Rebuilding the liberation war base: materiality and landscapes of violence in Northern Zimbabwe

ABSTRACT

This article examines how war veterans aligned to the ruling Zimbabwe African National Union-Patriotic Front (ZANU-PF) serving in the Zimbabwe National Army (ZNA) attempt to use affective experiences at former guerrilla bases dating to the liberation struggle of the 1970s, in conjunction with highly charged but also highly tailored narratives about the war, to constitute certain kinds of political subjectivity and loyalty to the ruling party among trainee officers, and local communities in Bindura South. Yet the very efforts they put into controlling and rehearsing workshops organized at such sites speaks to their own awareness of the excessivity of affective experience, which ultimately denies efforts to control narratives of the past and to constitute particular kinds of political subjectivity. The past has a relationship with the present through affective experiences with landscape and its materials, but such experiences are difficult to contain and channel. Engaging with recent debates about materiality, and the agency, affordances, and affective qualities of objects and landscapes I argue that liberation landscapes of past violence are active and affective, but also not wholly controlled or control-able by war veterans and ZANU-PF leaders attempting to forge particular kinds of political loyalty. This excessivity of landscapes of past violence defies narrative closure, and allows space for other narratives, other performances and experiences of the materiality of milieu.

KEYWORDS:

• Materiality
• landscapes
• violence
• liberation war
• apostolic church
• Zimbabwe
• affect
• agency

Acknowledgements

I am grateful for this financial support. I would also like to thank the British Institute in East Africa who invited me to present the paper at the Legacies of struggle conference in Nairobi, Kenya, for which this paper was written. I am also grateful to the Anthropology department at the University of the Witwatersrand for allowing me to present a version of this paper and all the comments I received. I am also grateful to Joost Fontein who helped me with shaping these ideas and discussions. Finally I am grateful to all in Bindura South who are subjects of this research.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

Notes

1. Ranger, “Nationalist Historiography,” 215–34.

2. Maringira, “When the Military,” 21–30; Tendi, “Ideology Civilian Authority,” 829–43.

3. Mlambo, Economic Structural Adjustment Programme.

4. Jones, Nothing is Straight in Zimbabwe; Hanke, Zimbabwe; Makumbe, Zimbabwe: Survival of a Nation; Le Bas, Party Formation, 419–38.

5. Matereke, “One Zimbabwe Many Faces.”

6. Fontein, “Between Tortured Bodies,” 423–48; Gell, Agency and Art; Latour, Pandora’s Hope; Ingold, “Materials against Materiality,” 1–16.

7. Gell, Agency and Art.

8. Latour, Pandora’s Hope.

9. Ingold, Materials against Materiality, 1–16.

10. Navaro-Yashin, “Affective Spaces, Melancholic Objects,” 1–15.

11. Ibid.

12. Navaro-Yashin, The Make-Belief Space, 161.

13. Selwyn, “Landscapes of liberation,” 141

14. Fontein, Remaking Mutirikwi.

15. Fontein, “Graves, Ruins and Belonging,” 713.

16. Ingold, “Materials Against Materiality,” 1–16; Hodder, Entangled.

17. Pinney, “Things Happen,” 256, 273.

18. Fontein, “Between Tortured Bodies,” 423–48.

19. Kriger “The Politics”; Werbner, Tears of the Dead.

20. Tilley, Walking in the Past.

21. Kriger, Zimbabwe’s Guerrilla War.

22. Sachikonye, When a State Turns; Manungo, “The Peasantry in Zimbabwe”; Tungamirai, “Recruitment to ZANLA”; Caute, Under the Skin.

23. Kriger, Zimbabwe’s Guerrilla War; Lan, Guns and Rain; Daneel, Guerrilla Snuff; Fontein, The Silence.

24. Narrative by Captain Zveushe, Chiramba Mountains, 16 October 2014.

25. Interview with Comrade Denda, Chiramba base, 22 October 2014.

26. Narrative by Comrade G. Nhundu, Chiramba Mountains, 22 October 2014

27. Narrative by Comrade G Mhanda, Chiramba Mountains, 22 October 2014.

28. Interview with Comrade Denda, Chiramba base, 22 October 2014.

29. Chaumba et al., “From Jambanja to Planning,” 533–54; Le Bas, Party Formation, 419–38.

30. Fontein, “The Politics”; Hove, Ancestors; Vera, Nehanda.

31. Matereke, “One Zimbabwe Many Faces.”

32. Engelke, A Problem of Presence.

33. Moore, Suffering for Territory, 233

34. Prophecy by Madzibaba Joel, Mumurwi Mountain, November 2013.

35. See Moore, Suffering for Territory.

36. Madzimai Jessica, Mumurwi Mountain, November 2013

37. Navaro-Yashin, The Make-Belief Space.

38. Chitando, Down with the Devil, 1–16; Engelke, A Problem of Presence.

39. Madzibaba Thomas is one of the former liberation war collaborators of the 1970s.

40. Bamu, Transitional justice; Le Bas, Party Formation, 419–38.

41. Tankik, The Moment I Became, 203–31; Chitando and Togarasei, “June 2008, Verse 28,” 151–62.

42. Engelke, A Problem of Presence.

43. Interview with Madzibaba Shaddy, Mumurwi Mountain, November 2013

44. Interview with Madzibaba Israel, Mumurwi Mountain, November 2013

45. Ranger, “Nationalistic Historiography,” 215–34.

46. Maringira, “When the Military,” 21–30.

Additional information

Funding

This article is based on fieldwork carried out between 2013 and 2015 in Bindura South northern Zimbabwe, as part of my PhD research at the University of the Witwatersrand Johannesburg. It was funded by grants from the Wenner-Gren Foundation-Wadsworth African Fellowship and the Social Science Research council-Next Generation Social Sciences in Africa Fellowship, with funds provided by Carnegie Corporation of New York.