituaries and two poems ...... Page 2 2 Freedom Nyamubaya obituaries and two poems ...... Page 4 3 Political commitment in the writings of Chenjerai Hove and Freedom Nyamubaya ...... Page 7 4 Of fading parks, street raids and daily struggle to survive in Zimbabwe ...... Page 10 5 The making of ‘Remaking Mutirikwi’ ...... Page 11 6 Guy Clutton-Brock – hero of Zimbabwe ...... Page 12 7 New Books from and about Zimbabwe ...... Page 13 8 Zimbabwe Health Training Support ...... Page 14 9 Report of BZS AGM, Zephaniah Phiri ...... Page 15 Chenjerai Hove and Freedom Nyamubaya This issue of the Zimbabwe Review is largely dedicated to the memory of two great Zimbabwean writers who both sadly died earlier this year, and who will be hugely missed both within and outside their country.

Freedom Nyamubaya: this photograph Chenjerai Hove addressing the 2013 BZS Research © Irene Staunton. Day : this photograph © Beth Norton 1 Chenjerai Hove: 9 February 1956 – 12 July 2015 The following is a slightly shortened version of an obituary that appeared in The Guardian on 21 July, written by Stephen Chan Chenjerai Hove, who has died aged 59, was a an interview in London in 2007 with the academic leading Zimbabwean novelist and poet, and a bea - Ranka Primorac, he said: ‘For me, even ... financial con of integrity and dissidence. [and] economic corruption begins with the corruption of language. Look at people talking about “American He had lived in exile in the west since 2001, and interests”, or Mugabe talking about “sovereignty” along with Dambudzo Marechera, Yvonne Vera and and “patriotism”. All of a sudden there is a new def - Charles Mungoshi, was one of the founding figures inition of patriotism. Suddenly, some of us who are of modern Zimbabwean literature – a group of writ - critical of the system are no longer patriots or nation - ers whose work dealt with both pre- and post-inde - alists. Of course, the person who is in political power pendence. Of these, only Mungoshi now survives. is in charge of defining who is a patriot, who is a na - It is a feature of Zimbabwean literature that many tionalist and what is sovereignty. All of a sudden of its writers have achieved international acclaim. In - these words are being given a new meaning. So the deed, the story of Zimbabwe – a country with a deep corruption of language, for me, psychologically and history and a legacy of stone cities, of white colonial - emotionally, is the beginning of a multiplicity of ism followed by white rebellion against the crown, other corruptions.’ of heroic liberation struggle followed by reconcilia - It was as a champion of language as a means of tion and, lately, by racial division and economic melt - remaining truthful about nationalism, land and values down – has made it an obvious place for literature of that Hove spent his time in exile, producing ... poetry an intense order. and plays as well as essays and novels. He won many Hove was a writer with an impeccable command awards and fellowships, and became the inaugural both of English and Shona. The triumph of his great - president of the Zimbabwe Writers Union in 1984 as est novel, Bones (1988), the tale of Marita, a farm well as a founding board member of the Zimbabwe worker in pre-independence whose son has Human Rights Association in 1990. disappeared into the forest to join a band of liberation fighters, is not just its application of Shona folklore Hove was born in Mazvihwa, in rural Rhodesia, the and mythology – often in extremely nuanced form – son of a local chief. He was educated at two Catholic but the way in which its use of English allows the boarding schools: Kutama college in the Zvimba area, reader to understand the complexities of Shona lin - and Marist Brothers, in Hwange. He later studied at guistic expression. ... Bones ... renders Zimbabwean both the University of South Africa, in Pretoria, and thought as the equal of European thought and, with what is now the , in . great subtlety, embarks upon a meditation on land In his early days after university he made his living as and its meaning. a teacher and in the publishing industry. Hove was far from convinced of ’s In exile, Hove longed to return to Zimbabwe, and use of the value of land as a reason for seizing white- had hope for the future. ‘Dictatorships, tyrannies, owned farms. And he was certainly opposed to the they are transient: they come and pass,’ he said. ‘I accompanying turn to authoritarianism by Mugabe’s understand that, and I will go through that.’ Sadly he government from 2000 onwards. His collection of es - failed to get to the end of the Mugabe era, but he will says, Palaver Finish (2002), is a sustained indictment be remembered as someone who wrote beautifully of the descent of Zimbabwean political society, its and who did not sell his soul for the squalid rhetoric title a call for an end to empty talk. Hove was an that dominates Zimbabwe today. early target of the regime and, after death threats and He is survived by his wife, Tekla, and by six attempts on his life, took himself into exile in 2001, children. first to France, then to the US, and then , • Chenjerai Hove, writer, born 9 February 1956; died where he was living at the time of his death. 12 July 2015 s A cosmopolitan person, he adapted well to life outside Zimbabwe and continued to write luminous © Guardian News & Media Ltd: this article is re - works. Extremely aware of the uses of language, in produced with permission of the copyright-holder.

2 The following is taken from an obitu - image seems, at best, romantic and naïve, and at worst, dangerously misleading.’ ary published in The Zimbabwean on Despite such criticisms, Hove remains the first 23 July, by Trevor Grundy Zimbabwean novelist of international stature to place At literary seminars after Zimbabwe’s independ - voiceless women centre stage. His concern for the ence in 1980, Chenjerai Hove told large audiences little person led to his alienation from Mugabe and that writers of his generation and background the ruling party, Zanu (PF). His house in Harare was had heavy jobs before them – the burden of per - broken into by secret police. His manuscripts were suading a largely indifferent world to listen to taken away. His computers were wrecked. His family Africa’s cries of helplessness. was threatened. He fled in 2001 with the help of the Interna - ‘As writers,’ he said, ‘we have as well to turn around tional Parliament of Writers, [eventually finding and be publicists for the sake of the survival of our a home in] Stavanger in Norway, where he was a people.’ It was his literary mantra and lifelong guid - guest writer through the International Cities of ing principle. Refuge Network, an organisation that aids endan - Like Voltaire, Hove believed that the best way to gered and exiled writers. get rid of dictators was to laugh at them. In one col - Used with permission from The Zimbabwean: see: umn, Hove asked his readers to remember the stories http://www.thezimbabwean.co/2015/07/novelist- they’d heard as children – especially the story about forced-into-exile-from-his-native-zimbabwe/ the proud monkey who climbed to the top of the tallest tree, seeking applause from below. When he got there, all the animals on the ground below roared with laughter. They cared nothing about his prowess as a climber but were delighted to get a worm’s-eye view of the size of this self-important mamma’s big fat red bottom. ‘And so it is with power of any kind, political or otherwise,’ Hove wrote. ‘The higher one ascends the tree ... the more the public have a chance to observe and scrutinise one’s political and economic bottom.’ *** From a compassionate literary observer, Hove de - veleloped into a cultural politician. Between 1984 – 89 he was Chairman of the Zimbabwe Writers’ Union (ZWU) and in 1989 he won the prestigious Noma Award for his novel Bones , in which he told the story of Marita, the poor, illiterate farm labourer who sets Chenjerai Hove at the Zimbabwe International Book out for the city to search for her son who left with the Fair in 1984. this photograph: © Biddy Partridge freedom fighters and never returned. Marita was one of the hundreds of thousands of lost Chenjerai Hove's novel Bones combined so much and lonely women who walked the Zimbabwean earth of what was best about his writing, the poet and after independence, often no better off (sometimes a the realist. It was also the first novel in English lot worse) than they were in colonial times. Bones re - that lives through the medium of Shona in tone, ceived glowing reviews and was translated into several rhythm, metaphor, and evolution. He thus pro - languages. It was followed by two other important vided a new terrain for the expression of English novels – Shadows (1991) and Ancestors (1996). in Zimbabwe implicitly offering an alternative to In her book, Teachers, Preachers, Non-Believers the notion that the only way to uphold one's cul - – A Social History of Zimbabwean Literature ture is to write in an indigenous language. (Baobab Books, Harare 1992) Flora Veit-Wild writes, Irene Staunton, Publisher, Weaver Press ‘Hove seems to have met certain expectations that critics and international readers have of the modern African tale … His attempt to recreate the African 3 TO A DICTATOR Tichaona Freedom Nyamubaya: in your time 5 July 1957– 2015 you took away the flowers of our freedom. Jeremy Brickhill, Director, Zimbabwe in your time Peace and Security Programme has the weak defended your weakness, contributed the following and the land cried; Zimbabwean freedom fighter, poet, feminist revo - the moon too lutionary, mother, sister and comrade, Tichaona was dark Nyamubaya, died in Chinhoyi Hospital on Sunday in your time. 5 July, 2015 . (in memory of a Pakistani poet who refused ) Born in Uzumba, Freedom left school as a young girl child to join the liberation struggle. She trained at A POEM FOR ZIMBABWE Tembwe Camp in Mozambique and was amongst the very first female combatants deployed to the front in i am the only one 1978. She quickly earned a reputation as a fearless you are the only one. and highly competent combatant and commander. the birds and the rivers Following independence, she spurned offers of the sing to me, political high-life and instead, having turned herself they speak in your voice. into a farmer, became a rural development activist working with small-scale, poor women farmers. At the if i fall silent same time, she began writing and publishing poems. you will be silent too. Whether she was mobilising women peasant farm - if i fall silent ers or writing and reading poetry, Freedom became your wounds will be named silence. an iconic voice of our liberation ideals in the face of mounting failure and disappointment at the betrayals i am a piece of you of the new ruling elite. and you are a piece of me. Simplicity the blood in my veins is you. Freedom wrote very simple poems. Her verses speak listen to the rhythm of life as a journey of perpetual struggle for liberation. of the stream of my blood In the anthology On the Road Again she wrote: and the echoes from the hills, Now that I have put my gun down mixed with gentle ripples For almost obvious reasons, of the waters in the fast stream. The enemy is still here, but with time Invisible, you will hear your voice My barrel has no definite target, in the blue skies of my heart. Now let my hands work, My pencil write, in the dark clouds of my soul About the same things my bullet aimed at . you will hear a voice Her revolutionary feminism led her to explore that tells the story of your forgotten voices themes that were absolutely off limits in the official of birds long dead liberation history. In the searingly painful For of elephants crippled by guns Suzann e she was the first to place the ordeals of of orphans you do not deserve. women fighters who suffered the humiliation of rape Both poems:Chenjerai Hove, 2003, From: Blind in the training camps into the liberation accounting Moon: Weaver Press, Harare, 1985 for the male leadership. Her simple verse narrated how her body became: These poems are published here with the kind per - mission of Poetry International (Zimbabwe). a church, http://www.poetryinternationalweb.net/pi/site/coun - For high-ranking monks to relieve their stress, try/poet_list/25 From hypocrisy and narrow-mindedness. As renowned Zimbabwean poet, Musa Zimunya, 4 observed: ‘This is a poem of a woman from the heart Army in Mozambique, where she achieved the rank of a woman and for all women. It is a fitting anthem in of Female Field Operation Commander, later being praise of the enduring strength of women in the most elected Secretary for Education in the first ZANU humiliating conditions created by colonialism and Women’s League conference in 1979. African patriarchy. It is also a poem about the irony of After Independence, she founded MOTSRUD, an defeat in this triumph, of confusion in the certainty of NGO that provides agro-services to rural farmers, motherhood: is a mother close to God, given all this?’ and she has worked on attachment with the United Freedom’s own story was published as That Special Nations in Mozambique. Place in Writing Still (Weaver Press, 2003). A founding member of the Zimbabwe Peace and More recently Freedom became very actively in - Security Trust, she has spent much of the last five volved in issues of peace and security as a Trustee years promoting peace throughout Zimbabwe. for the Zimbabwe Peace and Security Programme. Freedom’s home was a game farm in Mangura Despite threats and hostility from some powerful where she sought to work with villagers in the area pro - quarters, Freedom insisted that we pursue our liber - moting agricultural and development activities, and de - ation dreams by establishing a genuinely free, safe fend her own game against poachers and predators. and secure future for our country and our children. Her first volume of poetry, On the Road Again Her erstwhile former ZANLA commanders, who (Zimbabwe Publishing House, Harare, 1985), was were noticeably absent from her funeral, warned her followed by Dusk of Dawn (College Press, Harare, many times not to get involved in ‘these issues’. 1995), both being attempts to grapple with a brutal Her response: ‘We cannot shut up. We all need world using powerful images and disconcerting safety and security, peace and freedom. Even these powerful men might one day need the protection of rhythms. Her story That Special Place was published the rule of law.’ in Writing Still (Weaver Press, Harare, 2003.) Freedom said what she meant and meant what she Freedom had one son, Naishe. said. She was fearless and steadfast all through her too- © Irene Staunton short life. From The Zimbabwean , An optimist She was also an optimist who never gave up her by Ian Scoones dreams. She was fun and made us laugh. She loved Struggle is not a destination, to dance and was always ready to pull you onto the but a river that runs forever dance floor. The last time I saw her dance was at a hotel in Switzerland where she had been attending a These lines come from the poem, Tribal Wars , by workshop on peace mediation. Her smile leapt across Comrade Freedom Nyamubaya. Along with the loss the room as she and her dreadlocks twirled gracefully of Chenjerai Hove, we have lost two greats of Zim - through a throng of workshop participants from babwean literature; superb commentators on life and Switzerland and all over the world – dancing with politics, and inspirations for many of us. Freedom for justice and peace. When I heard of Cde Freedom’s passing I found That was Freedom Nyamubaya. my copy of On the Road Again , the anthology pub - Rest in peace beloved comrade and sister. lished in 1986 by ZPH. It is a slim volume, so it took a while to find, but See: In the absence of vision read by her at: I read it all again in a sitting. Even though written 30 http://www.weaverpresszimbabwe.com/…/…/632- years ago, the poems remain highly charged, and nyamubaya-freedom deeply pertinent today. Jeremy Brickhill, 2015 Cde Freedom was not shy to criticise those in power. She did not glorify the role of a freedom fighter. Indeed From Poetry International, an obituary many of her poems are harrowing accounts, showing how women fighters were so often mistreated. by her publisher, Irene Staunton In The Dog and the Hunter, she explores betrayal Freedom Nyamubaya was a rural development, by a new elite, and how some take the rich pickings, gender and peace activist, farmer, dancer and writer. while others despite the hard work and commitment just get thrown the bones. In A Mysterious Marriage , Cutting short her secondary school education in 1975, she complains: she left to join the Zimbabwe National Liberation Continued on next page 5 Independence came ON THE ROAD AGAIN But Freedom was not there. Nine months in the womb An old woman saw Freedom’s shadow passing Innocent and comfortable, Walking through the crowd, Freedom to the gate. Never again will I rest. All the same, they celebrated for Independence Always on the go to nowhere, As in the lines quoted in the title of this blog, she did Since I left that safe haven. not regard Independence as the end of the struggle. I creep, I walk, Indeed her commitment to farming and development Many times I run, was translated into the creation of Management Out - But most times reach Training Services for Rural and Urban Devel - I get pushed around. opment (MOTSRUD). I met Cde Freedom once back in the 1980s, when the promise of Independence was A student in the morning, still vibrant, and I was working with another inspir - A teacher mid-morning, ing product of the liberation war, Zephaniah Phiri. A builder at noon, A slave in the afternoon, Cde Freedom has been buried on her farm near Chi - A dog at dinner: noyi a provincial hero; but even her passing contin - A combatant the rest of my life. ues to generate controversy. Her visions for School has holidays, Independent Zimbabwe have still not been realised. Workers days off, The struggle continues, like the river, forever. Dogs rest too, Used with permission from The Zimbabwean: see: But struggles to go on, go on. http://www.thezimbabwean.co/2015/07/novelist- Still on the road, forced-into-exile-from-his-native-zimbabwe/ One endless journey. © 1986, Freedom T.V. Nyamubaya. From: On the Road Again : Publisher: Freedom Press, Harare, 2004 Freedom Nyamubaya I met Freedom in the early 1980s when I was THE TRAIN WAS OVERBOOKED part of a literacy group in Zimbabwe. Freedom contributed toward discussions about how the From Beira to Salisbury group should work. In those days her views were Some say it was full strong and her experiences in the struggle still Others say it wasn’t raw. She never lost her courage to express her But the train still made it views, her hopes and dreams for Zimbabwe and To its destination, Salisbury, her feistiness. Now called Harare. My final meeting with her was at the Book What happened to the passengers, Cafe where the wonderful Nyamasvisva per - Those who bought tickets? formed with his Mbira emsemble. Freedom sat I saw women with children near the stage. As the evening progressed, she Wandering about at the station, leapt up swinging her long dreadlocks and kick - Old people staggering, luggage at hand, ing off her sandals, she allowed the music to Awaiting official announcements, wash over her and danced with the sheer life Young people hustling at enquiries force that she was. It’s painful to remember that Trying to check the departure time; six months later she w ould be no more . But the train had gone halfway on its journey. Pat Brickhill Those on the waiting list Got seats to Salisbury. The two poems opposite, by Freedom Nyamubaya, are Who else took the booked ones? published here with the kind permission of Poetry In - It was discovered in Harare: ternational (Zimbabwe). No tickets, no passports: http://www.poetryinternationalweb.net/pi/site/coun - Crooks in the waiting room try/poet_list/25 Really made it there. © 2009, Freedom T.V. Nyamubaya 6 Political commitment in the writings of Chenjerai Hove and Freedom Nyamubaya Kizito Z. Muchemwa examines the work of the two poets

Chenjerai Hove (1956 – 2015) and Freedom Nya - grounding the political in the Zimbabwean literary mubaya (1960-2015) are writers shaped by spe - canon, write with great passion, honesty and fearless - cific historical circumstances of their time. ness on both the colonial and postcolonial state. In Zimbabwean literature, both in the indigenous The political element is not unique to African litera - languages and English, there is a latent political ele - ture. Irish poetry, for example, as demonstrated in the ment. The political in the broadest sense has been an poetry of W B Yeats ( Easter 1916 ) and Seamus integral aspect of literature: participating in and con - Heaney, responds to specific political events. In testing the exclusion from public debate. Writing in drawing the title of his novel Things Fall Apart from Zimbabwean literature, apart from the explicitly pa - Yeats’s poem The Second Coming , the Nigerian triotic productions of Solomon Mutswairo and his writer, Chinua Achebe, signals the postcolonial con - acolytes, has largely been off-centric. The off-centric nection Irish literature shares with Africa. literary productions come from different clusters – The political as patriotism marginalised women, repressed ethnicities and gen - The political, for both Chenjerai Hove and Freedom erally the peasants and the proletariat – that question Nyamubaya, is an expression of patriotism that tran - the grand narratives of the Zimbabwean postcolonial scends the elitist and partisan variety found in Zim - state. The postcolonial grand narrative has been de - babwean narratives of heroism. This patriotism, scribed and critiqued by Terence Ranger as ‘patriotic seems to both affirm and deny the official ZANU PF history’ – partisan history. ideology of blood and sacrifice. Ranka Primorac using Achille Mbembe’s lens of Nyamubaya, in particular, reveals what Michael ‘master code’ as defined by a ‘narrative of ordeal’ ex - Parker ( Fallout from the thunder: poetry and politics amines how the Zimbabwean ‘postcolonial master in Seamus Heaney's ‘District and Circle’ ) describes fiction’ has been prefigured, rehearsed and reinforced as ‘a long engagement with issues of artistic respon - not only by previous nationalist narratives’ but ‘also sibility in time of war’. Antony More finds political by works of fiction’. commitment and patriotism in the work of the Eng - ‘Desilencing the past’ lish poet, Andrew Marvel, and that of the American Robert Muponde reads this master fiction as impris - poet, Robert Lowell. These two examples from dif - oning and foreclosing political and aesthetic possi - ferent literary traditions and periods are clear testi - bility. In this regard the writings of the two writers mony to the existence of the patriotic in literature that become not only a ‘de-silencing of the past’, to bor - I link with war literature in Zimbabwe. row Flora Veit-Wild’s term, as a way of opening up Fighting for justice democratic spaces in re-imagining the nation and I want to broaden the understanding of war to include self. The writers refuse to endorse reiterations of un- all forms of fighting and contestation and artistic re - problematised Afrocentrism that dominate patriotic sponsibility as commitment to justice. and propagandist texts like A Fine Madness by Hove and Nyamubaya view writing as a fighting Mashingaidze Gomo as they write a literature of for social, political, environmental and gender jus - protest, ecocritical awareness and non-partisan patri - tice. For Nyamubaya, poetry becomes a piece of or - otism with courage, forthrightness and fearlessness. dinance with which to fight colonialism that assumes These qualities sent Hove into exile and premature new forms in the post-colonial state. death. Right from the beginning of their writing ca - Although not a combatant during the liberation reers Hove and Nyamubaya have not been complicit war and writing ex post facto about this war, Hove in the creation and perpetuation of the Zimbabwean writes into the ideological gaps left in the official nar - postcolonial grand narrative. ratives of the war. In his novel Bones , the narrative Autobiographical writing re-centres women’s voices and roles, and in doing so Nyamubaya ( On the Road Again and Dusk of Dawn ) he shares the same perspective on the literature-gen - uses autobiographical writing to place herself as a der-class connection with Freedom Nyamubaya. The two writers, although not being the first in fore - Continued on the next page 7 gendered subject in the narrative of the Second the female combatant and achieves sisterly solidar - Chimurenga that she excoriates from within. She ity through a shared experience of sexploitation speaks of crimes committed in the camps in Mozam - and ex clusion from discourses of the nation. Despite bique in her short story That Special Place and in her perpetration of wrongs by men against women, the war poetry without losing faith in the noble ideals of war experience taught women to fight and reclaim liberation struggle. She de-romanticises the official their rightful identity as daughters of the struggle version of the struggle to reveal the dehumanising who are able to transcend patriarchal and nationalist conditions of the war experienced by the fighters. It constructions of women as they become pan-African - is her re-gendering of the Zimbabwean narrative of ist and cosmopolitan. Chimurenga. Writing with a bluntness and fearless - The trajectory found in Nyamubaya’s poetry is also ness, Nyamubaya poignantly evokes atrocities in the noted in the literary texts of Hove, who embraces cos - camps and the post-independence betrayals of the mopolitan connections and concerns. Despite the al - ideals of the revolution. leged narrow nativism in his early work noted by Veit-Wild ( Dances with Bones ) Hove embraces cos - Endless journey mopolitan connections and concerns in his poetry. In These poignant evocations are measured against how the quest for, celebration and defence of, freedom, the revolution was hijacked: the metaphor of revolu - Hove’s political commitment and investment is not tion as an endless journey. This lack of finality allows limited to Zimbabwe but extends to the rest of Africa Nyamubaya to construct an image of a guerrilla and the world. In To a Dictator (see page 4), he refer - fighter who refuses to de-mobilise since revolutions ences Zimbabwe, but the poetic persona views dicta - have no destinations – allowing her to move out of torship as life-negating, and not unique to Africa, just the comfort of seeing the postcolonial state as polit - as he also pays tribute to Mandela as a global icon of ical and social idyll. freedom in his poem of that name. In her poem, The Train Was Over-Booked (see Hove is alert to the existence of the discarded and page 6), she views the very inauguration of the Zim - rejected in the world and his compassion enables him babwean postcolonial state as an ideological hijack - to see the cosmopolitanism of the less privileged of ing that excludes from political power and withholds the world. nationalistic dividends from those who fought for the revolution as she speaks truth to power. Commitment Using her characteristic demotic style, her poetry The imaginative road that Hove has travelled, begin - exhibits an accessibility not found in the poetry of ning with Up in Arms and Red Hills of Home , her more learned compatriots like Dambudzo through Rainbows in the Dust to Blind Moon , shows Marechera. Her style is consistent with her desire to a commitment to righting political, social and eco - address a broader readership that includes the less nomic wrongs. That commitment comes also with an formally educated found at the periphery of society. awareness of the environmental defacements of colo - This readership is part of a constituency whose role nial capitalism, which are articulations of the ecolog - in imagining the Zimbabwean post-colonial state has ical imperialism that comes in the form of the been obscured, as indicated above. introduction of disruptive new land use patterns and The pan-African context commercial farming (in Ancestors and Bones .) Both Hove and Nyamubaya focus on Zimbab - In Blind Moon , the poet’s social and political con - weanness in their writing, but move out of the nar - sciousness is infused with ecocritical awareness. In A row box associated with patriotic literature. poem for Zimbabwe (see page 4), the poet’s sense of Freedom Nyamubya‘s poetry places the Zimbab - his self is infused and constructed by the Zimbabwean wean struggle within a pan–African context as she landscape and is ironically sharpened by exile, yet his emphasises an urgent de-colonising agenda for a concern for Zimbabwe as a fragile political and moral continent fragmented by the imperial cartogra - phies of the Berlin conference of 1884. Freedom Nyamubaya In pursuit of a pan-African vision, Nyamubaya Brave, honest and true, she never shied from re - writes with sensitivity on Mozambique, which hosted ality, but embraced it, and then laughed. She guerrilla fighters in Zimbabwe’s independence strug - also had such generosity of spirit that no matter gle. For her, writing becomes not a re-construction the circumstance, she left you feeling more posi - of Zimbabwe but a reconfiguring of the concept and tive, more encouraged. cartographic image of Africa ( Tribal Wars ). In Osi - Irene Staunton bisa , she writes on the liberation war experience of 8 landscape does not stop him from acknowledging the Seamus Heaney's District and Circl e. Irish Studies Review, 16:4 Third Chimurenga as an environmental threat: (2008): 369-384. Primorac, Ranka. The Poetics of State Terror in Twenty-First Cen - in the dark clouds of my soul tury Zimbabwe . Interventions, 9:3(2007): 434-450. you will hear a voice Ranger, T. O. Literature and political economy: Arthur Shearly that tells the story of your forgotten voice Cripps and the Makoni labour crisis of 1911 . Journal of Southern of birds long dead African Studies, 9:1(1982): 33-53. of elephants crippled by guns ---. Nationalist Historiography, Patriotic History and the History of the Nation: the Struggle over the past in Zimbabwe . Journal of of orphans you do not deserve. Southern African Studies, 30. 2 (2004): 215-234. Hove writes of endangered species and poaching on Schulze-Engler, Frank . Freedom vs. Anticolonialism in Zimbabwe: a large scale in contemporary Zimbabwe ( Home Subversions of the Third Chimurenga Myth in African Literature . Sweet Home ). Cross/Cultures 148 (2012): 283. Veit-Wild, Flora. ‘ Dances with Bones’: Hove's Romanticized While not abandoning the protection of flora and Africa . Research in African Literatures (1993): 5-12. fauna, Nyamubaya, in Extinction , questions Western ---. De-Silencing the Past: Challenging ‘Patriotic History’: New notions of environmentalism that are divorced from Books on Zimbabwean Literature. Research in African Literatures, the question of social and cultural justice. Landscape 37, 3 (2006):193-204. for both poets becomes, among other functions fig - Wilson, Chris and Paul Groth, Ed. Everyday America: Cultural ured in their work, an ideological expression. Landscape Studies after J. B. Jackson . Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press, 2003: 178- 198 . A desire to transform The brief writing careers of Hove and Nyamubaya, Kizito Z. Muchemwa, Great Zimbabwe curtailed by untimely deaths, are marked by a con - University, 2015 sistently fearless political outlook in which they ar - ticulate a non-partisan patriotism and a desire to Chenjerai Hove transform the landscapes of countries and a continent Most people knew Chenjerai as an amazing poet that have been reduced by dictatorships to lands of and insightful writer. Paul and I knew him also unlikeness. as a fellow parent as we both had children at David Livingstone School in Chitepo Avenue. References Chenjerai lived his life in celebration of his Zim - Henderson, George L. What (Else) We Talk about When We Talk babwean heritage. about Landscape: For a Return to the Social Imagination . 178- 198 He liked to dress in African designed shirts and Hove, Chenjerai. Up in Arms . Vol. 3. Zimbabwe Pub. House, 1982. would often turn to one side while he was speak - ---. Red Hills of Home . Vol. 21. Mambo Press, 1985. ing and sprinkle a little snuff on his hand. He was ---. Rainbows in the dust . Baobab, 1998. a regular customer at Grassroots Books and the cul - ---. Shadows . Heinemann Educational Publishers, 1991. tural events that took place in the 80s and 90s. ---. Palaver Finish : Essays . Weaver Press, 2002. His writing, in particular his poetry, echoed Greene, Maxine. Poetry and Patriotism , Phi Delta Kappan, 87.8(2006). what he saw around him. He was not silent when Nyamubaya, Freedom. On The Road Again . Harare: ZPH, 1986. he saw what was happening in his beloved Zim - ---. Dusk of Dawn . Harare: College Press, 1995. babwe. There has been much talk of his exile – ---. That Special Place In Irene Staunton. Ed. Writing Still: New whether it was warranted or not. Sometimes stories from Zimbabw e. Harare: Weaver Press, 2007: 217-228. when something you love so dearly disappoints Moore, Antony. Robert Lowell and Marvell: Poetry and Patriot - the only way to survive is to impose a physical ism . English, 53.206(2004):117-134. distance. But the pain remains. In Chenjerai's Michell, Don. Cultural landscapes: just landscapes or landscapes of justice? Progress in Human Geography 27.6 (2003): 787-796. case perhaps his excesses were both what kept Muponde, Robert. The worm and the hoe : Cultural politics and reconcili a- him with us and also what finally led to his de - tion after the Third Chimurenga . Zimbabwe: Injustice and political mise. He was not a well man when he attended reconciliation. African Minds (2004): 176-192. the BZS Research Day in 2013, but he greeted me Mutswairo, Solomon M. Feso. Harper Collins, 1995 (1956). with warmth and friendship. I shall miss him and O’Keeffe, Tadhg. Landscape and Memory: Historiography, The - his lovely laugh, I shall miss his beautifully ory, Methodology . In: Niamh Moore, Niahmh Moore and Yvonne Whelan, Ed. Heritage, Memory and The Politics of Identity: New poignant words, I shall always miss his presence Perspectives on the Cultural Landscape. Aldershot: Ashgate, 2007: in Zimbabwe. 3-18. We live in sad times. Parker, Michael. Fallout from the thunder: poetry and politics in Pat Brickhill 9 Of fading parks, street raids and daily struggle to survive in Zimbabwe Nyamuzihwa 2015 on the difficulties of everyday life in Zimbabwe Gweru was once dubbed ‘the City of Progress’, But that is not the solution. As evening ap - but that is no more. proaches they will be back. You only have to visit Harare at night to witness the confusion as vendors Around the Municipal Buildings, the Gweru Theatre, compete for customers. People are forced to sell the dry park, broken benches, dysfunctional water produce to sustain their families. ponds, the thin and drying roses, and the fading wall paint – dilapidation has seized our city.The once-beau - With closure of industries and firing of workers, it’s tiful park, where I took photos on my wedding day, is reminiscent of 2008, when streets and stores were now an eyesore. I can barely remember how, at week - empty. Who is to blame? Sanctions, economic man - ends, families would bring their kids to play on merry- agement and corruption? It’s hard to say – but the go-rounds. The lush green grass, the sprinkling water average Zimbabwean today is forced to scrounge was a pleasure to watch, with birds and butterflies, and for basic necessities to survive. bees and other insects competing for nectar. Industries are in ruins. The other day I had a These days the place is in a terrible state, with dry chance to visit a friend at Redcliff. flower beds, scattered over with fallen leaves. A leak - ‘Let me take you to Zisco,’ he invited me. ing tap trickles water. As we turned behind a hill, he said, ‘Look. The Today, I found myself in the midst of a street raid. open-cast mine.’ ‘What’s happening?’ I asked a passer-by. A huge hole stretched into the distance, with gi - ‘Municipal Police versus vendors … chakachaya’, gantic rusty conveyor belts, like something from he responded. prehistoric times – the remnants of the iron ore And so it was that I discovered that the vendor smelting industry. from whom I usually buy was no longer at her usual Today, many families have no income. In Tor - street corner. Raw beans, vegetable leaves, crushed wood I was shocked with the squalid conditions and tomatoes and onions were strewn everwhere. how families lived. We climbed stairs amid the pun - ‘They’ve taken everything, everything!’ wailed an gent smell of urine. elderly vendor, who only sold tomato seedlings. ‘This room used to be our Torwood Library,’ my ‘Who took the wares, and why?’ I asked her. friend said. ‘Don’t be surprised by the state it’s in. But she just shrugged her shoulders and invited People no longer pay rates.’ me to buy the tomato seedlings. I just shook my head. Lately, the government has been unclear about its In Harare, I passed through Willowvale Motor In - stance on vending in the cities. There have always dustries, once a fast growing industrial area that is been contradictions: on the one hand the public has today in ruins. been encouraged to continue vending in front of major Neither can you find a train – rail lines are almost supermarkets during weekends (‘weekend markets’), buried underneath the ground. The other day I al - making it difficult for the general public to weave most laughed to myself when I imagined the sound through them. Yet vending has never been allowed in of an approaching goods train. (My children are not streets, and one is left puzzled by the lackadaisical ap - even interested in hearing about trains.) proach from the law enforcers. A city can easily be So, gone are those economic good old days when turned into a maze of vendors, thieves and vagrants. agricultural produce was cheap. The fields are I remember how, when I started working in Gweru empty, industries are derelict and collapsing build - in the 1990s, I would go kwaKombayi, two kilome - ings are all clear testimony of a dying economy. tres away from the city, to buy tomatoes, onions, or - Development has taken a u-turn; people are anges and apples. Now, market stalls have sprouted forced to travel into neighbouring countries to buy around the Kudzanayi Bus Terminus, selling wet bales of clothing to sell on the streets. vegetables, dry vegetables, kapenta fish, carrots, or - That is the tragedy of the Zimbabwean today, and anges and even chicken feed. every Zimbabwean remains resilient waiting on to In the central business district, the street raid has been that day when the economic fortunes of the country ruthless – vendors were sent home empty-handed. will recover. Nyamuzihwa 2015 10 The making of ‘Remaking Mutirikwi’ Joost Fontein describes the process of producing his book about the land occupations around Lake Mutirikwi I often think of Remaking Mutirikwi as a sequel to vice versa. Similarly, chiefs and other so-called ‘tra - my earlier book The Silence of Great Zimbabwe: ditional leaders’ reclaiming land do so across differ - Contested Landscapes and the Power of Heritage ent repertoires of meaning and rule; at once framing (UCL Press, 2006). their authority in terms of their responsibilities for so-called ‘chivanhu’, but simultaneously appealing The fieldwork took place in the same part of Zim - to ‘technocratic development’. babwe, in the same district, and with many of the I often heard them discuss the environmental con - same people. Indeed, the fieldwork I did for The Si - cerns (particularly the prevention of soil erosion and lence of Great Zimbabwe in 2000-2001 took place the dam’s siltation) of government land technocrats, when the initial land occupations around Lake Mu - even as they used such language to strengthen their tirikwi were happening. The Silence was focused on own ‘autochthonous’ land claims, by asserting that Great Zimbabwe and the politics of heritage in which they were uniquely placed to protect the land, be - it has long been enveloped. Remaking Mutirikwi cov - cause ‘we are of the land’ and ‘we know it’. ers a larger range of issues, a larger geographical area, and different theoretical questions. Its focus is The past on land occupations by local chiefs, clans, and about Many of these debates turned on the materialities. what motivated them, and how these various and Time and again, people occupying state lands and often diverse claims were made and received. former commercial farms around the lake told me they had returned to specific places because the Opportunities graves of their fathers and ancestors were there. Even In the early 2000s, the first wave of commentary ‘non-autochthonous’ vatorwa (including war veter - about ‘Fast Track’ land reform often painted a bleak ans and other ‘new farmers’), often sought out the picture of Zimbabwe’s ‘plunge’, the ‘end of moder - ‘original’ owners of the land, those ‘who know’ its nity’ and so on, yet in 2005 –6 when most of the field - sacred graves, trees and hills, and the pools where work for this book was done, there were good rains dangerous njuzu spirit creatures lived, in order to after several drought years and I found that, for many make safe their occupations and ensure that rain people involved in land occupations around Mu - would fall. The past matters as active, potentially dan - tirikwi, the so-called ‘third Chimurenga’ offered re - gerous stuff, and the traces of different past occupa - newed hope and optimism. This was particularly true tions, those graves, springs and so on, dating from for local clans who remembered being removed in before the evictions of the 1940s, co-exist in close ma - the 1940s from lands around (and under) where the terial proximity with the contour ridges and stop drains lake now lies. Many of them had tried to reclaim their dating to the coercive initiatives of Rhodesian Native lands immediately after the war, but were evicted in Affairs officials in the 1940s and 50s. the mid-1980s by the new government. The 2000s Furthermore, just as rain-makers want irrigation offered them the opportunity to try to regain these and dams, many people recalled how white farmers lands. For others, it was more about realising long- used to help fund rain-making mitoro or mukwerere promised opportunities and perceived entitlements ceremonies taking place on or near ‘their’ farms, deriving from contributions made to, and losses suf - even as they built their dams, and contour ridges. fered, during the war. After all, they too needed rain. Water The remains of many different earlier occupations As well as writing about the cultural politics of land, co-exist: even while asserting their belonging to the I was also concerned with the role of water in the soil as the only ones able to appease its troublesome emergent politics of state-making during this period. ancestors, spirits and njuzu , local chiefs and clans re - I have long been struck by the idea that rain-mak - occupying lands around the lake also spoke of en - ing and dam-building do similar things politically. countering the white ghosts of long-dead Rhodesian Both, I argue, demonstrate power as capacity and farmers. T he active and affective material remains of sovereignty, and at the same time, are pastoral re - many different past occupations continue to co-exist – sponses to peoples’ needs. Moreover, the two can and most of all, in the dam itself. do co-exist: rain-making need not exclude dams, nor Continued on the next page 11 The Mutirikwi dam This brings me to the Mutirikwi dam (formerly Guy Clutton-Brock – hero of Kyle); built in the late 1950s and early 1960s, after more than twenty years of negotiation between dif - Zimbabwe ferent groups of Rhodesian farmers, hydrologists and Sally Roschnik, the daughter of the first BZS soil scientists, planners and industrialists. President Guy Clutton-Brock, has written a It was inspired by a desire to build new white fu - biography of her father tures in , as the rest of the conti - nent was, rapidly decolonising. It was eventually Guy Clutton-Brock – Hero of Zimbabwe , tells the built for, and financed by, the sugar interests at Tri - story of Guy and his wife Molly from Guy’s birth angle, but it was remade into a watery playground in England in 1906 through to Molly’s death at for Rhodesia’s growing urban settler population. the age of 101 in 2013 – and beyond to Sally’s re - In some respects, the dam marked an attempt to turn to Zimbabwe in 2014. produce a European landscape, obliterating African Guy, Molly and Sally (then aged seven), arrived pasts. But the African landscapes of sacred mapa , in Cape Town by boat in 1949 with their posses - graves, springs, and hills and caves around the lake sions in two metal dustbins, three tea chests and survived. For many people around Mutirikwi, these two suitcases. African pasts, and the futures they promised, came Guy’s first job was to teach agriculture in what was alive again in the 2000s. then Southern Rhodesia, at St Faith’s Secondary School Temporalities outside Rusape. Molly started the Mukuwapasi Clinic Thus, I found myself questioning conventional tem - for disabled children at St Faith’s in 1950 (Sally poralities. Most people assume colonisation in Zim - found it still going strong in 2014.) babwe began in 1890 and ended in 1980. But around The family later spent time in Bechuanaland, now Mutirikwi people will tell you they lost their lands in Botswana, returning to Rhodesia to help found the the 1940s, when the Land Apportionment Act was non-racial Cold Comfort Farm, as Ian Smith and the implemented in Victoria District. Most European Rhodesian Front prepared to declare UDI. farms had been pegged and delineated in the 1890s In 1959, Guy was arrested for his involvement in the and 1900s, but it was people’s eviction into the re - nationalist cause and detained in Salisbury Prison. He serves that marked their dispossession. was branded a suspicious trouble-maker, and in 1971, From this perspective the colonial period be - deported by what was by then an illegal regime. comes a brief interlude between 1940 and 1980, and After their enforced return to the UK, Guy and the post-colonial period did not really begin until the Molly spent 20 happy years living simply and 2000s (because the 1980s and 1990s were marked by ecologically in a small cottage in North Wales. frustrated promises of returning to the land). This of - Guy’s me morial service in St Martin-in-the-Fields fers a challenge to historians, who conventionally di - in 1995, attended by President Mugabe, was organ - vide their labour according to conventional temporal schemas: the pre-colonial period before 1890; the ised with the help of the BZS. colonial period between 1890 and 1980; and the post - A limited number of colonial – anything from 1980. copies of Guy Clut - From examining the political materialities of land ton-Brock – Hero and water around Mutirikwi I learned that we can no of Zimbabwe, are longer take those schemas for granted. The active co- available for £10 existence of many past and futures in the materiali - including postage ties of place and landscape means we need to be open & packing in the to other ways of ordering space and time. UK, all proceeds to I think we still have a long way to go with that. the Zimbabwe As - Joost Fontein: October 2015 sociation. Send a For a more detailed version of this article, see: cheque for £10 http://www.biea.ac.uk/blog/uncategorized/the-mak - made out to ‘BZS’, ing-of-remaking-mutirikwi/ c/o Margaret Ling, Remaking Mutirikwi: Landscape, Water and Belong - Treasurer, 25 ing in Southern Zimbabwe, 2015 James Currey/BIEA Endymion Road, Eastern Africa Series London N4 1EE 12 New books from and about Zimbabwe Banning Eyre dictatorship. Nkosilathi Moyo has published two other Lion Songs: and the Music That books on Kindle: Zimbabwe: A Revolution Waiting to Made Zimbabwe Happen (May 2015), and The Rise of Grace Mugabe – Like Fela Kuti and Bob The Fall of ZANU (PF): (truth-telling book about Marley, singer, composer, Africa’s upcoming first female dictator) (September and bandleader Thomas 2015) 104 pp, Amazon Media Kindle edition, May Mapfumo and his music 2015, ASIN B00XKSL8VO, e-book came to represent his coun - Allison K Shutt try's anticolonial struggle Racial etiquette in Southern Rhodesia, 1910–1963 and cultural identity. The Tells the story of how people struggled to define, re - genre Mapfumo created in form and overturn racial etiquette as a social guide the 1970s called to Southern Rhodesian politics – how whites be - chimurenga, or ‘struggle’ lieved that the nimble use of etiquette would contain music, challenged the Rho- Africans’ desire for change, and how a changing dis - desian government and became important to Zim - course about manners and respectability contributed babwe’s independence. In the 1980s and 1990s Map - both to political mobilisation on the part of Africans fumo’s international profile grew along with his and the narrowing options for the course of white opposition to Robert Mugabe's regime. His criticism politics. 264 pages, US, University of Rochester led authorities and loyalists to turn on the singer with Press, 2015, 9781580465205 hardback threats and intimidation. From 2000, Mapfumo and key band and family members left Zimbabwe for the Edited by Irene Staunton US and elsewhere. The book also has a companion Writing Mystery and Mayhem CD of Thomas Mapfumo’s songs, Lion Songs : Es - This eighth anthology of twelve short stories from sential Tracks in the Making of Zimbabwe . Signed Zimbabwean writers, with subjects ranging from copies of both are available for purchase from the au - tokolosh to tsunami, and from ghosts to goldfish, re - thor’s website http://www.banningeyre.com. 416 pp, minds us that the world is crazier than we think. Sev - Duke University Press, USA, May 2015, eral writers adopt a tongue-in-cheek approach to the 9780822359081, hardback. subject, others explore the ramifications of sudden death, or draw on the pain and vulnerability of both Ezekiel Hleza the victims and those left behind. 118 pp, Zimbabwe, Don’t Cry For Me Weaver Press, 2015, ISBN 9781779222787 paper - This historical drama draw n from the history of ZIPRA back . focuses on the Rhodesian response to the downing of Vis - count Hunyani with a SAM7 missile, on 3 September 1978. Edited by Arnold J. Temu, Joel das Neves Tembe A massive air and ground attack on ZAPU and ZPRA deep Southern African Liberation Struggles 1960-1994 – inside ensued. Contemporaneous Documents The operation, code-named Green Leader, began on These nine volumes are the most comprehensive his - 19 October 1978 with the operations commander taking torical record of the liberation struggles in southern over the Zambian airspace and holding the Zambian air Africa. They record interviews with liberation fight - force on the ground for a better part of the day. Mean - ers and supporters in the Frontline states and the ex - while the freedom camp is turned into hellfire by traordinary sacrifices they made. The books are part bombers and helicopter gunships. 177 pp, Austin of the SADC-initiated Hashim Mbita Project, and the Macauley Publishers, London, 2014, ISBN project team was drawn from a range of SADC 9781849633116, paperback. Southern African countries. The support received from other parts of the world is also documented. Nkosilathi Moyo 5,394 pages, Tanzania, Mkuki na Nyota Publishers, Robert Mugabe: from freedom fighter to the People's 2015, ISBN ISBN 9789987753284 hardback. Enem y Note: This collection is priced at $800/£500 with Discusses the rise of the people's movement in Zim - local shipping rates applying. babwe and how it will uproot authoritarianism and 13 Zimbabwe Health Training Support (ZHTS) Dr Kate Adams describes the work of this charity, set up by members of Zimbabwe’s diaspora to meet health needs in Zimbabwe

Zimbabwe Health Training Support (ZHTS) is a Zimbabwe. Over 25 per cent of people using primary registered UK charity set up in 2004 by health health care in Zimbabwe suffer from mental health professionals from the diaspora, in response to the problems. political and economic crisis in Zimbabwe. Despite the large burden of mental illness in the community, there is no government provision of psy - Zimbabwe used to have one of the best health sys - chological treatment in primary care across Zim - tems in the southern African region. babwe. There are no community mental health However, following the economic crisis, with little services provided by the Government, and there are investment and few funds to support health services, only a few trained psychiatrists working for the pub - in addition to a mass exodus of health professionals lic health system. out of Zimbabwe (many to the UK), the Zimbabwean The main project we have been supporting is the health system came close to collapse. ‘Friendship Bench’, which is a community mental At the height of the crisis, life expectancy was the health service led by trained lay health workers in lowest in the world, at 37 years. Mbare Township, Harare, that screens people in the Key aim community for depression and provides low-intensity ZHTS decided that its key aim would be to support therapy for people suffering with common mental ill - health professional training and continuing education nesses. in Zimbabwe to support colleagues working under dif - ZHTS has also trained staff in one of the two men - ficult circumstances, and try and prevent further ‘brain tal health hospitals. Zimbabwean mental health drain’ of health professionals out of the country . nurses working in the UK are supporting the training ZHTS draws upon the commitment and skills of of mental health nursing staff to improve the man - the UK-based Zimbabwe health diaspora. It also mo - agement of acutely unwell mental health patients. bilises a wider support base within the UK that sup - Another project plans to support the development port fund-raising, and also includes facilitating the of family practice training in Zimbabwe. establishment of sustainable institutional links be - Skills database tween Zimbabwe, the UK and elsewhere. We are developing a skills database of Zimbabwean Because we are a small charity with few resources, health professionals living and working in the UK we focus on training and skilling up key staff. Train - who are interesting in training health professionals ing is then cascaded to other staff throughout Zim - in Zimbabwe. babwe. We have also supported the new medical Do get in touch ([email protected]) if school in Bulawayo, training the future doctors of you are a health worker and want to support our Zimbabwe. work. We are only a small charity and really value Projects the support and contribution of our supporters, so do To date, the organisation has successfully completed consider joining us. and supported a range of projects. We ensure that the annual membership fee of £25 ZHTS has helped train midwives and obstetricians is put to good use in helping those back home. to recognise and respond to obstetric emergencies. If you want further information about our activities Teams of doctors and nurses have visited Zimbabwe please go to: www.zhts.org.u k to train colleagues to improve the health outcomes for women and babies. Dr Kate Adams There has been similar training delivered to pae - Chair, ZHTS diatricians to improve the support and management of children with epilepsy. Mental health Over the past few years, ZHTS has raised funds to support the training of mental health workers in

14 BZS AGM, 24 October 2015 Our Annual General Meeting was held at St Zimbabwean community to speak in a more co-ordi - James’s Church Hall, Prebend Street in London: nated way on a host of issues of concern to the diaspora. thanks are due to Victor de Waal for organising this . ‘We become powerful together,’ he told the meeting . The meeting began with the announcement that Knox 2. He was followed by Rose Hamilton of the SKLA Chitiyo is standing down as Chair (having held the po - who outlined the history of the link, and how they have sition since 2009). He is, however, not giving up his in - recently developed links between organisations for dis - volvement, as he has now become President. abled people in both towns, and paid school fees for In his farewell speech as chair, Knox spoke of the over 200 students in primary and secondary schools. challenges and opportunities facing the BZS – not least, 3. Jackson Nazombe, a youth and community in attracting younger members. He thanks the member - worker and pastor, who grew up in Zimbabwe told ship secretaries with whom he has worked over the the meeting about the SEED project, of which he is years, and Margaret Ling for her work as treasurer. founder. This works with communities in Zimbabwe Knox spoke too of the success of the Research rifehigh, and opportunities, hope and education are Days over the years, conducted with the help of the poor. He explained that the focus was on empow - Journal for Southern African Studies (JSAS) and the erment – but voiced his regret that so many young Rhodes Chair Fund, and the organising abilities of people are leaving the country. Margaret Ling and Diana Jeater. This is a time of transition and renewal, Knox said, but he had confidence that the organisation Zephaniah Phiri Maseko: would continue. Areas we should consider included 1927–2015 becoming involved with the Commonwealth Oral History Project (see: http://commonwealth.sas.ac.uk/re - Zephaniah Phiri, the farmer who became famous search/cw-oral-history-project) – we should be thinking for his techniques of ‘water harvesting’ and for about our own history. founding the Zvishavane Water Project, has died Knox ended his speech by thanking our partners aged 88. – mentioning in particular the Stevenage–Kadoma Phiri,began his career as a fireman before becoming Link Association SKLA) and the African Studies a farmer. In the 1980s, he served as a Community Li - Centre in Oxford. aison Officer for the Lutheran World Federation Reports water programme in the Zvishavane and Mberengwa Reports followed – from Margaret Ling, as Treasurer, region, working on water conservation. In the late noting that the Research Day had, sadly, made a loss 1980s, he was invited to join the research team of the this year, mainly because there had been less grant University of London/University of Zimbabwe agri - money than in previous years. A report from the cultural ecology study in Mazvihwa (Zvishavane), SKLA given by its vice-chair Jan Addison spoke of and continued to develop methods of water conser - work with students and a visit to the Kadoma Fire vation. Over the years, he became famous for his station, which the Association had helped to fund. simple, effective and innovatory water management techniques, turning his dry farm into a showcase for Elections visitors interested in conservation issues, from all Following these reports, elections were held for the Ex - over the world. ecutive, with Pauline Dodgson-Katiyo being elected as We hope to devote the next issue of the Zim - a new Chair. Victor de Waal has stepped down as Vice- babwe Review to environmental issues, and carry Chair but continues as a member of the Executive and more information about the life and work of that Mutsai Hove has stepped down as Membership Zephaniah Phiri . Secretary and member of the Executive. The full list is given on the next page – but please note that we still need a membership secretary! Date for your diary Guest speakers The next Britain Zimbabwe Society Research Our guest speakers this year were: Day is scheduled for 18 June 2016, at St Antony’s 1. Dr Paul Matsvai , of the Zimbabwe Diaspora College, Oxford. The theme will be ‘Health’. Network-UK. This seeks to make it easier for the 15 Contact the Britain Zimbabwe Society

Secretary (Minutes/Correspondence): Pat Brickhill, 1A Selbourne Place, Minehead, Somerset TA24 5TY E-mail: [email protected]

Acting Membership Secretary: Margaret Ling 25 Endymion Road, London N4 1EE, [email protected]

BZS Executive members Other Executive members: Diana Jeater 2015 –2016 officers and Executive Bruce Mutsvairo Chair:Pauline Dodgson-Katiyo Ranka Primorac Vice-Chairs: Millius Palayiwa, Rori Masiyane Victor de Waal Secretary (Minutes/Correspondence):Pat Brickhill Simon Bright Secretary (Membership): Margaret Ling (acting) Representatives of: Information and Publications Officer: Jenny Vaughan Stevenage-Kadoma Link Association Web Officer: Philip Weiss Zimbabwe Association Treasurer: Margaret Ling Note: There are vacancies on the Executive: please contact Pat Brickhill if you are interested in joining it.

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