A History of Zimbabwe

A History of Zimbabwe

Author: Alois S. Mlambo

Publisher: Cambridge University Press

Published: 2014-04-07

Total Pages: 313

ISBN-13: 1139867520

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The first single-volume history of Zimbabwe with detailed coverage from pre-colonial times to the present, this book examines Zimbabwe's pre-colonial, colonial and postcolonial social, economic and political history and relates historical factors and trends to recent developments in the country. Zimbabwe is a country with a rich history, dating from the early San hunter-gatherer societies. The arrival of British imperial rule in 1890 impacted the country tremendously, as the European rulers exploited Zimbabwe's resources, giving rise to a movement of African nationalism and demands for independence. This culminated in the armed conflict of the 1960s and 1970s and independence in 1980. The 1990s were marked by economic decline and the rise of opposition politics. In 1999, Mugabe embarked on a violent land reform program that plunged the nation's economy into a downward spiral, with political violence and human rights violations making Zimbabwe an international pariah state. This book will be useful to those studying Zimbabwean history and those unfamiliar with the country's past.


A History of Zimbabwe

A History of Zimbabwe

Author: A. S. Mlambo

Publisher: Cambridge University Press

Published: 2014-04-07

Total Pages: 313

ISBN-13: 1107021707

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Examines Zimbabwe's pre-colonial, colonial and postcolonial social, economic and political history and relates historical factors and trends to more recent developments in the country.


The History and Political Transition of Zimbabwe

The History and Political Transition of Zimbabwe

Author: Sabelo J. Ndlovu-Gatsheni

Publisher: Springer Nature

Published: 2020-10-21

Total Pages: 469

ISBN-13: 3030477339

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This book is the first to tackle the difficult and complex politics of transition in Zimbabwe, with deep historical analysis. Its focus is on a very problematic political culture that is proving very hard to transcend. At the center of this culture is an unstable but resilient ‘nationalist-military’ alliance crafted during the anti-colonial liberation struggle in the 1970s. Inevitably, violence, misogyny and masculinity are constitutive of the political culture. Economically speaking, the culture is that of a bureaucratic, parasitic, primitive accumulation and corruption, which include invasion and emptying of state coffers by a self-styled ‘Chimurenga aristocracy.’ However, this Chimurenga aristocracy is not cohesive, as the politics that led to Robert Mugabe’s ousting from power was preceded by dirty and protracted internal factionalism. At the center of the factional politics was the ‘first family’:Robert Mugabe and his wife, Grace Mugabe. This book offers a multidisciplinary examination of the complex contemporary politics in Zimbabwe, taking seriously such issues as gender, misogyny, militarism, violence, media, identity, modes of accumulation, the ethnicization of politics, attempts to open lines of credit and FDI, national healing, and the national question as key variables not only of a complete political culture but also of difficult transitional politics.


Becoming Zimbabwe. A History from the Pre-colonial Period to 2008

Becoming Zimbabwe. A History from the Pre-colonial Period to 2008

Author: Brian Raftopoulos

Publisher: African Books Collective

Published: 2009-09-15

Total Pages: 298

ISBN-13: 9988647417

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Becoming Zimbabwe is the first comprehensive history of Zimbabwe, spanning the years from 850 to 2008. In 1997, the then Secretary General of the Zimbabwe Congress of Trade Unions, Morgan Tsvangirai, expressed the need for a 'more open and critical process of writing history in Zimbabwe. ...The history of a nation-in-the-making should not be reduced to a selective heroic tradition, but should be a tolerant and continuing process of questioning and re-examination.' Becoming Zimbabwe tracks the idea of national belonging and citizenship and explores the nature of state rule, the changing contours of the political economy, and the regional and international dimensions of the country's history. In their Introduction, Brian Raftopoulos and Alois Mlambo enlarge on these themes, and Gerald Mazarire's opening chapter sets the pre-colonial background. Sabelo Ndlovu tracks the history up to WW11, and Alois Mlambo reviews developments in the settler economy and the emergence of nationalism leading to UDI in 1965. The politics and economics of the UDI period, and the subsequent war of liberation, are covered by Joesph Mtisi, Munyaradzi Nyakudya and Teresa Barnes. After independence in 1980, Zimbabwe enjoyed a period of buoyancy and hope. James Muzondidya's chapter details the transition 'from buoyancy to crisis', and Brian Raftopoulos concludes the book with an analysis of the decade-long crisis and the global political agreement which followed.


Against the Odds

Against the Odds

Author: Mary Ndlovu

Publisher: African Books Collective

Published: 2012

Total Pages: 421

ISBN-13: 1779221681

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1978: In Rhodesia, the Internal Settlement led to the creation of a coalition government. Smith had, however, neither capitulated nor abandoned his belief in white superiority, and thousands of people fled across the country's borders. In England, a group of missionaries, supported by the Catholic Institute for International Relations, formed a steering group that was to become the Zimbabwe Project. Originally an educational fund to support exiled young Zimbabweans, it shifted focus toward humanitarian assistance to refugees in the region. 1981: The Zimbabwe Project Trust, a child of the war, came home, and its director, Judith Todd, started mapping the route that it would follow for the next thirty years. ZimPro - as it came to be known - began its work with ex-combatants, assisting with their education, skills training and co-operative development, and producing a news bulletin. In terms of funding, courage, and creative programming, it became a giant in the country's development landscape, but it has had to negotiate many political, financial and philosophical minefields on the way. Against The Odds offers a rare insight into workings of an NGO on the frontline. With a cast of larger-than-life characters, it also offers a drama of Zimbabwe's first thirty years and provides insights and lessons which will benefit everyone concerned with development, and provide historians with another important lens through which to view the past.


African Police and Soldiers in Colonial Zimbabwe, 1923-80

African Police and Soldiers in Colonial Zimbabwe, 1923-80

Author: Timothy Joseph Stapleton

Publisher: University Rochester Press

Published: 2011

Total Pages: 332

ISBN-13: 1580463800

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Recruiting and motivations for enlistment -- Perceptions of African security force members -- Education and upward mobility -- Camp life -- African women and the security forces -- Objections and reforms -- Travel and danger -- Demobilization and veterans.


African Music, Power, and Being in Colonial Zimbabwe

African Music, Power, and Being in Colonial Zimbabwe

Author: Mhoze Chikowero

Publisher: Indiana University Press

Published: 2015-11-24

Total Pages: 364

ISBN-13: 0253018099

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In this new history of music in Zimbabwe, Mhoze Chikowero deftly uses African sources to interrogate the copious colonial archive, reading it as a confessional voice along and against the grain to write a complex history of music, colonialism, and African self-liberation. Chikowero's book begins in the 1890s with missionary crusades against African performative cultures and African students being inducted into mission bands, which contextualize the music of segregated urban and mining company dance halls in the 1930s, and he builds genealogies of the Chimurenga music later popularized by guerrilla artists like Dorothy Masuku, Zexie Manatsa, Thomas Mapfumo, and others in the 1970s. Chikowero shows how Africans deployed their music and indigenous knowledge systems to fight for their freedom from British colonial domination and to assert their cultural sovereignty.


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

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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.


Imagining a Nation

Imagining a Nation

Author: Ruramisai Charumbira

Publisher: University of Virginia Press

Published: 2015-09-29

Total Pages: 350

ISBN-13: 0813938236

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In Imagining a Nation, Ruramisai Charumbira analyzes competing narratives of the founding of Rhodesia/Zimbabwe constructed by political and cultural nationalists both black and white since occupation in 1890. The book uses a wide array of sources—including archives, oral histories, and a national monument—to explore the birth of the racialized national memories and parallel identities that were in vigorous contention as memory sought to present itself as history. In contrast with current global politics plagued by divisions of outsider and insider, patriot and traitor, Charumbira invites the reader into the liminal spaces of the region’s history and questions the centrality of the nation-state in understanding African or postcolonial history today. Using an interdisciplinary methodology, Charumbira offers a series of case studies, bringing in characters from far-flung places to show that history and memory in and of one small place can have a far-reaching impact in the wider world. The questions raised by these stories go beyond the history of colonized or colonizer in one former colony to illuminate contemporary vexations about what it means to be a citizen, patriot, or member of a nation in an ever-globalizing world. Rather than a history of how the rulers of Rhodesia or Zimbabwe marshaled state power to force citizens to accept a single definition of national memory and identity, Imagining a Nation shows how ordinary people invested in the soft power of individual, social, and collective memories to create and perpetuate exclusionary national myths. Reconsiderations in Southern African History