Myth and legend in urban oral memory: Bulawayo, 1930–60

Abstract

Inspired in part by the fictional work of the Zimbabwean novelist Yvonne Vera, this article draws on oral interviews conducted with elderly residents of townships (former colonial ghettos) of Bulawayo, Zimbabwe’s second‐largest city, in the early 2000s. The informants’ memories of life in the colonial city are configured by five intertwined sets of urban myths and legends, related to strangeness, panic, youth, resilience and heroism. Linked by recurring motifs of violence and transformation, these myths and legends may be understood as supplementing and interrogating official (written) narratives of historical processes and events.

Keywords:

• Bulawayo
• Makokoba
• memory
• orality
• urban legend
• transformation

Notes

1. A call to violence; the hunting equivalent of “tally‐ho” in siNdebele.

2. A Ndebele idiomatic expression meaning “Don’t get left behind!”

3. At Karengo’s (shebeen).