Spiritual Temporalities of the Liberation War in Zimbabwe

Abstract

This paper contributes to our understanding of the spiritual and invisible aspects of African military landscapes through a historical and ethnographic study of Zimbabwe liberation war guerrillas' spiritual practices. Guerrillas mobilized and deployed their spiritual beliefs and practices in the execution of the 1970s liberation war against well equipped Rhodesian forces, and in subsequent deployments as members of the post-colonial national army. Guerrillas' understanding of their landscape of deployment as spiritual influenced their engagement with it's physical materials such as trees and caves and wild animals as active objects representing the ancestors. The paper argues that the spirituality of African military landscape challenges dominant western conceptualizations of military landscapes as passive sites that are dominated and shaped by violent military activities. Spirituality makes African military landscapes active and affective beyond the dictates of human [militay] action, therefore shaping and controlling ways in which the military engage with it.

KEYWORDS:

• spirituality
• liberation war
• military landscapes
• Zimbabwe

Notes on contributor

Edmore Chitukutuku is a Lecturer in the department of Anthropology at the University of the Witwatersrand, Johannesburg, South Africa. Research interests are military studies, landscapes, violence, youth and peacebuilding.

Correspondence to: Edmore Chitukutuku, Department of Anthropology, University of the Witwatersrand, Johannesburg, South Africa. Email: [email protected]

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by Social Science Research Council [grant number SSRC 2016]; Wenner-Gren Foundation [grant number WGF 2016].