The Zimbabwe African People's Union, 1961-87

The Zimbabwe African People's Union, 1961-87

Author: Eliakim M. Sibanda

Publisher: Africa World Press

Published: 2005

Total Pages: 338

ISBN-13: 9781592212767

DOWNLOAD EBOOK

This book is an exploration of the political history of insurgency in SOuthern Rhodesia. During the early years of its struggle, ZAPU employed non-violent means to try and achieve its goal for majority rule and a non-racial society. Because of the belligerancy of the White settler regime, ZAPU added the armed resistance to its strategy and went on to build a formidable army. Problems escalated and alliances were built and dissolved until, tired of being hunted down and butchered, the ZAPU leadership decided to merge its party with the ruling party in December 1987.


"Yesterday it was One Man One Vote, Today it is One Man One Gun"

Author: Nicholas Donald Linwood Baker

Publisher:

Published: 2018

Total Pages: 0

ISBN-13:

DOWNLOAD EBOOK

This thesis is a political history of the Zimbabwe African People's Union (ZAPU), a significant, yet neglected, African nationalist party active in Zimbabwe's liberation war between 1961 and 1980. A political history of ZAPU offers an opportunity to challenge and problematize entrenched narratives which privilege the Zimbabwe African National Union (ZANU) as the singular, legitimate expression of African nationalism during the struggle to end minority rule in Zimbabwe. ZAPU has been criticized by politicians, war veterans, and scholars as a toothless, opportunistic party. This study disrupts this strain of historiography by arguing that ZANU's victory was far from inevitable. By incorporating ZAPU's substantial political and military contributions, a clearer picture of African nationalism in Zimbabwe emerges: ZAPU provides historians of Zimbabwe with a discursive tool to explore how resistance to colonial authority involved complex, contested processes, rather than a teleological movement from oppression to independence through a single party.