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ABSTRACT
Since the early 2000s, scholars have criticised how Zimbabwe’s ruling party has ‘distorted’ history to suit its political purposes through its rhetoric of ‘patriotic history’. There remains a lacuna of studies focusing on what purchase ‘patriotic history’ has had in specific contexts, and what alternative commemorations it has sometimes afforded. Examining efforts in early 2010s by war veterans, relatives and survivors to monumentalise two wartime massacres sites in southern Zimbabwe, this paper explores the localised politics of recognition through which ‘patriotic history’ gained local saliency. Based on interviews at Kamungoma and Hurodzavasikana massacre sites in Gutu district, we examine how Zimbabwe African National Union Patriotic Front’s historiographical project re-fuelled local efforts to remake communities and landscapes marked by violence and death. What is striking at Kamungoma and Hurodzavasikana is the relative absence of unhappy spirits or problematic human remains which have dominated war veteran-led exhumations and National Museums and Monuments of Zimbabwe’s ‘liberation heritage’ programme elsewhere in Zimbabwe. Although hasty burials, landscapes scarred by violence and unsettled by the mingling substances of bodies and soil are part of the story here, at these Gutu sites the metonymy of past violence is more affective in the scarred bodies of survivors, in the failed futures of youth and kin lost, and of recognition delayed or denied.
Acknowledgements
We are grateful to Gutu’s war veterans, its District Administrator and its rural communities, and NMMZ for the assistance we were shown during this research. We are also grateful to the Munro fund and the Hayter committee at Edinburgh University for the funds that enabled this research to be carried out. Earlier versions of this paper were presented at the BIEA’s conference in March 2015 on Legacies of Struggle in Southern and Eastern Africa, and at the ASA USA annual conference in San Diego in November 2015. We are grateful for comments received at these events, and for Justin Willis for reading an earlier version of the paper, and to the anonymous reviewers for their comments and suggestions.
Disclosure statement
No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.
Notes
1. Werbner, “Smoke from the Barrel of a Gun” and Kriger, “The Politics of Creating National Heroes.”
2. Sithole, Zimbabwe: Struggles Within the Struggle.
3. Ranger, “The Uses and Abuses of History” and Ranger, “Nationalist Historiography, Patriotic History.”
4. Primorac, “History as Fiction,” 437.
5. Ranger, “Nationalist Historiography, Patriotic History;” Primorac, “History as Fiction;” Fontein, The Silence of Great Zimbabwe; Tendi, Making History in Mugabe’s Zimbabwe; and Tendi, “Patriotic History and Public Intellectuals.”
6. Kriger, “From Patriotic Memories,” 1151.
7. Even established musicians felt the pressure of party interference during that time, and some who succumbed witnessed a devastating loss of popular support as a result, like Andy Brown. Ndlovu-Gatsheni and Willems, “Making Sense of Cultural Nationalism,” 954.
8. Fontein, “The Politics of the Dead;” Fontein, “Between Tortured Bodies;” and Fontein, “Re-making the Dead.”
9. Fontein, “Between Tortured Bodies,” 504 and Muchemwa, “Necropolitan Imagination.”
10. Kriger, “The Politics of Creating National Heroes,” 146 and Werbner, “Smoke from the Barrel of a Gun.”
11. Becker, “Commemorating Heroes.”
12. Alexander et al., Violence and Memory; Eppel, “A Tale of Three Dinner Plates;” and Eppel, “‘Gukurahundi’ the Need for Truth and Reparation.”
13. McGregor and Schumaker, “Heritage in Southern Africa” and Fontein, “The Politics of the Dead.”
14. We are grateful for Justin Willis for highlighting this point.
15. Interview with Cde Chikandwa, Mpandawana, 9 December 2013.
16. See Aronson, “The Strengths and Limitations” and Rousseau, “Death and Dismemberment.”
17. Fontein, “The Politics of the Dead;” Fontein, “Between Tortured Bodies;” and Fontein, “Re-making the Dead.”
18. Mtisi et al., “War in Rhodesia, 1965–1980,” 162.
19. Ibid., 149.
20. Mazarire, “Discipline and Punishment in ZANLA,” 587, argues that rapidly training guerrilla recruits within ‘liberated’ areas close to operational zones enabled ZANLA to launch military offensives quickly, enabling ZANU to respond to the intensification of Rhodesian military activity and the presence of Muzorewa and Sithole’s auxiliaries.
21. Interview with Paul Mugariwa, Kamungoma, 10 December 2013; Interview with Mrs Patricia Mapfumo, Kamungoma, 10 December 2013.
22. The Zambia Daily Mail reported that the massacre was the “bloodiest incident of its kind reported on the five year old war.” “Rebels co-minister quizzes forces on deaths,” Zambia Daily Mail, May 18, 1978. In Nairobi, the Daily Nation reported that 50 people were “gunned down in a five-minute hailstorm of bullets as Rhodesian security forces tried to eliminate a band of eight black nationalist guerrillas.” “Slaughter of the Innocents,” Daily Nation, May 19, 1978.
23. “Rebels Co-minister Quizzes Forces on Deaths,” Zambia Daily Mail, May 18, 1978.
24. Ibid.
25. For example, the narratives collected at Kamungoma during the CFNM project in 2006 (see below) largely focused on the brutality of the Rhodesian Forces but glossed over guerrillas’ culpability.
26. Paul Mugariwa, Kamungoma, December 10, 2013.
27. Hamutyinei, from the Chin’ombe community, wrote about the massacre in a Shona novel shortly after the war, claiming guerrillas had purchased large amounts of food and drink for the pungwe, which attracted an unusually large crowd. Hamutyinei, Zvakanga zvakaoma muZimbabwe, 69. See also McLaughlin, On the Frontline, 197.
28. Interview with Paul Mugariwa, Kamungoma, September 26, 2011 and December 10, 2013; see also Hamutyinei, Zvakanga zvakaoma muZimbabwe, 70. He suggested that had the guerrillas heeded mujibhas’ intelligence that soldiers were nearby, they might have stopped the pungwe and prevented the massacre.
29. Interview with Cde Chikandwa, Mpandawana, December 9, 2013.
30. Interview with Rtd Col. Masanganise, Mpandawana, December 9, 2013.
31. NMMZ File 10b-Liberation Heritage, Report on a visit to Gutu liberation war shrines, September 26, 2011.
32. Fieldnotes, December 11, 2013.
33. NMMZ File 10b-Liberation Struggle, Letter from Rtd Colonel Masanganise to NMMZ Southern Region, August 5, 2014.
34. Interview with Mr Mhiripiri, Hurodzavasikana, December 12, 2013; interview with Cde Makuto, December 9, 2013.
35. Mbembe, “Necropolitics.”
36. Mrs Mabuwa, quoted in N. Bhebe and G. C. Mazarire, “Zimbabwe’s Struggle for Liberation.” According to Mrs Mabuwa, when they arrived at Mkushi Girls Camp in Zambia after an attack by the Rhodesian Forces in 1978, they discovered that Rhodesian soldiers had laid landmines around the camp and booby-trapped dead bodies. In the end many of these people were not buried but left simply to rot away.
37. Interview with Mr Mhiripiri, Hurodzavasikana, December 12, 2013.
38. Interview with Mr Mhiripiri, Hurodzavasikana, December 12, 2013.
39. “Nightmare of a Lifetime: A Father Relives a Wartime Ordeal that Left Him Without His Children,” The Sunday Mail, August 12, 2001.
40. Interview with Paul Mugariwa, Kamungoma, December 10, 2013.
41. Interview with Ms Vongai Mapfumo, Kamungoma, December 10, 2013.
42. Mbembe, “Necropolitics.”
43. Interview with Petros Makwanya, Kamungoma, December 10, 2013.
44. Interview with Ms Vongai Mapfumo, Kamungoma, December 10, 2013.
45. Interview with Cde Makuto, December 9, 2013.
46. Interview with Mrs Patricia Mapfumo, Kamungoma, December 10, 2013.
47. Daneel, Guerrilla Snuff.
48. Interview with Mr Petros Makwanya, Kamungoma, December 10, 2013.
49. Interview with Mrs Patricia Mapfumo, Kamungoma, December 10, 2013.
50. Hertz, Death and the Right Hand.
51. Fontein, “The Politics of the Dead;” Fontein, “Between Tortured Bodies;” and Fontein, “Re-making the Dead.”
52. Werbner, “Smoke from the Barrel of a Gun,” 98.
53. Interview with Chief Makumbe, December 12, 2013.
54. Fontein, “The Politics of the Dead;” Fontein, “Between Tortured Bodies;” and Fontein, “Re-making the Dead.”
55. Fieldnotes, December 10, 2013 and Fieldnotes, December 12, 2013.
56. NMMZ stone masons who reconstructed the initial war veteran-built, cemented, stone monument in 2012–2013, told us they had not camped at the site because of the killings that had taken place there, seeking lodgings in a nearby township instead. Henry Mugabe and Munyaradzi Mapfuwa, NMMZ Stone Masons, December 13, 2013.
57. Werbner, “Smoke from the Barrel of a Gun,” 98.
58. Interview with Paul Mugariwa, Kamungoma, December 10, 2013.
59. Comaroff and Comaroff, Theory from the South, 134–7.
60. Bloch, “Death and the Concept of the Person.”
61. Comaroff and Comaroff Theory from the South, 52–3.
62. Fontein, “Graves, Ruins and Belonging.”
63. Ingold, Being Alive.
64. Hertz, Death and the Right Hand.
65. Geissler and Prince, The Land is Dying, 10.
66. Ibid.
67. Comaroff and Comaroff, Theory from the South, 36.
68. Fontein, Remaking Mutirikwi.
69. Bond and Manyanya, Zimbabwe’s Plunge and Raftopoulos and Mlambo, Becoming Zimbabwe.
70. Sadomba, War Veterans in Zimbabwe’s Revolution, 170.
71. Ranger, “Nationalist Historiography.”
72. Rutherford, “Commercial Farm Workers.”
73. This book became core reading for the National Youth Service’s so-called greenbombers or maBorder Gezi (after the minster who began the programme), established in 2001 to instil ZANU PF discipline onto the younger generation of so-called born frees, who were instrumental in securing ZANU PF’s violent and contested victory in the 2002 presidential elections. Ndlovu-Gatsheni and Willems, “Making Sense of Cultural Nationalism,” 958.
74. Ranger, “Nationalist Historiography.”
75. Matenga, The Soapstone Birds of Great Zimbabwe and Fontein, The Silence of Great Zimbabwe.
76. Magadzike, “An Investigation of Zimbabwe’s Contemporary Heritage Practices” and Fontein, “The Politics of the Dead.”
77. “Oral History Programme Launched in Tsholotsho,” The Herald, May 17, 2004.
78. Murambiwa, “Launch of the Oral History Project: Capturing a Fading National Memory,” National Archives of Zimbabwe, Memorundum (undated).
79. Ranger, “Nationalist Historiography,” 11.
80. “Lest We Forget,” Chronicle, August 10, 2003.
81. Mupira, “A Framework for Managing Zimbabwe’s Liberation War Heritage,” First Draft, NMMZ, November 2010.
82. One of the authors, Joseph Mujere, led a team of the research assistants conducting interviews at Kamungoma.
83. Interview with Crispen Chauke, April 5, 2006.
84. Kriger, Zimbabwe’s Guerrilla War.
85. Mujere, “Autochthons, Strangers, Modernizing Educationists and Progressive Farmers.”
86. This probably related to ZANU PF’s increasingly restrictive citizenship policies, which put descendants of regional migrants under great strain at the time.
87. Ivan Murambiwa, “The Zimbabwe Archive,” unpublished paper presented at the Expatriate Archives in Museums Workshop, Bristol, UK, 19 April 2008, 3.
88. The CFNM team sent to Gwanda in January 2006 failed to interview people there, as local politicians protested that nothing was being said or done by the government about the Gukurahundi massacres.
89. As Ivan Murambiwa also noted in “The Zimbabwe Archive,” 3. Since the project’s end in 2006, NAZ has continued to conduct interviews, and is slowly building a large collection of oral interviews about the struggle.
90. For example in Gutu, one woman came to Alheight Mission, where the project team was camped, a few kilometres from Kamungoma, and implored the team to interview her, arguing that when other villagers were interviewed she had not been home.
91. Cde Everisto Chikandwa is chair of Gutu’s War Veterans Association. During the struggle Chikandwa operated in Manicaland and held the highest rank of a Detachment Commander. Cde Makuto was trained in Mozambique in 1977, and then operated in his home district of Gutu, an uncommon scenario until that war’s later stages, as most fighters were deliberately deployed far from their home areas. He claimed to be conversant with the specific details of the war as it was fought in Gutu district. Cde Masanganise was the most senior of the three, and is a retired colonel in Zimbabwe National Army. Unlike others we interviewed in December 2013, he showed little interest in discussing his war credentials or experiences. A prominent member of local ZANU PF structures, he is also a member of the Gutu clan, and a relative of the current acting chief, with whom he was in frequent contact.
92. “Mahofa, Mutsvangwa Sworn In,” The Herald, February 27, 2015.
93. One of the war veterans commented that the failure of previous efforts to bear meaningful results suggested that maybe the spirits of those who died at the two sites did not want those who once attempted to build these shrines to do that for them. Gutu Fieldnotes, December 9, 2013.
94. NMMZ File E10b – Liberation Heritage, Report on a Visit to Gutu Liberation War Shrines, September 26, 2011.
95. Ibid.
96. See Fontein, The Silence of Great Zimbabwe and Pikirayi, “The Kingdom, the Power and Forevermore.”
97. A former guerrilla and refugee camp that was attacked by Rhodesian forces on November 23, 1977.
98. Interview with Rtd Colonel Masanganise, December 9, 2013.
99. Fontein, “Re-making the Dead.”
100. Ibid.
101. Ibid.
102. Interview with Cde Makuto, December 9, 2013.
103. Interview with Rtd Colonel Masanganise, December 9, 2013.
104. Interview with Cde Makuto, December 9, 2013.
105. Comaroff and Comaroff, Theory from the South, 133–52.
106. Interview with Cde Makuto, December 9, 2013.
107. “Walter Mzembi Attacks Chinamasa,” Newsday, December 6, 2014. He played a pivotal role as Minister of Tourism during the 20th session World Tourism Organization General Assembly co-hosted by Zimbabwe and Zambia from 24 to 29 August 2013 at Victoria Falls and Livingstone. NMMZ File 10b-Liberation Heritage, Report on a Visit to Gutu Liberation War Shrines, September 26, 2011.
108. Henry Mugabe and Munyaradzi Mapfuwa, NMMZ Stone Masons, December 13, 2013.
109. NMMZ File 10b-Liberation Heritage, Report on a Visit to Gutu Liberation War Shrines, September 26, 2011.
110. Fontein, “The Politics of the Dead,” 17.
111. Financial constraints meant that NMMZ took almost two years to rebuild the monument at Kamungoma. NMMZ seconded its stonemasons to work with the community to rebuild the monument to its own ‘authentic’ standards. New stone needed to be quarried and prepared, and local communities had to be trained. With the stonemasons’ working days minimised to save costs, the quality of even the final structure was inevitably affected. Fieldnotes, December 13, 2013. Before both sites can be proclaimed National Monuments, the structure at Hurodzavasikana too will need to be rebuilt to NMMZ’s standards, and in the current financial climate, this is unlikely to happen soon.
112. “The idea to build shrines came out of the third Chimurenga when we were fighting the war to take over the land. Cde Makuto and myself and the late Cde Mahowa and Mai Muneno and Chin’ombe and Ranga, young brother to Cde E. D. Mnangagwa, were at the forefront of the third Chimurenga to grab the farms.” Cde Chikandwa, December 9, 2013.
113. Fontein, “Re-making the Dead” and Chipangura, “Archaeologists and Vernacular Exhumers.”
114. As Makuto explained, “We are not saying that the war was fought only in Gutu. There were deaths everywhere in the country. If we look at Chibondo … these people did not die on a single day they were brought and dumped in the shafts but those of Gutu died on that particular day within a period of thirty minutes.” Cde Makuto, December 9, 2013.
115. Fieldnotes, December 10, 2013.
116. Interview with Rtd Colonel Masanganise, Mpandawana, December 9, 2013. Also NMMZ File 05-Internal Reports, Report on the Mupata Sacred Site, Second Visit, October 18, 2013. See also Fontein, Remaking Mutirikwi.
117. Interview with Jessica Zingwena, Hurodzavasikana, December 12, 2013.
118. See, for example, “ZIMBABWE: Compensation Payments to Reward Ex-detainees Launched Ahead of Elections,” IRIN, February 10, 2005; “Zim to Pay Ex-political Prisoners Unbudgeted $200bln,” New Zimbabwe, December 11, 2009; “War Collaborators Demand Compensation,” Zimbabwean, October 10, 2014; and “War Collaborators Fight,” Newsday, April 28, 2012.
119. Fieldnotes, December 10, 2013.
120. Interview with Headman Makumbe, December 12, 2013.
121. Interview with Patricia Mapfumo, Kamungoma, December 10, 2013.
122. Ibid.
123. Bourdillon, The Shona Peoples.
124. Mupira, “A Framework for Managing Zimbabwe’s Liberation War Heritage,” NMMZ, 2010; Mupira and Bvira, Chimoio Liberation War Shrine, Interpretation Guide, NMMZ 2012.
125. For example, at Chimoio and Nyadzonia in Mozambique, Chibondo in Mt Darwin (Fontein, “Re-making the Dead”) and Rusape’s Butcher site (Chipangura, “Archaeologists and Vernacular Exhumers”).
126. Cde Chikandwa response was “These people don’t want to tell us everything,” suggesting relations between the war veterans and locals around the sites were not quite as fraternal as had been suggested. Fieldnotes, Kamungoma, December 10, 2013.
127. Interview with Masanganise, Mpandawana, December 13, 2013.
128. See Aronson, “The Strengths and Limitations” and Rousseau, “Death and Dismemberment.”
129. Field Notes, December 18, 2013.
130. Fontein, “The Politics of the Dead;” Fontein, “Between Tortured Bodies;” and Fontein, “Re-making the Dead.”
131. Fontein, “The Politics of the Dead.”
132. Fontein, “Between Tortured Bodies” and Fontein, “Re-making the Dead.”
133. Fontein, “Re-making the Dead.”
134. Fontein, “Between Tortured Bodies.”
135. Community projects and school sponsorships are conceivable; NMMZ follows similar polices around other sites. Dr G. Mahachi, Executive Director, NMMZ, December 18, 2013.
136. Sagiya and Mandima “Report on Kamungoma Massacre Commemoration’s Preparatory Meeting,” April 21, 2016, NMMZ; “Kamungoma and Hurodzevasikana Budgets for 5000 People,” undated document, NMMZ, 2016; Zihove, Mashamaire and Mandima, “Report on a Visit to Kamungoma Liberation Massacre Site,” March 30, 2016, NMMZ; “Minutes of the Kamungoma and Hurodzavasikana Commemorations Preparations Meeting,” held at DA’s office, Gutu, April 23, 2016, NMMZ.
137. Primorac, “History as Fiction.”