This art icle was downloaded by: [ The Library, Universit y of Wit wat ersrand] On: 24 March 2014, At : 06: 31 Publisher: Rout ledge I nform a Lt d Regist ered in England and Wales Regist ered Num ber: 1072954 Regist ered office: Mort im er House, 37- 41 Mort im er St reet , London W1T 3JH, UK African Identities Publicat ion det ails, including inst ruct ions f or aut hors and subscript ion inf ormat ion: ht t p: / / www. t andf online. com/ loi/ caf i20 Political theatre, national identity and political control: the case of Zimbabwe Samuel Ravengai a a Depart ment of Drama , Universit y of Cape Town , Sout h Af rica Published online: 20 May 2010. 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Term s & Condit ions of access and use can be found at ht t p: / / www.t andfonline.com / page/ t erm sand- condit ions African Identities Vol. 8, No. 2, May 2010, 163–173 RESEARCH ARTICLE Political theatre, national identity and political control: the case of Zimbabwe Downloaded by [The Library, University of Witwatersrand] at 06:31 24 March 2014 Samuel Ravengai* Department of Drama, University of Cape Town, South Africa (Received 20 October 2009; final version received 21 December 2009) This article intends to situate Zimbabwean political theatre within the discourse of national identity. National identity is deployed here as denoting any given set of myths, stories and beliefs propagated to justify a dominant group in maintaining power and in the case of Zimbabwe such generated myths and images are sectarian. Institutions such as theatre must be established to protect, nourish, articulate and perpetuate such identities. What is emerging now in Zimbabwe is that even if the government has supported such institutions often posturing as independent of sectarian political expedience, the resultant public imagery is the official version of history which incriminates those who have different views as sell-outs. Political theatre in Zimbabwe is one of the mediums which generates public imagery that challenges or maintains the ZANU-PF version of national memory. I argue that the totality of the state is expressed in its monopoly of images of meaning that float in the public mind through the medium of theatre. Where such theatre is consistent with what Ranger calls ‘patriotic history’ it is protected as memory should be guarded against dissolution. However, national identity can be an umbrella for determining what speech and passion is permissible and what is not. Thus in Zimbabwe, national identity has become a camouflage for a series of political controls that occupy the creative space and deny the opportunity for a pluralism of views and freedom of expression. Keywords: political theatre; identity; discourse; memory; patriotic history; essentialism In order to fully understand the behaviour of the ZANU-PF administration towards political theatre in Zimbabwe, Brian Friel and Benedict Anderson could provide useful theoretical underpinnings to the discourse of national identity. Brian Friel posits that: It is not the literal past, the ‘facts’ of history, that shape us, but images of the past embodied in language . . . we must never cease renewing those images, because once we do, we fossilise. (cited in Parry 2004, p. 37) The implications of this theoretical position are that history on its own without being mediated by a powerful ruling elite which selects and adorns aspects of it in the service of nationalism cannot shape a nation in a predetermined direction. It needs to be reinterpreted and valorised to achieve a national agenda. In other words memory must be mediated in order to produce a predetermined idea of a nation. *Email: rvnsam001@yahoo.com ISSN 1472-5843 print/ISSN 1472-5851 online q 2010 Taylor & Francis DOI: 10.1080/14725841003629716 http://www.informaworld.com Downloaded by [The Library, University of Witwatersrand] at 06:31 24 March 2014 164 S. Ravengai The second theoretical position adumbrated by Benedict Anderson (1983) and developed by other theorists much later is that which is explained by the phrase ‘imagined community’. In describing national culture, Benedict Anderson argued that national identity must include the idea citizens have of it. People within a nation must have a shared idea of what constitutes national identity. Nations are different from one another in the different ways their citizens imagine their nation or identity. A nation is not a pre-existing entity, but is imagined and created by its people. A nation is therefore forged through film, theatre, television, the media, curriculum and a number of communal symbols which reinforce cohesion. In this discussion I will zero in on political theatre1 as a representational system or generator of public imagery inscribed with specials powers to create or gain a nation. Theatre thrives on telling stories and is included among communal symbols and/or set of stories or inventions or imaginings that establish the place of history, patriotism and loyalty. The implications of this theoretical position posited by Benedict Anderson are that the integrity and continued existence of a nation depends crucially on what its citizens consume mentally. These two theoretical moorings taken together collude to establish the fact that images of the past can be renewed and reinvigorated to tell a story or stories that can create the idea of a nation. The problem that this article is trying to grapple with is that the ZANU-PF administration has monopolised the right to access of images of the past allowing the creation of texts (plays included) that parrot its version of history. Different sections of the Zimbabwean society are unfortunately not able to recognise themselves in the ‘imagined community’ held up by the ZANU-PF administration. The memory is so narrow that it excludes immigrants from neighbouring northern countries, who have been around for almost a century, Asians, coloureds, whites, townspeople and large chunks of history of the Ndebele people. The plays that follow the official version of history are allowed to be published and to be performed to the public throughout the country. However, plays that give space to groups of people who have been written out of history, or that include versions of history that are not considered patriotic, are banned, stopped, censored or politically controlled. The background to what Ranger (2005) labels the ‘struggle over the past’ is that in 1999 the Movement for Democratic Change (MDC) was formed. It enjoyed support from a wide spectrum of the population – students, workers, farmers and even people from within ZANU-PF who were protesting against the involvement of Zimbabwe in the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC) and the general deterioration of the standard of living. This was the first major challenge to ZANU-PF hegemony that unnerved them. In 2000, ZANUPF lost a constitutional referendum to MDC which was campaigning for a NO vote. In the same year MDC won 57 of the 120 contested parliamentary seats. The writing was on the wall for ZANU-PF. Consequently, it moved in to close all democratic spaces left for articulating political opinions. Political theatre was not spared. The government became paranoid and there was a need to legislate against any perceived support or activities that may be deemed to support the MDC. David Dzatsunga, the director of Masvingo Siya Cultural Theatre, observed the events and how they affected his theatre group: Government now wanted to control information dissemination because it was not going to be possible now to simply write what you think, put it on stage and perform it to an audience without consequences. And it became increasingly important to government to make sure that the content and movement of information was in their control. (Ravengai 2008, interview with David Dzatsunga, Masvingo) What this background information provides is the sense of danger that ZANU-PF is facing. The danger is not coming from fellow black people, but from a party perceived Downloaded by [The Library, University of Witwatersrand] at 06:31 24 March 2014 African Identities 165 by ZANU-PF as being used as a front by North Americans, Europeans and white Rhodesians, as asserted by Mahoso, one of the authors of patriotic history: ‘the Zimbabwean opposition and the British, European and North American sponsors have expressed themselves as forces opposed to Mugabe as Pan-Africanist memory’ (cited in Ranger 2005, p. 226). If the threat is perceived to come from former colonisers, the response by ZANU-PF is to take refuge in liberation theory and discourse. Liberation discourse celebrates ancestral purity and inscriptions of monolithic notions of identity. The change of politics and culture demanded by oppositional politics has caused ZANUPF to take refuge in regressive and protective identity and as Mercer (1990) correctly observes ‘identity only becomes an issue when it is in crisis, when something assumed to be fixed, coherent and stable is displaced by the experience of doubt and uncertainty’ (cited in Morley and Robins 1995, p. 15). The issue with national identity of a protective nature is that it is constructed around a negative principle. Morley and Robins (1995, p. 22) describe this negative principle as ‘the apparent incapacity to constitute oneself without excluding the other – and the apparent inability to exclude the other without devaluing and ultimately hating him’. The stories that are excluded and hated are those that are deemed to sympathise with issues on the agenda of oppositional politics and those that reveal certain strands of history that have been written out. Liberation discourse which is the staple of ZANU-PF is implicated in its complicity with the terms of colonial discourse in the sense that it reverses the structure of oppression and does exactly what colonialism used to do but in a different direction. Those that are deemed to work with colonisers are denied space to tell their stories. Liberation discourse installs a nativist topology which re-inscribes the same binary oppositions it sought to fight – insider/outsider, indigene/alien, traditional/western. It replicates and therefore reinstalls the linguistic polarities devised by colonial discourse to exclude and act against those who are categorised as outsiders, aliens and western. If a playwright writes political theatre which does not reveal history and issues as seen by ZANU-PF, their work is labelled alien and unpatriotic. Muchemwa (2005, p. 195) in reflecting about history, memory and writing in Zimbabwe has noted a similar trend: Official history is selective and supportive of the status quo . . . in texts contributing to the Zimbabwean nationalist narrative (found in black literary tradition) there is an insistence on memory as a sacred set of absolute meanings, owned by a privileged ethnic group . . . When so considered, memory becomes a set of instruments used to exclude and expel the undeserving from the ancestral house. Ancestral memory, initially appropriated to interrogate colonial misrepresentations of the black ‘other’, now reveals its inability to provide adequate sites for the creation of a multi-ethnic post-colonial national identity. ZANU-PF’s reverse discourse, just like colonial discourse, is racist in the sense that it denies the white ‘other’ the right to speak for itself by destroying or hiding sites of memory. Cont Mhlanga’s Workshop negative (1992) demonstrates this position. The two ex-combatants Zulu and Mkhize take turns to deny the white co-worker Ray the space to articulate his views. Just like the subaltern indigene could not speak or be heard in colonial texts, the white outsider is also ‘disarticulated’. When Ray tries to name black fighters in his idiom, he is corrected and told how to name them. He is denied a voice. The reason given by Zulu the ex-combatant is that: Because you white guys cannot say anything in this country. You lost the war. If you speak, you will be reminded eleven times of that, and you will quickly be reminded of what your ancestors did to our ancestors. (Mhlanga 1992, p. 39) What is demanded by this ex-fighter Zulu is that Ray changes, behaves and thinks along official lines. If he behaves white and does ‘what your ancestors did in Rhodesia . . . this 166 S. Ravengai society will always boot you’ (ibid., p. 40). But this national culture demanded by Zulu is too narrow to the extent that it cannot accommodate Ray. It is actually trying to write him out of history. He no longer knows who he is and complains: Downloaded by [The Library, University of Witwatersrand] at 06:31 24 March 2014 Change! Change! What is wrong with me? Where do I belong? In Europe because my skin is white, or here because I was born here and grew up here? And my deeds, must they be of a man who stays here or stays in Europe? (Mhlanga 1992, p. 40) This reverse ethnocentric narrativisation propounded by Zulu, whose thinking matches that of ZANU-PF’s patriotic history, tries to effectively write out the white other. In fact this play Workshop negative was denied clearance to tour Europe by the Zimbabwean government for revealing these issues and for criticising socialism. For walking the forbidden road, the playwright Cont Mhlanga came under the spotlight from the secret service. This incident ultimately contributed to the cutting of aid to community theatre groups by the Zimbabwean government. What can be observed from these facts is that national identity is about exclusion as it is about inclusion. The critical factor which defines the dominant ethnic group – the Shona – seems to be the official boundary which defines them. The ZANU-PF version of identity is based on the selective processes of memory. Zimbabwe’s cultural identity is in many ways formulated around the cultural identity of the Shona from where patriotic history authors come – Mugabe, Mahoso and Chigwedere (see also Ranger 2005). This is a very unfortunate situation in the sense that the expression of such a culture takes a protective identitarianism that is xenophobic and/or racist and, because of its roots in the liberation struggle, looks for and finds outlets for its fears in attacks on those who are different from it. Any discourse that does not toe the party line is seen as causing cultural erosion or even extinction. It is repulsed by coercive arms of the state. The question then is: how is this relationship of inclusion and exclusion lived and played in theatre and politics? I attempt here to describe and analyse the relationship between performed political theatre and/or dramatic texts and the politics of national identity. Political performances and dramatic texts that are authorised by the government are those that parrot what Ranger calls patriotic history. Ranger (2005) gives the following salient features of patriotic history: . It focuses on violent resistance. . It utilises a war discourse. . Its recent version is very narrow in the sense that it no longer talks about modernisation, reconstruction and welfarism which it used to in the 1980s. . It depicts Mugabe and ZANU-PF as custodians of history and portrays the MDC as representing a historical globalisation. . It divides the nation into revolutionaries and sell-outs. . It has hostility towards whites. . It omits or writes out the history of the towns and urban worker activism. It sees townspeople as those without totems (lacking natal links with ethnic rural origins). . It omits or writes out ‘ugly history’ such as the activities of Gukurahundi.2 . It is focused on Rhodes and the British, but does appeal to an earlier glorious past. The foregoing reveals how ZANU-PF would like ideas to be packaged in the various media in Zimbabwe. The principle of partiinost is being observed to the letter by ZANU-PF. Partiinost is understood by Fadeyev as: African Identities 167 Downloaded by [The Library, University of Witwatersrand] at 06:31 24 March 2014 the historical fact that . . . writers, both party and non-party, recognise the correctness of the party’s ideas and defend them in their work and therefore naturally acknowledge the guiding role of the party in (all) affairs. (cited in Swayze 1962, p. 15) It is this party politics that has led to the growth of a repertory of plays that inscribes patriotic history. The traditional task of the authorised version of political theatre is to adapt any of the above tents of patriotic history or a combination of them, reinvigorate them, alter focus and provide new tropes of legitimacy. Mujajati’s The rain of my blood (1991) is an example. It traces the history of exploitation by a white farm owner Baas Jeffries in the 1970s. We see also the brainwashing of black students at a mission headed by Mr Owen who teaches them a self-demeaning history. This exploitation is fought back by Chamunorwa and Tawanda, who after being expelled for protesting against a colonial version of African history choose to cross the border to train as guerrillas. When they come back, they revenge the abuse by killing Baas Jeffries, his son Francis and abducting Mrs Jeffries. The play comes back to the present to mock Alex, an educated townsperson who used the opportunity created by the liberation struggle to get a profession, but now ill-treats his ex-combatant brother Tawanda. The government also authorises political plays that inscribe the same history albeit in other African countries. For instance, after the demolition of Kamiriithu theatre and the arrest of Ngugi wa Thiong’o by the Kenyan government, the government of Zimbabwe invited Kimani Gicau, Ngugi wa Mirii and Micere Mugo to come and teach socialist theatre in Zimbabwe. The programme began by the production of The trial of Dedan Kimathi which narrates memory in a manner that suits the ZANU-PF version of history. The play centres on the oppression of black people and their resolve to fight back epitomised by Dedan Kimathi. Soon after The trial of Dedan Kimathi, many local versions that reinterpreted the same history unfolded in Zimbabwe were performed, for example Takaitora neRopa/Won by blood (1983) and Chaminuka Youth Training Centre’s Rivers of blood (1985). Robert McLaren, who had come to Zimbabwe in 1984, did similar plays, but dealt with revolutions and struggles of Mozambique and South Africa. He did Katshaa! Sound of the AK (1985), Samora Continua (1987) and Mandela: the spirit of no surrender (1990). All these plays followed the same schema and rendered the same motifs. They reveal a given history of origins of the Blackman’s suffering. The past is glorified to a point where the characters (and audiences) feel a sense of blessedness and chosenness. This is followed by victimhood at the hands of the white oppressor and then there is redemption when black people fight back to regain their humanity. This imagery appeals for loyalty to the nation (party) that brought that redemption. The party draws it legitimacy to rule without accountability because of its role in liberating its people. No one must question it or they are deemed to have forgotten the revolution. In this sense, patriotic history has divided the nation into ‘revolutionaries’ and ‘sellouts’. Any other rendition of history that problematises the official version is met with brute force. Playwrights and intellectuals who do not want to be limited by a parochial history have been represented according to the schema of inclusion and exclusion as subversive agents. The liberation discourse’s installation of a nativist topology of insider/outsider, indigene/alien, traditional/western, naturally places those playwrights on the side of sell-outs, outsiders and the pro-western. According to Christiansen (2005, pp. 204 – 205): ‘in ZANU (PF)’s political discourse President Mugabe’s authority relies on defining the present time as a state of emergency, which is signified by the war against the neo-colonial forces that threaten the Zimbabwean nation with regression into a colonial state’. This attack on dissenting voices did not begin from the moment MDC was birthed; it was ever present from the birth of the Zimbabwean nation. During the early days 168 S. Ravengai Downloaded by [The Library, University of Witwatersrand] at 06:31 24 March 2014 of the crafting of patriotic history, traditional culture and socialism featured prominently in theatre writing that helped to construct the idea of nationhood. Tradition and socialism were used to include and exclude other groups as noted by Dambudzo Marechera: Here we have a deliberate campaign to promote Zimbabwean culture: everyone is talking about it, building it, developing it. When politicians talk about culture, one had better pack one’s rucksack and run, because it means the beginning of unofficial censorship . . . when culture is emphasised in such a nationalistic way, that can lead to fascism. When Nazi Germany culture started to be defined in a nationalistic way, it meant that all other people, all other nations were stupid; it meant intellectuals, painters, writers, lecturers, being persecuted or being assassinated. In this sense, all nationalism always frightens me, because it means products of your own mind are now being segregated into official and unofficial categories, and that only the officially admired works must be seen. All other works must hide or tear up. (cited in Veit-Wild 1992, p. 39) Marechera neither used tradition nor socialist realism as a creative method in his writing of political plays collected under the title Mindblast (1984). His work was segregated into an unofficial category by ZANU-PF’s parochial history and he became a target of political control. In the plays The Coup, The Gap and The Toilet Marechera employs post-modernist techniques to explode axioms of traditional performance techniques. His indecorous use of language and character construction flies in the face of the decent tradition. Structurally, Marechera defies the received freytag pyramid structure associated with Aristotle and denies the linearity of history which moves from cause to effect. The narrative techniques, structure, language and content contest primordial and essentialist modes of national identity. As patriotic history focuses on violent resistance symbolised by ‘the fist of fury’ or the descriptive epithet ‘ZANU-PF chiwororo’,3 they had to deal with the unofficial political texts of Marechera and the playwright himself. Marechera was arrested the very day Mindblast was published and continued to be held uncharged under the emergency powers still in force then. After his release, the secret service and the army had to do their part. He was assaulted and verbally abused by an army colonel at a Holiday Inn and warned that he should stop publishing his ‘filthy writings [which] defamed his country and his government’ (Veit-Wild 1992, p. 335). The secret service agents searched his house. Patriotic history also omits or writes out ‘ugly history’. In 1983, the government could not watch the nation being narrated in a negative sense in Habakkuk’s political play The honourable MP. When still unpublished it was about to be staged during the first International Book Fair in 1983, when it was cancelled at the last minute. The police enforced the cancellation and/or prohibition and Veit-Wild (1992) comments that the play was too critical of the government to be shown to an international audience which had gathered for the Book Fair. The play was ridiculing the corruption and incompetence of the Member of Parliament especially as measured by the expectations of members of his constituency. In patriotic history, importance is placed on remembering ZANU-PF’s role in the liberation struggle and at the same time forgetting its role in atrocities. According to Christiansen (2005), ZANU-PF history became the history of the nation and other versions were supposed to be torn up. Ndlovu-Gatsheni (2007, p. 76) also concurs with this position: ‘This was indicated by promotion of ZANLA party songs, symbols and slogans as national and state business rather than party politics’. This creates what Kriger terms ‘a party-nation and a party-state’ (ibid.). Performances and dramatic texts that have attempted to rewrite the ‘ugly history’ have been dealt with accordingly by the state. Like Yvonne Vera in The stone virgins, Daniel Maposa in his play Decades of terror (2007) African Identities 169 Downloaded by [The Library, University of Witwatersrand] at 06:31 24 March 2014 challenges the official silencing of the Matabeleland genocide. In a press release a day before the opening night of the show, Maposa enunciated what he wanted to achieve with Decades of terror: History shapes identity, who you are and shall be. Successful nations have long realised that to progress, people must not be slaves of their past, but learn from it. But how do people learn from their past when they are not honest about their true history even with themselves? What do people learn and become from half truth history? Decades of Terror is a bold and daring artistic initiative of making the nation come face to face with other parts of their history for long sadly tabooed. A history so valuable in its mistakes and challenges as the lessons it presents. The play asks, what happened to the objectives and promises of the liberation struggle? When did ‘partyism’ become patriotism? . . . The play demonstrates that because of the bastardisation of our history, the nation finds itself in a mess with little clue on how to uproot itself. The play proffers that, for the nation to rid itself of the violence . . . we need to know how it all started . . . the whole truth. And only through this frank self-interrogation can a permanent solution be. (Maposa 2007) As could be expected, the police, some of them armed and in uniform, came to watch rehearsals at Theatre-in-the Park.4 This was a way of intimidating the director and members of the cast. After the opening night armed secret service personnel also came to watch subsequent shows. Although this play was not stopped, the subsequent one Final push (2007), written by one of the main characters in Decades of terror, Sylvanos Mudzvova, was banned and its performers were arrested, tried and found guilty. The partystate or party nation, to use Kriger’s epithet, is expressed in its monopoly of the images of meaning. Those who threaten national identity in an authoritarian state are repulsed, sometimes violently. As Price (1995, p. 43) notes: To celebrate the union of the nation and state, elements of history must be selected, adorned, even invented . . . A national identity must be defended against those who assault it, particularly if that identity is the justification for the state. What has to be noted is that any nation has a role to play to determine the parameters and possibilities of various media including theatre. This role of the state is exercised in recognition of the potential ideological power of theatre as an institution with ‘nationalising’ capabilities. As I have argued above, a nation does not exist, but it is something to be gained. Political theatre or theatre in Zimbabwe has to be understood as one of the means at the disposal of the state by which nationhood is gained. Marxist theorists have added that where consent is not readily available, the state uses its coercive apparatus. The state in that sense combines power, values and public imagery (history, stories, myths) in order to build loyalty. All over the world, the state plays a significant role in shaping and confining the most important imagery – that is the imagery of loyalty. The problem with the Zimbabwean version of control is that it has too much ‘partyism’ and inclines more towards a parochial Shona ethnocentrism. Muchemwa (2005, pp. 201– 202) observes: Yet the enforced recourse to an ancestral memory marks the continuity of an ethnocentric Shona ancestral imagination that has threatened to subsume the memory of other ethnic groups in this country. Whites, coloureds, Asians and black immigrants cannot occupy the spaces opened up by myths of indigeneity. The disrupted memories of groups that have recently migrated to Zimbabwe cannot go beyond their point of intersection with the group that claims privileged ancestral heritage. Foundational myths have, despite progressive and recuperative intentions, an unfortunate habit of othering, and evicting the other from the father’s house. The problem with this nativism is that it involves essentialist claims about belongingness. National identity, even if in this case it is very narrow, is seen as fixed and unchanging. Downloaded by [The Library, University of Witwatersrand] at 06:31 24 March 2014 170 S. Ravengai The claims to identity are based on an essentialist version of history which is constructed as an unchanging truth. The other groups that have been excluded are symbolically marked as sell-outs. Theatre groups that produce plays considered or categorised as unofficial are socially and materially deprived. They do not benefit from state grants to support their productions. It is impossible to socially exclude others without hating them. This is the basis of ZANU-PF’s hate speech and brute force against political theatre that has been marked as anti-revolutionary. The performance techniques used to narrate the nation in the authorised version are replete with difficulties. Ngugi wa Mirii prescribes dance, mime, song, drama and gestures. As an advocate of the authorised version of theatre Ngugi wa Mirii (1988, p. 40) argues that these performance techniques ‘point to the only genuine direction for a true Zimbabwean theatre’. This view of Zimbabwean theatre ignores the significance of current processes of modernisation that are taking place. It is undialectical to insist on a Zimbabwean worldview as a static irreducible. The reality of the Zimbabwean situation should be confronted in its dynamic multivalence. The issue of romantic traditionalism should be approached in tandem with changes at political and economic level. Culture is not a phenomenon that can be pursued on its own without considering political and economic variables. Chidi Amuta, while criticising Chinweizu et al.’s book Toward the decolonization of African literature (1980) raises arguments that apply to the ZANU-PF version of culture: Its cardinal premise is suspended on a precarious idealist proposition – that culture can be sequestered from its economic and political moorings. Its emotional appeal is founded on a dying anti-racist racism, its idea of tradition is static while its notion of society is undialectical. (Amuta 1989, p. 49) The nativist topology of traditional/western makes the ZANU-PF administration hypersensitive to western master narratives.5 The romantic streak, a tenet of the old negritude movement, is smuggled back through the back door. However, the fact of the matter is that even if Zimbabwe and indeed the rest of Africa is independent, the west continues at least as an economic presence and sometimes through satellite footprints (globalisation) as a controlling cultural authority in Africa’s multiple lives. The positing of pan-Africanism to replace socialism by ZANU-PF which it uses to parry European grand narratives is undialectical. The present post-colonial and multicultural nature of the nation of Zimbabwe is impatient with essentialised identities celebrated by ZANU-PF’s nativism. In a global and cosmopolitan nation, single origins, which all master narratives presume, are almost impossible. The ZANU-PF government employs both legislative and political control in order to deal with political plays. In terms of the law, it employs the Censorship and Entertainment Control Act (1967), the Access to Information and Protection of Privacy Act (AIPPA) (2002) and the Public Order and Security Act (POSA) (2002) (see Ravengai 2008 and Zenenga 2008). In politically controlling theatre, the state uses its own institutions such as the National Arts Council of Zimbabwe, the police, the secret service, war veterans and village vigilantes to control, manage, command direct and regulate the content, ideology and appropriateness of theatre. In political control: There is no law which says you can’t write about this or about that. But there is a heavy political atmosphere whereby every writer is aware of the national programme which unofficially does not allow certain things, so you have a situation where writers are censoring themselves very heavily. (Marechera, cited in Veit-Wild 1992, p. 39) Downloaded by [The Library, University of Witwatersrand] at 06:31 24 March 2014 African Identities 171 Political control operates both on a subconscious level and, in the case of state agents stopping productions, on a physical and conscious level. The methods employed are an essay-length topic and fall outside the scope of this study (see Zenenga 2008 and Ravengai 2008). What is important is to discuss the plays that were politically controlled by the state on account of writing or performing an identity considered unofficial by ZANU-PF. In an interview with a theatre practitioner, Walter Muparutsa, he confirmed the ethnocentric tendencies of ZANU-PF theorised above: ‘If you say anything contrary to ZANU PF, you are an enemy of the state, you are a reactionary. You cannot even get to discuss or debate anything here’ (Ravengai, interview with Walter Muparutsa, Harare, 10 April 2008). The play he directed, What they said and what they got, which dealt with freedom of expression, was stopped before opening at Stanley Hall in Bulawayo. The play Overthrown written by Stanley Makuve and directed by Cont Mhlanga was stopped in November 2007 in Bulawayo by the police. The Manicaland chapter of Super patriots and morons met similar problems from war veterans and vigilantes. This production was stopped at Bezzle Bridge Growth Point. Baya’s Super patriots and morons and Dzvova’s Final push remain the only plays that were banned through the Censorship Act. Zenenga (2008), who has written on censorship, surveillance and protest theatre in Zimbabwe, sees light at the end of the tunnel. He goes back into history and reveals that Zimbabwean ancient kings like Mzilikazi, Munhumutapa and Lobengula allowed praise poets to advise and criticise their style of governance. This is a challenge to the present leadership. Zenenga (2008, p. 78) concludes by saying that: No matter how much censorship exists, however, artists will always find creative ways to convey their political messages and stay ahead of the censors. History has shown that banning plays will not stop Zimbabwean people from producing and patronizing theatre. Conclusion In this article I hope to have established that a nation is not a pre-existing entity, but it is something to be gained through power, values and imagery. This is the prerogative of any nation in the world. However, I posit the argument that in the face of opposition, the ZANU-PF administration has crafted a parochial history that is problematic. It is a history that creates a protective identity which includes and excludes others on the basis of belief and party affiliation. Those that it excludes are categorised as sell-outs and are dealt with through recourse to the law and political control. I have also attempted to interrogate the foundational principles of essentialist nativism – the staple philosophy of ZANU-PF. I hope to have revealed that the identity it creates is fixed and unchanging. The performance techniques used in the authorised version of theatre in Zimbabwe are undialectical and they are tantamount to importing the disavowed negritudism through the back door. I have also attempted to reveal the extent of political control of theatre in Zimbabwe by citing incidents where performances were banned, stopped or prohibited. I put forward the claim that all these efforts by the state do not successfully maintain the status quo forever. Images may sustain the idea of a people, but they are not, on their own, sufficient to maintain national identity. They are other variables which may not be within the power of the state. Notes 1. Political theatre is theatre that advances a progressive leftist politics to oppose a conservative status quo. The thrust is on convincing the audience that the values of the status quo should be changed in order to achieve justice. It is theatre aimed at righting a wrong and creating conditions for liberation. 172 2. 3. Downloaded by [The Library, University of Witwatersrand] at 06:31 24 March 2014 4. 5. S. Ravengai The North Korean-trained Fifth Brigade which carried out purges in Matabeleland and Midlands provinces. Gukurahundi means the first spring rains that drift away the chuff. ‘Fist of fury’ was an electioneering statement used by ZANU-PF during the 2008 presidential elections to describe the clenched fist of Robert Mugabe when waiving at supporters. ZANU-PF chiwororo on a denotative level might not have an English equivalent. Connotatively it means no problem can match the craftiness of the party. A chemical company that manufactures pesticides uses the term on the same level. On that level it means ZANU-PF can deal with any perceived enemy. It can disinfect, pasteurise and kill. I directed this production and felt intimidated by the intrusive presence of the police. Even if many people believed that the show was going to be stopped and I was going to be arrested, this show was an exception, but it put the state on high alert to act on any other production from the same company. A master narrative, also called a grand narrative, is an ideological apparatus that plays an important role in legitimating a set of ideas. It provides a framework in which all other cultural products find their ground and acquire their meaning and legitimacy. It explains particular choices a culture prescribes as possible courses of action. Religion, theories, ideologies are all examples of master narratives. (See also Taylor and Winquist 2001.) Notes on contributor Samuel Ravengai is a theatre-maker, director, writer and lecturer. He has an MA in Theatre and Performance (UCT) and has published several journal articles and book chapters. He has presented papers at international conferences including the annual International Federation of Theatre Research and the biennial Dramatic Learning Spaces. He worked as Associate Director and Story Consultant of a pro-development soap opera Studio 263 which is currently showing on Mnet – Africa Magic. Before joining the University of Cape Town’s Drama Department, where he is currently based as a Doctoral Research Fellow, he worked as lecturer and Head of Department of Theatre Arts at the University of Zimbabwe. References Amuta, C., 1989. The theory of African literature: implications for practical criticism. London: Zed Books. Anderson, B., 1983. Imagined communities. London: Verso. Chinweizu, Jemie, O. and Madubuike, I., 1980. Toward the decolonization of African literature: African fiction and poetry and their critics. Enugu: Fourth Dimension Publishers. Christiansen, L.B., 2005. Yvonne Vera: re-writing discourses of history and identity. In: R. Muponde and R. Primorac, eds. 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