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UNIVERSITY OF THE WESTERN CAPE FACULTY OF ARTS Decentering Nationalism: Representing and Contesting Chimurenga in Zimbabwean Popular Culture TINASHE MAWERE (3053624) Thesis submitted for the requirements of the DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY Degree in Women’s and Gender Studies SUPERVISORS: DESIREE LEWIS & BRIAN RAFTOPOULOS November 2015 DECLARATION I, TINASHE MAWERE, declare that ‘Decentering Nationalism: Representing and Contesting Chimurenga in Zimbabwean Popular Culture’ is my own work and that it has not been submitted before for any degree or examination in any other university, and that all sources I have used or quoted have been indicated and acknowledged as complete references. Signed: ____________________ Tinashe Mawere November 2015 Signed: ____________________ Prof. Desiree Lewis November 2015 i DEDICATION This thesis is dedicated to Zvitutamatuzvi (Dung beetles) ii ACKNOWLEDGMENTS I greatly acknowledge and thank the support, contributions, generosity and tolerance that different individuals, institutions and funders directly and or indirectly extended to me at various stages in the production of this dissertation. Nevertheless, I take the responsibilities for errors of content and analysis that this work might have. My gratitude to the Andrew Mellon Foundation for advancing me a three year scholarship through the Centre for Humanities Research (CHR)’s Programme on the Study of the Humanities in Africa (PSHA) at the University of the Western Cape (UWC) can never be expressed well enough. The CHR provided a very rich and stimulating environment for academic exchanges and networking, hence contributed immensely to the interdisciplinary nature of this work. At CHR I would like to especially thank the Director, Premesh Lalu for his support during the fellowship and for organising the invaluable weekly discussions and readings, the yearly winter school programme and other academic engagements that gave shape to this study. Brian Raftopoulos was my mentor at CHR and I would like to thank him for his valuable guidance. I also thank the CHR administrator, Lameez Lalkhen for the excellent administrative work. A priceless debt of appreciation goes to my two supervisors, Desiree Lewis and Brian Raftopoulos for taking me through this work. Your encouragement, patience, valuable critiques of the several drafts and many other forms of assistance kept me going. I also thank staff and students from the Women’s and Gender Studies Department for the support. The numerous seminars and informal engagements were really helpful. Special thanks also go to Ngonidzashe Marongwe, my colleague at the CHR and cousin, who read and critiqued several drafts of this work, thank you Mavedzenge. A heartfelt gratitude goes to my parents, my siblings and the entire family for the belief, patience, inspiration and many other forms of support. Many thanks also to my friends who welcomed me in Cape Town and in many ways, sacrificed for my well- being. I also thank the many friends I met in Cape Town for moral support. iii I received generous, useful and thought-provoking comments as well as intellectual stimulation from fellow doctoral and post-doctoral fellows as well as lecturers affiliated with the CHR and the History, Anthropology, Women’s and Gender Studies and English Departments of UWC. Some of these include Leslie Witz, Ciraj Rasool, Heidi Grunebaum, Paolo Israel, Suren Pillay, Ngonidzashe Marongwe, Okechukwu Nwafor, and Godfrey Maringira. Lastly, I would like to acknowledge all those whose works I have used in this study and all the unnamed who directly or indirectly contributed to the shaping of this study. iv ABSTRACT This study seeks to uncover the non-coercive, intricate and insidious ways which have generated both the ‘willing’ acceptance of and resistance to the rule of Robert Mugabe and ZANU-PF in Zimbabwe. I consider how popular culture is a site that produces complex and persuasive meanings and enactments of citizenship and belonging in contemporary Zimbabwe and focus on ‘agency,’ ‘subversion’ and their interconnectedness or blurring. The study argues that understanding nationalism’s impact in Zimbabwe necessitates an analysis of the complex ways in which dominant articulations of nationalism are both imbibed and contested, with its contestation often demonstrating the tremendous power of covert forms of resistance. The focus on the politics of popular culture in Zimbabwe called for eclectic and critical engagements with different social constructionist traditions, including postcolonial feminism, aspects of the work of Louis Althusser and Michel Foucault. My eclectic borrowing is aimed at enlisting theory to analyse ways in which co-optation, subversion and compromise often coexist in the meanings generated by various popular and public culture forms. These include revered national figures and symbols, sacrosanct dead bodies and retrievals, slogans and campaign material, sport, public speeches, the mass media and music. The study therefore explores political sites and responses that existing disciplinary studies, especially politics and history, tend to side-line. A central thesis of the study is that Zimbabwe, in dominant articulations of the nation, is often constituted in a discourse of anti-colonial war, and its present and future are imagined as a defence of what has already been gained from previous wars in the form of “chimurenga.” I argue that formal sites of political contestation often reinforce forms of patriarchal, heterosexist, ethnic, neo-imperial and class authoritarianism often associated only with the ZANUPF as the overtly autocratic ruling party. In turning to diverse forms of popular culture and their reception, I identify and analyze sites and texts that, rather than constituting mere entertainment or reflecting organized and party political struggles, testify to the complexity and intensity of current forms of domination and resistance in the country. Contrary to the view that Zimbabwe has been witnessing a steady paralysis of popular protest, the study argues that slogans, satire, jokes, metaphor, music and general performance arts by the ordinary people are spaces on which “even the highly spectacular deployment of gender and sexuality to naturalize a nationalism informed by the ‘efficacy’ of a phallocentric power ‘cult’ is full of contestations and ruptures.” v TABLE OF CONTENTS DECLARATION ........................................................................................................................ i DEDICATION .......................................................................................................................... ii ACKNOWLEDGMENTS ......................................................................................................... iii ABSTRACT ............................................................................................................................... v TABLE OF CONTENTS ........................................................................................................ vi LIST OF ACRONYMS ........................................................................................................... viii LIST OF IMAGES ..................................................................................................................... x CHAPTER 1: DECENTERING ZIMBABWEAN NATIONALISM ....................................... 1 (Re)Thinking Zimbabwean Nationalism ................................................................................... 1 Theorizing Power, Culture and Nationalism ............................................................................. 3 Conceptualizing Zimbabwean Nationalism: Repression, Subversion and Performance ......... 11 Gender, Sexuality and Nationalism: A Postcolonial Constructionist Lens. ............................ 24 CHAPTER 2: ORIGIN STORIES OF THE ZIMBABWEAN NATION AND THEIR CONTESTATIONS ................................................................................................................ 38 Roots, Triumphs and Destinies................................................................................................ 38 Origin Stories: The (Un)Making of a Nation .......................................................................... 45 Glories and Re/presentations ................................................................................................... 59 CHAPTER 3: THE ‘LAND QUESTION’ AND ITS SYMBOLIC MEANINGS .................. 61 Re/Scaping Zimbabwe: ‘Motherland,’ ‘Son of the Soil’ and ‘Sovereignty.’ .......................... 61 After the Litmus Test: Tightening the Leash and Loosening the Grip .................................... 73 Hailing Subjects: Public Enactments of Reform and National Control .................................. 78 Femininity, Land and Nationalism .......................................................................................... 82 Land and its Mythical Resonance ............................................................................................ 87 CHAPTER 4: NARRATIVES AND PERFORMANCES OF STRUGGLE IN THE ZIMBABWEAN NATION ..................................................................................................... 96 Struggle and Space .................................................................................................................. 96 The Dead, Burials, Bones and Retrievals ................................................................................ 96 Heroes, Performativity and Chimurenga ..............................................................................