History

Zimbabwe Peoples’ Revolutionary Army (ZIPRA) was the armed wing of Zimbabwe African People’s Union (ZAPU) which waged the war to liberate Zimbabwe. It operated from its bases in Zambia between 1964 and 1980. Umkhonto Wesizwe (MK) was ANC’s armed wing which sought to liberate South Africa from minority rule. Both forces (MK and ZIPRA) worked side by side until the attainment of independence by Zimbabwe when ANC guerrillas were sent back to Zambia by the new Zimbabwean government. This paper argues that the failure of ZIPRA and Umkhonto Wesizwe to deploy larger numbers of guerrillas to the war front in Zimbabwe (then Rhodesia) and South Africa was mainly caused by bio-physical challenges. ZAPU and ANC guerrillas faced the difficult task of crossing the Zambezi River and then walking through the sparsely vegetated areas, game reserves and parks until they reached villages deep in the country.  Rhodesian and South African Defense Forces found it relatively easy to disrupt guerrilla move...

The Catholic Church emerged out of the liberation war in 1980 as battered, numbed and depleted by the deportation of several of its rural clergy and the murders of its misionaries, nuns and lay people working in parishes which were located in the main theatres of the war. The Catholic church was accused by the Rhodesian government of being riddled with communism yet at the same time missionaries were brutalized by armed guerrilla assailants. The paper studies the experiences of some of the missions in the then Sinioa Prefecture (now Chinhoyi Diocese). The missions under study are St. Albert’s, Kangaire, St Rupert’s, St Boniface and St Paul’s. It begins with the history of Jesuits in Zimbabwe, the establishment of the missions and then goes on to explain circumstances surrounding the misfortune of these missions. The escalation of the war saw St Ruperts, Kangaire and St Albert’s closing between 1978 and 1979. At St Ruperts, the two German missionaries present were killed and a German...

Civilians in Zimbabwe’s rural areas suffered the wrath of the war more than other groups as rival combatants descended on them each exerting force. Their experience of wartime violence, coercion and repression has taught them to be less willing to share sensitive war time stories with anyone who is a stranger to their network. More often, they are prepared to say a lot in praise of guerrilla movements and the ZANU-PF party, but not much against it. Others are not even prepared to share any wartime stories out of fear that they might be sniffed out by the ears and eyes of the state. This is particularly so to blacks who fought the war on the side of the minority white regime. Their fears go a long way in highlighting that the reconciliation process did not extend to the grassroots and neither was the state fully committed to grassroots reconciliation. The lack of preparedness on the part of communities in rural areas to freely discuss their wartime experiences is an indication of the...

This study seeks to document the history of the motor vehicle in Zimbabwe.  It is informed by the fact that the motor vehicle has transformed Zimbabwean communities in all aspects of life yet there is little systematic historical research that has been conducted in this field of study.  The study highlights the four historical phases of motoring, namely, the advent of motor vehicles to the Great Depression (1902-1929), From the Depression to post World War 2 federal and economic boom (1929-1964), From U.D.I to Independence (1965-1980) and the Socialist Phase (1980-1989).The study brought forward the argument that motor vehicles like human beings have social life histories. Different vehicle makes determine the use on the basis of sizes, shapes and capacity and all those variables reflect lifestyles, work regimes and even aspirations of their owners. Motor vehicles are also commodities of value that can be used as a means of primitive accumulation especially in times of artificial shortages.

Governments of national unity (GNUs), power sharing arrangements or the so called 'inclusive' governments have become a common feature in Africa especially in post-crisis territories. The African Union and her regional organizations seem to have adopted the power-sharing concept as a quick-fix solution to pacify conflict-ridden areas. What has become worrisome is that this solution has now become a one-size-fits-all where its application has run from war-zones, genocidal cases to even disputed elections where these power-sharing arrangements end up undermining the democratization process on the African continent. Most power-sharing arrangements are also pushed for and refereed by outsiders who act as 'guarantors' while the concerned electorate is reduced to 'watching from the terraces'. As a result the whole exercise is lacking in democratic principles and devoid of a nationalistic feeling and flavor. It is therefore characterized by politics of exclusion, usurpation of popular sovereignty and politics of power retention. Using Kenya and Zimbabwe as case studies, this paper is going to argue that the 2008 and 2009, Governments of national unity in the two respective countries were 'foreign arrangements' forced on their respective electorate. Their main purpose therefore served as 'power-retention' vehicles for losers which they used first, to stay in power, second, as a breather to re-invigorate and re-strategize. Thirdly, in Zimbabwe this power-retention mechanism was used at political party level while in Kenya it was used both at political party and individual levels. Resultantly, Zimbabwe experienced politics of intimidation and intransigency where the former ruling party used all means possible to regain control of state power while in Kenya developed politics of conspiracy and collusion as individual politicians negotiated the political spaces to remain relevant in the matrix of power.

As the Zimbabwean economy continue to collapse to unprecedented levels due to a number of factors, life in the Southern African country continue to become a proverbial 'survival of the fittest'. With levels of employment around 80%, most urban dwellers have decided to create their own forms of employment and survival techniques in the face of hunger and starvation. The bulk of the economic activities engaged by citizens are usually outside the boundaries of the law: state laws and urban municipal by-laws. Urban agriculture is one of the survival techniques practiced and hijacked but has always in most cases been outside the legal framework and urban planning policies of African states right from colonial times to the present day. Now this practice, together with other informal activities have expansively become the norm in Zimbabwe's cities and towns inversely posing the question of who is driving the concept of 'informalisation of the economy' in Zimbabwe. Is the state creating mechanisms for the economy to informalise or the Zimbabwean urbanites responded to the effects of a comatose with informalisation as a survivalist strategy where they assumed self-responsibility in place of state failure to shoulder its political responsibility and mandate to provide social and economic security to its citizens? It also needs to be asked how legal are informal economic activities? And is there a way to address this economic quagmire on the African continent?

Energy management Many hotels and lodges, away from the cities, are now investing in alternative energy sources. Solar power, in particular, is the preferred alternative, and most responsible businesses today use some kind of solar system for their electricity and water heating. Wind power is not yet as big, but several local suppliers are fuelling a growing interest. One area in which Kenya has made impressive gains is in the recycling of organic waste to provide an alternative source of fuel for water heating and cooking. With the growing bans on fuelwood -particularly in the national parks -fuel briquettes are being made from an increasing variety of waste materials. Such practices will help to save the remaining forests in the country's main reserve, which have been ravaged by tree-felling and charcoal burning.

With the attainment of uhuru there was the institutionalisation of the independence contract in which all, the people, the masses, were supposed to pray at the altar of nation building and development, and the articulation of sectional class, social, community, ethnic and gender interests was frowned upon as selfish and subversive.

The colonial Southern Rhodesian government displaced the minority Tonga people from the ecologically rich Zambezi River plains due to the construction of the World Bank funded hydroelectric power generating Kariba Dam in the late 1950s. The dislocated communities were resettled in the adjoining uplands of Binga District where they did not access the electricity and waters of the Kariba Dam as well as the wild animal resources in the safaris and national game parks abutting their new villages. This state regulated decoupling from the local natural resource asset base generated a politicised sense of entitlement to those resources spearheaded by a generational cohort of educated Tonga activists that emerged in the 1990s. Besides everyday realities of socio-economic marginalisation, these activists also drew inspiration from the prevailing global discourses of indigeneity and anti-dam politics to form organisations such as Binga Development Association, Binga Catholic Commission for Peace and Justice, and Basilwizi Trust that coordinated local assertions for increased access to resources in the uplands and around the Kariba waterscape. Through these emerging networks of solidarity, I argue, the Tonga activists constructed and deployed persuasive claims for the exigency of rehabilitating their embattled people's deprived post-relocation livelihoods. These Tonga articulations and actions reveal how marginalised ethno-class categories within countries align their claims for increased access to local resources and general socio-economic empowerment to national and international activism and discourses.

This study is an exploration of the use of technology-mediated
interventions by the Zimbabwe Peace Project (ZPP) in checkmating
the country’s insidious culture of political violence and impunity. It
disentangles the ZPP’s strategies and the composite reactions they
triggered from state functionaries and the aligned security apparatus.
The ZPP exploited and deployed an Internet-circulated monthly
newsletter, bulk short message service (SMS) alerts, smartphones, radio
and Facebook to shine a spotlight on injustice. It is argued that the
ZPP’s whistle-blowing strategies used against human rights violators
were not necessarily intended to secure immediate perpetrator
conviction; rather, they were a partial but exigent attempt at using
perpetrator exposure to reveal extralegal activities and checkmate the
country’s culture of impunity. The ZPP’s cybernetic naming and
shaming strategies embarrassed some offenders, as evidenced by the
intelligence operatives and the police’s constant harassment and
arrests of ZPP-affiliated activists. The state-controlled media
compounded this pressure by casting aspersions on the ZPP’s bona
fides, labelling it a foreign-funded organisation that was attempting to
destabilise the country. Finally, this study is informed by a broad
evidentiary base that includes ZPP reports on its e-archive, oral
interviews, policy documents and newspaper accounts.