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Zambezia (1999), XXVI (ii).

PROBLEMATISING NATIONALISM IN ZIMBABWE: A

HISTORIOGRAPHICAL REVIEW
BRIAN RAFTOPOULOS*
Institute of Development Studies, University of Zimbabwe
Abstract
Nationalism, as a mobilising ideology, has had a powerful presence in
Zimbabwean history, as it has on a global level. This article is an attempt to
trace the historiography of nationalism in Zimbabwe from the 1960s to the
present. It argues that since the celebrated nationalist inspired texts of the
1960s, there has been an increasing attempt to unpackage the ideology and
practice of nationalism and nationalist politics, fracturing our view of the
latter through a more careful analysis of class, gender, ethnicity and changing
rural-urban relations, as well as periodising the presence of nationalism in
Zimbabwean history. The result is that we now have a more complex picture
of nationalism, reflecting both its continued resonance and its uneven and
differential presence. This has opened up the possibility for less ahistorical,
essentialist notions of the subject.

INTRODUCTION
In his 1979 review of the social and economic historiography of Zimbabwe,1
Ian Phimister set out to explore the path-breaking contributions of Marxist
interventions in the historical debates between 1970-1979, emphasising
also the limitations of the existing liberal and Africanist discourse. The
relationships between structure and agency, forms of accumulation and
social differentiation under colonialism, and the tensions between the
Africanist's emphasis on the more or less unified agencies of nationalist
politics and the differential responses to colonial rule stressed by radical
historians, formed the central features of Phimister's seminal discussion.
In his conclusion, Phimister lamented that t h e r e was often a
methodological overlap between liberal and Africanist discourses on the
one hand, and the new radical historiography. Explaining the cause of
such an overlap Phimister observed that such radical historians,
were constrained to clear away the existing historiographical
undergrowth and to initiate construction of materialist interpretations

* I am grateful for the useful comments of Dr. Patricia Hayes.

1 I. R. Phimister, 'Zimbabwe: Economic and social historiography since 1970", African
Affairs, (1979), 78, (cxi).

115
 116 PROBLEMATISING NATIONALISM IN ZIMBABWE

of Zimbabwe political economy, but in doing so they inevitably risked

the appearance and occasionally the substance of capture by the very
liberal problematic they were confronting.2
The result of this methodological proximity was 'the failure of Marxist
studies of Zimbabwean economy and society to establish themselves
securely as a distinct paradigm'.3 This failure of Marxist studies, referred
to by Phimister, was related to the problem of understanding the
nationalism-race-class triad under colonialism. While the Africanist
emphasis on the celebration of African, and more broadly, nationalist
agency, paid too little attention to differential struggles, the radical
emphasis on class largely subsumed issues of race and nationalism.
Because of the failure of both the Africanist and radical historians to
confront the relations between these categories in more convincing ways,
a common analytical problem in this area in the 1970s, the methodological
overlaps were not surprising as each held on to the stronger coat tails of
the other's arguments.
The issue, of course, was not only a methodological problem, but
was also located in this force field of the political dynamics of the period,
1970-1979. Problematising nationalism in the context of the on-going
liberation struggle not only at a national level, but also in a regional
context, had serious political implications for historical analysts. More
will be said about such political contextualisation below.
The issues which Phimister raised in 1979 have continued to surface
in the historiographical debates on Zimbabwe, since that period. The
arguments have taken different forms, but the central problem of relating
nationalist hegemony to difference, and discourses of unity to the
contradictions born out of the struggles and varying perspectives of
subordinate classes, remains. However, there was one problem in the
perspective Phimister proposed for a future paradigm of historical
research. His emphasis on the centrality of class for future historical
work, always contained within it the possibility of economistic and
reductionist readings. He has recently emphasized this formulation by
stating that unless the processes of race, nationalism, and gender 'are
refracted through class they ultimately mislead rather than inform'.4
Phimister's own excellent work, like much of the radical history which
has relied so heavily on him, myself included, has sometimes displayed
such economism. This central focus on class perhaps also stemmed from

2 Ibid., 267-268.
3 Ibid, 267.
4 I. R. Phimister, "Keynote Address at the Conference on 'The Zimbabwean Economy 1930-
1990", 4-7 August 1997, University of Zimbabwe.
 B. RAFTOPOULOS 117

an underestimation of the potential for fruitful growth within the liberal,

Africanist paradigm. In fact there have been substantial developments in
this field centred around the work of Terence Ranger, the doyen of
Zimbabwean historiography.
Important work on the 'inventions' and 'social constructions' of
nationalist and ethnic discourse has emerged under Ranger's influence.
These developments are still characterised by some of the problems
Phimister raised, which will be discussed below. However, their central
concern with nationalism has provided valuable lessons for new analytical
developments.
In order to carry out this review of Zimbabwean historiography, this
article will concentrate on two periods. Firstly we will revisit briefly the
period covered by Phimister, starting however from 1967-1979, in order
to make some additional comments on the developments in this period.
However, the major focus of this discussion will be an assessment of
historiographical developments between 1980-1997, namely the post-
independence period in Zimbabwe. In doing this we hope to review the
questions which were raised during the formative periods of
historiographical growth, as well as the limitations of such interventions.

THE PERIOD 1967-79

The year 1967 marked the publication of the formative Africanist text on
African agency in Zimbabwe, namely Ranger's Revolt in Southern Rhodesia.5
The book had a formative influence not only academically, but also
politically as it helped to feed the nationalist invention of a continuous
thread of anti-colonial struggle. The book dealt with African resistance to
colonial intervention in 1896-97, which in popular nationalist discourse,
became known as Chimurenga I, the sequel being the liberation struggle
of the 1960s and 1970s. This book was completed while Ranger was
teaching at the University of Dar-es-Salaam between 1963 and 1970, after
being deported from Southern Rhodesia in 1963 for his involvement in
nationalist politics during his seven years' stay in the settler colony.6 For
younger aspiring historians like myself, who were also involved in
nationalist politics, the lure of Ranger's unified vision of early anti-colonial
struggle was strong. In 1982, a leading Zimbabwean poet paid homage to
Ranger, in a poem entitled 'To Terence':

5 T. O. Ranger, Revolt in Southern Rhodesia. 1896-97 (Heinemann Educational Books, London,

1967).
6 For some recent biographical details on Ranger see, John McCracken, 'Terence Ranger: A
personal appreciation', Journal of Southern African Studies, (June 1997), (23), (ii).
118 PROBLEMATISING NATIONALISM IN ZIMBABWE

You were gone when I came,

and yet I have met
the blood you spilled
in the muscle of history.

Your history, Terence,

is an arrival
where others departed.7
In 1970, this book was followed by Ranger's The African Voice* which
Phimister aptly described as 'a mature expression of the Africanist
scholarship which then dominated central African studies'. 9 This book
attempted to track the development of African political and social
organisation in Southern Rhodesia up to 1945, a precursor to the study of
mass nationalism in the colony.
In addition to Ranger's African work, numerous books by leading
African nationalists themselves, which span both time periods under
review in this article, appeared which provided both general and
autobiographical accounts of nationalist struggle. Ndabaningi Sithole,
who was to become the first president of the Zimbabwe African National
Union (ZANU) in 1963, produced his book>t/ncan Nationalism10 in 1959 in
which he combined his personal movement towards Nationalism, with an
attempt to theorise what he termed the 'factor of nationalism.'
Eshmael Mlambo's The Struggle of a Birthright (1972)11 also attempted
to provide the historical background for the emergence of African
nationalism. Autobiographies by Bishop Muzorewa (1978), Maurice
Nyagumbo (1980) and Joshua Nkomo (1984)12 provided interesting and
valuable insights into the lives of major nationalist leaders, within the
broad narrative of nationalist politics. In the case of Nkomo's book,
appearing in the middle of the war in Matabeleland in the mid-1980s, the
story is also one of the tensions and break-up of nationalist unity. The
most interesting of this genre of work were the two books produced by

7 Chenjerai Hove, 'To Terence", in Up in Arms (Zimbabwe Publishing House, Harare, 19821
33.
8 T. O. Ranger, The African Voice in Southern Rhodesia (Heinemann Educational B(x>ks
London, 1970).
9 Phimister, "Zimbabwe: Economic and social historiography since 1970\ 253.
10 Ndabaningi Sithole, African Nationalism (Oxford University Press, Oxford, 1970).
11 Eshmael Mlambo, The Struggle for a Birthright (C. Hurst Company, London 1972).
12 Bishop Abel Muzorewa, Rise Up and Walk (Sphere Books, London, 1978); Maurice
Nyagumbo, With The People (Allison and Busby, Ix>ndon, 1980); Joshua Nkomo, The Slnrv
of My Life (Methuen, London, 1984). *
 B. RAFTOPOULOS 119

Lawrence Vambe in 1972 and 1976.13Vambe's work provided a fascinating

insight into the urban social history of nationalist politics setting in an
important precedent for the growth of urban historiography in Zimbabwe
in the 1980s and 1990s.
Ranger's Africanist sway in the study of early anti-colonial struggles
in Southern Rhodesia dominated the field, until the emergence in the
1970s of alternative analytical perspectives. Between the work of Giovanni
Arrighi,14 Charles Van Onselen15, Duncan Clarke16, Phimister17, Harris18
and Davies19, processes of class formation, class struggle and articulation
of modes of production, became a more prominent feature of the analysis
of the settler formation. However, these interventions by radical scholars
failed to seriously engage the problematic of nationalism for a number of
reasons. Firstly, much of the work by these radical scholars was
concentrated in the period before the emergence of mass nationalist
politics in the mid-1950s, and thus the implications of the analysis of
class for an understanding of nationalism were not seriously explored.
Secondly, the most important historical texts on class, namely the work
of Van Onselen and Phimister had as their central focus, the establishment
of t h e existence of worker consciousness, against t h e more
undifferentiated focus of the Africanist and liberal schools. Thus Van
Onselen boldly stated:
By systematically probing the response of African workers within the
context of a specific industry, it seems possible to suggest that there
was a well developed worker consciousness from the earliest days of
the mining industry.20

13 Lawrence Vambe, An Ill-fated People (Heinemann, London, 1972); Also, From Rhodesia to
Zimbabwe (Heinemann, London, 1976).
14 G. Arrighi and J. Saul, Essays on the Political Economy of Africa (Monthly Review Press,
London, 1973).
15 C. Van Onselen, Chibaro: African Mine Labour in Southern Rhodesia 1900-1933 (Pluto,
London, 1976).
16 D. G. Clarke, Contract Workers and Underdevelopment in Rhodesia (Mambo Press, Gwelo
1974); Agricultural and Plantation Workers in Rhodesia (Mambo Press, Gwelo, 1977);
'Structural trends affecting the conditions of labour for African workers in Rhodesia',
Rhodesian Journal of Economics, (January 1976), 10, (ii); 'The Under-development of
African Trade Unions and Working Class Action in Post-war Rhodesia' (Oxford Workshop,
Unpub. mimeo, 1974). Clarke, a prolific researcher, published much more in the 1970s.
17 I. R. Phimister and C. Van Onselen, Studies in the History of African Mine Labour in
Colonial Zimbabwe (Gwelo, Mambo Press, 1978).
18 P. Harris, Black Industrial Workers in Rhodesia (Gwelo, Mambo Press, 1974); 'Industrial
workers in Rhodesia, 1946-1972: Working class elite or lumpen proletariat?'. Journal of
Southern African Studies, (1975), I.
19 R. Davies, 'Notes on the theory of the informal sector with reference to Zimbabwe', South
African Labour Bulletin, (1977), III.
20 C. Van Onselen, 'Worker consciousness in Black miners: Southern Rhodesia, 1900-1920',
in I. R. Phimister and C. Van Onselen, Studies in Colonial Zimbabwe (Gwelo Mambo
Press, 1978), 19.
 120 PROBLEMATISING NATIONALISM IN ZIMBABWE

Moreover, heavily influenced by social historians such as E. P.

Thompson and Eugene Genovese, Van Onselen sought this expression of
worker discontent 'in the nooks and crannies of the day-to-day work
situation', which in his view were the only ways in which workers could
express their discontent in the context of the repressive labour conditions
on the mine compounds. In this kind of analysis class tended to become
a delimited corporate framework, linked to an historical task of
proletarianation.21 The reductionist pull of such a trajectory was hardly
going to be of much use for an understanding of the complexities of
nationalist mobilisation.
The work of historians like Van Onselen and Phimister was developed
within the context of the radical South African labour historiography of
the 1970s, which in Lewis's words, 'followed hard on the heels of the
revival of South African trade unionism in the early 1970s'.22 This growth
in labour history also reflected the focus of the South African Left on
labour as an alternative focus of anti-apartheid struggle. The decisive
effects of Biko and the Black Consciousness Movement on the political
scene in South Africa during this period, also raised important theoretical
and political questions on race and nationalism, which may have fed a
heightened concern with class on the part of large sections of the South
African Left. In such a context class could once again have the effect of
subsuming issues of race and nationalism. In any case the influence of
these developments could be detected in the work of the radical historians
focusing on labour in Zimbabwe. Thirdly, even when questions of ethnicity
were dealt with by radical historians, the dynamic and construction of
ethnic consciousness was located largely in the abode of production. 23
Thus even though the political economy interventions of the radicals
raised serious questions, absent in Ranger's work, the work of the radical
historians itself raised new problems and limitations.
However, Ranger's work not only faced criticism from the Marxist
inspired historiography. His own interpretation of the uprising of 1896/97,
which fed so much nationalist nostalgia and mythology, was seriously
undermined by the late 1970s. The work of Beach24 and Cobbing25 seriously

21 In a different context, see T. Nairn's critique of E. P. Thomson's use of class, in T. Nairn

The Enchanted Class: Britain and Its Monarchy (London, Vintage, 1994).
22 John Lewis, 'South African labour history: A historiographical assessment', Hadimia
History Review, (1990), 46, (vii). '
23 I. Phimister and Charles Van Onselen, "The political economy of tribal animosity: A case
study of the 1929 Bulawayo Location 'Faction fight". Journal of Southern African Studio s>
(October 1979), 6, (i).
24 D. N. Beach, 'Chimurenga: The Shona risings of 1896-97'. Journal of African llfctnn, ry
(1979), 20, (iii). -
25 J. Cobbing, 'The absent priesthood: Another look at the Rhodesia risings of 1896-07-
Journal of African History, (1977), 18. (i). " •
 B. RAFTOPOULOS 121

challenged Ranger's exaggerated view of the extent of unity and popular

resistance in the conflicts of 1896/97. Beach and Cobbing seriously
questioned Ranger's view of the organisation of the Risings, undermining
Ranger's view of the role of the Mwari Cult in organising these Risings.
Where Ranger had sought to demonstrate the unity of the Shona and
Ndebele in the Risings as a prelude to later, mass nationalism, both
Cobbing and Beach painted a more differential, less romanticised picture.
In Cobbing's view the 'problem of scale' was for the most part not solved
by the Shona or Ndebele in the supratribal sense pointed to by Ranger.26
Cobbing thus concluded that it was,
above all fallacious to seek in the events of those years a surge of
Zimbabwean nationalism or proto-nationalism, which was only to
develop this century.27
Thus by 1980 Zimbabwean historiography was faced, on the one
hand with a still influential Africanist school, whose often undifferentiated
perspective on nationalism had been critically dented; on the other hand
the 1970s had seen the emergence of a radical scholarship which, though
it had raised serious issues regarding the differentiated struggles under
settler-colonial capitalism, had been unable to bring such insights to bear
on a convincing problematisation of nationalism.

HISTORIOGRAPHY IN THE POST-COLONIAL PERIOD: 1980-97

In the immediate post-colonial years Of the Zimbabwean state, there
followed a series of studies attempting to demonstrate the unifying
capacity of nationalism, and its ability to express and integrate a variety
of subaltern struggles. In 1981, a work by Martin and Johnson,28
represented little more than a hagiography for the ruling party, an
unashamed apologetic justifying th« coming to power of a section of the
liberation movement. However, two much more substantive studies
celebrating the growth of nationalism, namely Ranger's Peasant
Consciousness and Guerrilla War in Zimbabwe,29 and David Lan's Guns
Rain30 appeared in 1985. Ranger's work, located in the Makoni District in
north-eastern Zimbabwe, traced the development of a radical peasant

26 Phimister, 'Zimbabwe: Economic and social historiography since 1970", summarises the
critique of Beach and Cobbing succinctly.
27 Ibid.
28 D. Martin and P. Johnson, The Struggle for Zimbabwe: The Chimurenga War (Zimbabwe
Publishing House, Harare, 1981).
29 T. O Ranger, Peasant Consciousness and Guerrilla War in Zimbabwe (Zimbabwe Publishing
House, Harare, 1988).
30 D. Lan, Guns and Rain: Guerrillas and Spirit Mediums in Zimbabwe (Zimbabwe Publishing
House, Harare, 1988).
122 PROBLEMATISING NATIONALISM IN ZIMBABWE

consciousness in this area which developed out of the experiences of

colonial conquest, land alienation, and centralised, authoritarian state
interventions in the agrarian questions from the 1930s. This growth of
peasant discontent provided the basis for guerrilla mobilisation and
nationalist politics. Moreover, the use of spirit mediums as symbols of
the rights of peasants to land, was incorporated into ZANU's mobilisation
strategy. The result was that the,
collective action and collective suffering of peasants and guerrillas
produced a corporate ideology in Makoni District and elsewhere in the
country.31
David Lan's work also stressed the close cooperation of guerillas and
spirit mediums in mobilising peasants, with the latter legitimating the
authority of the liberation forces against discredited chiefs who
collaborated with the settler regime.
A similar insistence on Ranger's 'composite ideology' can be found in
the work of Manungo who sees the guerrillas as 'an extension of peasant
resistance to colonial rule' with the peasants viewing the liberation forces
as 'their children who had come to assist them in removing the burden of
colonialism'.32
In 1992 a major critique of Ranger's and Lan's perspective on
nationalism appeared in the work of Kriger's Peasant Voices,33 in which
she argued that Ranger's stress on unity ignored the differentiation within
the peasantry along the lines of lineage, age, gender and wealth. Thus she
argued that Ranger's 'narrowly constructed concept of peasant
consciousness' based on 'shared cultural nationalist ideology' ignored
various levels of differentiation of peasants, and thus overstated peasant
grievances against the state and White settlers in the arena of agricultural
production. On nationalism she concluded:
The concept of nationalism, like that of peasants is outward oriented
and assumes that peasant differences with each other pale in significance
to their differences with alien others. Peasants appear as a class
motivated against an alien state, whether characterised as capitalist,
imperialist, or colonialist.34

31 Ranger, Peasant Consciousness and Guerrilla War in Zimbabwe, 182.

32 K. Manungo, 'The peasantry in Zimbabwe: A vehicle for change', in I'reben Kaarsholm
(ed.) Cultural Struggle and Development in Southern Africa (James Currey, London, 1991)
117-118; see also K. Manungo 'The Role Peasants Played in the Zimbabwe War of liberation
With Special Emphasis on the Chiweshe District' (Ph.D thesis, Ohio University, 1991)
33 Norma J. Kriger, Zimbabwe's Guerrilla War: Peasant Voices (Cambridge University Press
Cambridge, 1992), 27. "
34 Ibid., 240.
 B. RAFTOPOULOS 123

Moreover, central to Kriger's thesis was the view that in order to

mobilise a nationalist consciousness in the countryside, guerrillas were
forced to utilise coercion rather than persuasion, because of the conflicting
agendas of peasant communities. Thus the guerrilla war in Zimbabwe
was successful despite the lack of popular rural support.
Other critiques of Ranger also emerged. Alexander,35 one of Ranger's
foremost students, argued that Ranger's study was based on an area which
was a prime example of successful peasant production, an experience
which could not therefore be generalised. She proposed, in a critique
that applied also to Lan and Kriger, that studying the national liberation
struggle in Zimbabwe differed according to the areas' experience of the
war, its geography, the political and religious institutions and the nature
and extent of incorporation into the colonial political economy.36
Alexander also criticised Ranger for his failure to seriously address the
problem of guerrilla violence and coercion, treating the latter 'more as a
necessary condition of war than as an indication of social tensions'.37
Moreover, Alexander's own work on rural struggles demonstrates the uneven
relationship between nationalism, 'traditional' authorities and peasant
communities, in her comparative study of the liberation war experience
in areas in the north-east and south-west of Zimbabwe, respectively.38
While Kriger's work posed serious questions and problems for
Ranger's work, her own understanding of nationalism exposed a failure
to understand the hegemonic capacity of nationalist struggle. Her central
concern with the use of coercion in nationalist struggles, disarmed her
from confronting the passionate commitments of nationalist affiliations.
Thus a few major problems can be located in Kriger's work. Firstly,
referring to Alexander's earlier point about the need to understand
different area responses to the liberation struggle, Kriger like Ranger,
sought to generalise a particular district experience to the guerrilla war
as a whole. Moreover, the area studied namely Mtoko district, had a
particular potential for coercive strategies because of the rival nationalist
movements operating in the area. As Alexander points out:
Kriger neglected the role of Methodism in creating support for Bishop
Muzorewa's UANC Towards the end of the war, a strong UANC and

35 Jocelyn Alexander, 'Things fail apart. The center can hold: Processes of post-war political
change in Zimbabwe's rural areas', in Laurids S. Lauriden, (ed.) Bringing Institutions Back
In — The Role of Institutions in Civil Society, State and Economy 0DS Roskidle University,
1993 [a]), 35.
36 Ibid., 134.
37 Ibid., 135.
38 Jocelyn Alexander, 'The State, Agrarian Policy and Rural Politics in Zimbabwe: Case
Studies of Insiza and Chimanimani Districts, 1940-1990' (D. Phil thesis, Oxford University,
1993 [b]).
 PROBLEMATISING NATIONALISM IN ZIMBABWE
124

In
In fact
fact the
the last
last two
two to
to three
I years
y of the war witnessed
liberation a more
movement, generala
sensing

pointed out, peasant criticism of guerrilla violence did not automatical*

imDlv
P
lack of support for the nationalist struggle.
4 e workZs far discussed has concentrated on the rural expenses
of nationalism and anti-colonial struggle. However, in the study of
ot nationalism «u relations between nationalism
^ ^ S ^ Z ^ ^ ^ ^ picture of nationalist
gles has begun to emerge. Phimister's recent work has continued to
S S the differential and uneven process of the ^^Jfi*jfc
His comprehensive Economic and Social History of Zimbabwe 1890-1984*
S P a 3 on his original explanations of capital accumulation and class
stmggle during this period, while his long-standing interest in the s udy
of capital and labour in the mining sector has resulted in a detailed study
of Zimbabwe's largest coal mine.4'1
In studies of urban social history, which began to emerge slowly in
the 1970s45 and then expanded rapidly in the 1980s, a more complex
process o'f the differentiated and layered experiences of various urban
classes has been presented, thus further problematising the understanding
of nationalist consciousness. Such studies have sought to understand
class ethnicity, gender and nationalism in the urban areas as part of a

39 Alexander, "Things fall apart, The center can hold', 135.

40 The Work of D. Moore on the struggles within the liberation movement over political and
militarist issues in the mid-1970s is a valuable contribution to an understanding of th«
various trends within nationalist politics. See D. Moore, "The Contradictory Construction
of Hegemony in Zimbabwe: Politics, Ideology and Class in the Formation of a New African
State' (D. Phil thesis, York University, 1990).
41 S. Robins, 'Heroes, heretics and historians of the Zimbabwe revolution: A review articU
of Norma Kriger's Peasant Voices', Zambezia. (1996), XX1I1, (i), 86.
42 Ibid., 87.
43 I. R.Phimister, .An £conom/c and Social History otZimbabwe 1890-1948: Capital Accumulation
and Class Straggle (Longman, London, 1988).
44 1. R. PhimWer, Wangi Kolia: Cool, Capital and Labour in Colonial Zimbabwe 18!M.]<KI
(Baobab Books, Harare, 1996). **
45 S. Thornton, 'African History of Bulawayo' (Unpub. Mimeo, 1978).
 B. RAFTOPOULOS 125

more general and related agrarian history of the country. The dichotomies
between urban and rural struggles have thus been eroded. As a result we
have a better understanding of the different types of consciousness
which emerged amongst workers, the range of factors affecting labour
organisation and labour mobilisation, and the changing relationship
between the labour movement and nationalist politics. A brief overview
of some of the works in this area will exemplify these trends.
Yoshikuni's46 work on colonial Salisbury demonstrates the
relationship between the changing origins of major urban migrant workers,
and the growth of a territorial consciousness. As a result while migrants
from Nyasaland (Malawi), Portuguese East Africa (Mozambique) and
Northern Rhodesia (Zambia) dominated urban life in colonial Salisbury
until the late 1940s and early 1950s, because of the continuing peasant
option for indigenous workers, the relationship between urban and a
broader rural territorial politics was tenuous. As land alienation policies
intensified in the 1940s and 1950s, and increasing numbers of indigenous
workers entered the colonial cities, the ground was prepared for a broader
nationalist mobilisation.
Building on the work of Yoshikuni, my own work47 has attempted to
focus on the political and ideological relations between nationalism within
the context of both urban and agrarian history in the period after 1945.
The thrust of this work suggests the following propositions:
1) From the mid-1950s to the early 1960s there were demographic changes
in the urban areas which resulted in indigenous Africans becoming
the dominant numerical factor in the cities. These changes were a
result of more destructive changes on the land (that is The Land
Husbandry Act, 1954), which increased the movement of local Africans
into the urban sector.
2) These changes were also accompanied by the increased growth of an
African middle class intelligentsia, who began to articulate a nationalist
ideology which encompassed the problems in both the rural and
urban areas.
3) This nationalist movement increasingly subordinated more strictly
urban based movements like the Reformed Industrial and Commercial

46 T. Yoshikuni, 'Black Migrants in a Black City: A Social History of Harare 1890-1925 (1).
Phil, thesis, University of Zimbabwe 1989); Also T. Yoshikuni, 'Notes on the influence of
town-country relations on African urban history: Experiences of Salisbury and Bulawayo
before 1957', in T. Yoshikuni and B. Raftopoulos (eds.), Essays in Zimbabwean Urban
History (Forthcoming, 1999).
47 B. Raftopoulos, 'Nationalism and labour in Salisbury 1953-1965', Journal of Southern
African Studies, (1995), 21, (i); See also 'Labour Internationalism and Problems of Autonomy
and Democratisation in the Trade Union Movement in Southern Rhodesia: 1951-1975',
Paper presented at the Conference on "The Historical Dimensions of Human Rights and
Democracy in Southern Africa' (University of Zimbabwe, September 1996).
 PROBLEMATISING NATIONALISM IN ZIMBABWE
126

Workers Union led by Charles Mzingeli, and which dominated African

pol tics in Salisbury from 1945 to the early 1950s. Nationals politics
also increasingly marginalised the emerging Southern ^ - a j r a d e
Union Congress which came into existence from the mid-1950s. The
cri ical vofce of labour was thus increasingly subsumed in the
nattonalist movement, especially once the anti-colonial j u g g l e was
caught in the grip of serious divisions and exile politics More
undamentally, L the focus of the liberation struggle moved to the
rural areas the role of the labour movement was further minimised.
Within this period the role of the International Labour Federations
(1CFTU) created further problems for the trade union movement,
pulling it into the sphere of Cold War politics
The relationship between gender and nationalism ,n the urban areas
has been confronted in the work of Barnes^ and Scarnecchia.« Barnes s
work demonstrates the complex gender struggles within the African urban
community in the context of changing colonial policy with regard to
women. Summarising her argument Barnes writes:
African women often challenged the forces of patriarchy: they travelled
absconded, used the colonial courts, earned their own money, and
talked back to their elders. However, it would be a mistake to paint
African women in the colonial years as unflinchingly heroic combatants
in a fight against patriarchal oppression. African women in colonial
Zimbabwe generally did not seek to destroy the ties which bound them
to the perspectives, hopes and visions of their fathers, husbands and
sons they contributed to the shaping of urban society not so much
by confronting patriarchy head on, but rather by persisting in developing
and performing tasks that enabled them to further the causes nearest
to their hearts: the survival and hoped for prosperity of the coming
generations.3"
Thus Barnes attempts to show that women not only fought against
the patriarchal authority of their husbands and fathers, but also fought
with their men against colonial authority. She demonstrates this in her
analysis of the importance of issues raised by women in the demands of
strikers in the 1940s. She writes:
There is a great deal of evidence . . . that worker u n d e r s t a n d i n g of how
the prevailing economic system affected their females contributed to
their willingness to strike. Lists of workers' d e m a n d s show that they

48 T. A. Barnes, "We Women Worked So Hard": (Sender. Labour, and .Social Reproduction i
Colonial Harare, Zimbabwe, 1930-1956" (I). Phil, thesis. University of Zimbabwe. 1993)
49 T. I.. Scarnecchia, 'The Politics of (lender and Class in the Creation of African Cotnmuntti s
Salisbury, Rhodesia. 1937-1957' (Ph. 1). thesis. University of Michigan. 1993) '
50 Barnes, "We Women Worked So Hard'. 416-447.
 B. RAFTOPOULOS 127

were increasingly concerned about issues of family viability and social

reproduction. When the consideration of the role of women is added to
the equation it becomes clear African workers in Rhodesia in the 1940s
were not just making economic demands. They wanted the state and
their employers . . . to shoulder a greater part of the burden of their
reproduction and that of their families.51
Scarnecchia's work also deals with the Internal gender and class
divisions of African urban society, focusing in particular on the struggles
over residential space and the importance of such space in defining class
and status within the African community. These divisions are expressed
by Scarnecchia as follows:
The climate within the Harare township in the late 1940s and early
1950s reflected a growing tension between married and single workers,
and further among married people, between those who aspired to
middle class status, migrants, and those who remained tied to rural
ways of living.52
These tensions, according to Scarnecchia, often reflected competing
perceptions of 'respectability' and 'morality', concerning how Africans,
and particularly African women, should live in the city. Conflicts over the
position of women in the city could sometimes become an ugly part of
urban struggles against the colonial state, as in the case of the women,
living in the newly built women's hostel, who were raped during the 1956
Bus Boycott in Salisbury organised by emerging nationalist politicians.
The work of the latter historians on gender has been particularly important
in highlighting the deeply gendered nature of nationalist politics. This
central feature of nationalism became apparent once again in the post-
colonial period, when the independent government attempted to include
in its problematic discourse on the nation, selective patriarchal definitions
of 'respectable women', and homophobic attacks on 'unacceptable' sexual
preferences. These trends in the discourse were exemplified by the round-
up of so-called prostitutes in the early 1980s and President Mugabe's
attack on gays and lesbians in 1995.53 Notwithstanding the varied urban
struggles described above, the work of West has carefully charted the
growth of an hegemonic middle class between 1890 and 1965 as part of
the growth of urban society, which increasingly defined and articulated
the nationalist agenda.54

51 Ibid.
52 T. Scarnecchia, 'The Mapping of Respectability and the Transformation of African
Residential Space' (Unpub. Mimeo, 1995).
53 Marc Epprecht, 'Unstructural Behaviour and the Queer "Threat" to Zimbabwe' (Unpub.
Mimeo. 1996).
54 Michael West, 'African Middle Class Formation in Colonial Zimbabwe, 1890-1965 (Ph.l)
thesis, Harvard University, 1990).
128 PROBLEMATISING NATIONALISM IN ZIMBABWE

Thus as in our discussion of nationalism in the rural areas, the

complexity of nationalism and the urban experience has become more
apparent. In the face of these diverse and uneven experiences of
nationalism that have become apparent in the recent historiography of
Zimbabwe, Ranger has pointed to an increasing contingency in the
relationship between nationalist politics and popular mobilisation. He
has observed that the connection between peasants and nationalism is
far from given and in fact 'depends upon very particular, and by no
means enduring, convergences of peasants and nationalist interests'. 55
Ranger's views on the contingency of nationalist mobilisation have
also been influenced by the most traumatic event of post-colonial
Zimbabwe, namely the crisis in Matabeleland in the mid-1980s. It is a
crisis to which some commentators believe the triumphaiist nationalist
historiography of an earlier period contributed through 'a f-ukire on the
part of historians to recognise the continuity in a culture of violence and
authoritarianism, that emerged during the guerrilla war'. 56 Certainly the
brutality of the Zimbabwean state towards a minority ethnic group, left
little doubt that the terms of belonging to the nation were being defined
in brutal militarist fashion.
Moreover central to the crisis in Matabeleland was the central thrust
of ZANU (PF) to eliminate its major political opposition in the southern
part of Zimbabwe, namely the Zimbabwe African People's Union (ZAPU).
The ZANU government's policy of Gukumhundi (a colloquial Shona
expression meaning, 'the storm that destroys everything*) was, in the
words of Sithole and Makumbe, 'an undisguised, intolerant, commandist,
and deliberately violent policy towards the opposition. By this policy the
opposition was rendered impotent.'57 Evidence in a recent report on the
violence experienced in Matabeleland reveals the wrath of an authoritarian
nationalism. Reports of beatings, rape, torture and a generally forced
compliance with a particularist version of national allegiance,
characterised the Zimbabwean state's use of its 5th Brigade in
Matabeleland. As an example of forced mobilisation of people in
Matabeleland by the state the report recorded an incident in the Matobo
area:
5 Brigade rounded everyone in the area to a local school. There were
about 200 men, women and children. Everyone was beaten and kicked
from sunrise to 10 a.m. Then some were made to dig two graves while

55 T. 0. Ranger, 'Towards A Research Project, with IDS. 1997 to 2000' (Oxford. 1997).
56 Robins, 'Heroes, heretics and historians of the Zimbabwe revolution". 7fi.
57 Masipula S. Sithole and John Makumbe 'Klections in Harare: The ZANU PK hegemony and
its incipient decline', African Journal of Political Science, (1997). 2. OV
 B. RAFTOPOULOS 129

others were made to fight each other. Six men were chosen at random
and placed in groups of three. They were then shot dead. Everyone else
was told to sing songs praising Mugabe and condemning Nkomo. While
some sang and danced, others were beaten.58
Such state violence on a minority ethnic group called out for analysis
and explanation. Richard Werbner's book on a Kalanga family in
Matabeleland, sought to explain this debacle through the concept of
'quasi-nationalism', an ideological practice located primarily in 'the
struggle for power and moral authority in the nation state'. Werbner
concluded that:
The catastrophe of quasi-nationalism is that it can capture the might of
the nation state and bring authorised violence down ruthlessly against
the people who seem to stand in the way of the nation being united and
pure as one body.59
Ranger's response was an attempt to historicise the development of
ethnicity in order to show how such an invention had emerged as a result
of the combination of colonial state practice, missionary interventions in
the definition of African language dialectics, and migrant labour practices.60
Expanding on this work later, Ranger has revisited the idea of an invented
ethnicity which he perceived as paying inadequate attention to a 'fully
historical treatment of African participation and initiative in innovating
custom'. 61 Preferring Benedict Anderson's concept of Imaginal
Communities,62 Ranger's new emphasis on 'imagination' was an attempt
to provide for a more active agency for different African voices, in which
'multiple imaginations' developed by different groups, over a long period
of time, contest over the meaning of such imaginings. This process of
discursively constituting ethnicity and nationalism has been part of the
most recent, innovative work that has emerged on nationalism.63 Thus
Ranger's emphasis on the historical mutations of ethnic identity, based
not only on colonial and missionary categorisations, but on the changing

58 Evidence to the report 'Breaking The Silence' (The Legal Resources Foundation and the
Catholic Commission for Justice and Peace, 1997).
59 Richard Werbner, Tears of the Dead: The Social Biography of An African Family (Baobab
Books, Harare, 1991), 159.
60 T. O. Ranger, The Invention of Tribalism in Zimbabwe (Mambo Books, Gweru, 1985).
61 T. O. Ranger, 'The invention of tradition revisited: The case of colonial Africa', in T.
Ranger and O. Vaughan (eds.) Legitimacy and the Stale in Twentieth Century Africa
(MacMillan, London, 1993).
62 B. Anderson, Imagined Communities (Verso, London, 1983).
63 See Eric Hobsbawn and Terence Ranger (eds.), The Invention of Tradition (Cambridge
University Press, Cambridge, 1983); also Geoff Eley and Ronald Grigor Suny, Becoming
National: A Reader (OUP, Oxford, 1996); Golap Balakrishman (ed.), Mapping The Nation
(Verso, London, 1996).
 130 PROBLEMATISING NATIONALISM IN ZIMBABWE

interventions of African agents, such as chiefs and nationalists, has

attempted to de-essentialise both ethnic and national identities.
This movement away frdm essentialist characterisations has been a
response to official state nationalism, stressing the democratic possibilities
of both ethnic and national identities. In his most recent book Ranger has
continued to explore the changes in nationalist practice stressing earlier
traditions of pluralism and tolerance, in the early Southern Rhodesia
African Nationalist Congress of the late 1940s and early 1950s. Commenting
on the writings of one of its leading lights, Stanlake Samkange, Ranger
noted that the latter 'deplored the nationalist attempt to take over other
associational activities, such as the trade union movement, and the cycle
of violence which this precipitated'.64
In summing up this section, we observe that if one looks at the work
of Ranger and the various attempts, in response to him, to develop a
more variegated analysis of nationalism in Zimbabwe, there appears to
be a certain convergence of perspectives. Ranger has moved away from
earlier celebratory positions on nationalism to a more nuanced concern
with divergence and diversity within nationalist politics. A two-volume
~~~collection edited by Ranger and Bhebe provides a useful overview of the
unevenness and diversity of the liberation struggle. This collection thus
registers the on-going process of unpackaging the categories of nationalist
struggle while continuing to assert the resonances of nationalism. 65
Nevertheless, Ranger has pointed to a dilemma which continues to
confront all the work on nationalism in Zimbabwean historiography. This
is the fact that nationalism continues to provide an essential part of the
framework in which political ideas and participation are imagined in
Zimbabwe, notwithstanding the tensions and differences in the way that
different groups have experienced nationalist mobilisation. In Ranger's
words:
... despite the many injunctions within African historiography not only
to go beyond nationalist history but also to abandon nationalism as a
topic, it makes no sense to do this in Zimbabwe . . . the sequence of
nationalist thought and organisation from the Bantu Congress of the
1940s and early 1950s through the revived mass nationalist parties of
the late 1950s and early 1960s and into the guerrilla war are crucial for
contemporary debate about democracy in Zimbabwe. Understanding
rural nationalism is crucial for understanding Zimbabwe's rural areas.

64 T. 0. Ranger, Are We Not Also Men? The Samkange Family and African Politics in Zimbabwe
W2OS4 (Baobab, Harare, 1995).
65 N. Bhebe and T. 0. Ranger (eds.) Soldiers in Zimbabwe's Liberation War Volume One
(University of Zimbabwe Publications, Harare, 1995); and N. Bhebe and T, O. Ranger
(eds.), Society in Zimbabwe's Liberation War Volume Two (University of Zimbabwe
Publications, Harare, 1995).
 B. RAFTOPOULOS 131

The range of political options in Zimbabwe seems confined to

emancipating pluralist nationalism on the one hand and collective,
majoritarian nationalism on the other.66
This position is similar to that of one of Zimbabwe's leading historians,
N. Bhebe, who in his work has emphasised the formative and unifying
role of nationalism.67
In the light of the above discussion, we can therefore observe that,
despite the growth of the historiography on nationalism in Zimbabwe,
there are continuing problems of understanding the relationships between
nationalist ideas articulated by nationalist elites, and the contradictory
and complex ways in which subaltern classes assimilate and utilise such
ideas in contending ways. Moreover, the effects of this analytical problem
can be observed in the weakness displayed in the analysis of the
relationship between the ruling party and its support base in the post-
colonial period. On the one hand, many analysts take note of the continued
populist appeal of nationalism, without critically explaining this hegemonic
project, beyond broad references to the persisting legacies of the liberation
struggle, and the welfarist policies of the post-colonial state. On the other
hand, having summarily dispensed with such explanations, analysis of
post-colonial politics becomes focused on the factional struggles of state
and party elites.
A good example of this tendency is the work of Ibbo Mandaza, one of
Zimbabwe's leading political analysts. In 1986, in the first critical review
of the post-colonial regime, Mandaza assumed the 'strength and
dominance' of African nationalism, which because of its national-popular
appeal was able to 'disguise the class structure of African societies, to
hide the reality of the class struggle'.68 However, the ways in which the
national-popular elements were incorporated into subaltern ideologies
was given little attention. Henceforth, Mandaza's analysis has focused on
the role of elites in defining and resolving 'the National Question'. In an
example of his many statements on this issue he observes that,
the African nationalist leadership must have the courage to call a
spade and spade, oblivious of the ideological white mail which, in
seeking to disparage nationalism and the related concerns of the

66 T. O. Ranger 'Living Africa: Making and Writing History in Zimbabwe' (Valedictory

Lecture, 19 June 1997, Oxford).
67 N. Bhebe, Benjamin Burombo: African Politics in Zimbabwe 1947-1958 (College Press,
Harare, 1989); See also N. Bhebe 'The nationalist struggle 1957-62', in C. Banana (ed.),
Turmoil and Tenacity: Zimbabwe 1890-1990 (College Press, Harare, 1989). For the most
part this volume is a celebratory nationalist text.
68 1. Mandaza, (ed), Zimbabwe: The Political Economy of Transition, 1980-1986 (CODESRIA,
Senegal, 1986), 8.
132 PROBLEMATISING NATIONALISM IN ZIMBABWE

National Question, distracts the new state from the urgent tasks of
building a nation and developing a national economy.69
A similar emphasis on the role of elites and nationalism can be found
in the work of Sithole, Sachikonye and Moyo,70 where questions of the
nation state and democratisation are usually dealt with in terms of intra-
ellte struggles. In such analyses the state is usually viewed through a
dominative and instrumentalist model,71 in which questions of legitimation
strategies are largely confined to what Bayart has termed 'the reciprocal
assimilation of elites'.72 As important as the analysis of elite politics
remains, we cannot understand the strengths and ambivalences of
nationalism if our focus remains at this level.

CONCLUSION
To conclude we can make the following observations. Since Phimister's
review of Zimbabwean historiography in 1979, there has been a vast
expansion of work on nationalism in Zimbabwe. We now know much
more about nationalism in relation to: the different experiences of the
peasantry; the labour movement; gender; class; ethnicity; and religion.
The study of all these areas has provided a more divergent perspective
on the experiences of nationalist ideology and practices. Phimister's
hope that radical historians would develop a distinct paradigm, as distinct
from the liberal and Africanist agendas, proved too confining a perspective.
While class remains an essential modality of analysis, its tendency to
subsume issues of nationalism to an almost teleological trajectory of
class formation in Southern African historiography, was always going to
be problematic. The complexities of understanding nationalism will
demand a much more expansive, less reductive view of the still fruitful
category, class.
In fact what has occurred in Zimbabwean historiography has been a
convergence of interests around the diversity of the nationalist experience.

69 I. Mandaza, "The National Question and Affirmative Action in Africa: S o m e Reflections on

South Africa', Keynote Address presented at t h e Affirmative Action W o r k s h o p Natal 11
October 1993. '
70 M. Sithole, 'Zimbabwe's eroding authoritarianism". Journal of Democracy. (January 1997)
8, (i); L. M. Sachikonye 'The nation-state project a n d conflict in Zimbabwe', in A 0
Olukushi and Liisa Laako (eds.). Challenge to the Nation State in Africa (Nordiska
Afrikainstitutet, Uppsala, 1996); J. N. Moyo. 'Civil society in Zimbabwe", '/.ambezia, (I993)

71 For a discussion of Gramsci's relevance in avoiding s u c h i n s t r u m e n t a l i s t models in the

analysis of the post-colonial state see. S. Hall. "Gramsci's relevance for t h e study of race
and ethnicity', in D. Morley and K, H. Chen (eds.) Stuart Hall Critical Dialogues in Cu/i,,mi
fu
Studies (Routledge, London. 1996). ™
72 J. F. Bayart, The Slate in Africa: The Politics of the llelly (Longman. Ixjndon, 1993)
 B. RAFTOPOULOS 133

This development has occurred within the context of the fracturing of

the nationalist alliance in independent Zimbabwe, and the increasing
strains and tensions in the legitimacy of the post-colonial state. These
cracks in the nationalist alliance have become particularly apparent in
the 1990s as the destructive effects of the Structural Adjustment
Programme in Zimbabwe have become an increasing reality. Various
classes and organisational lobbies have been forced to confront the state
over a variety of grievances. Thus the labour movement called a General
Strike in December, 1997, while consumers in the township areas engaged
in food riots in January 1998. At a different level the indigenisation lobby,
representing an aspirant Black bourgeoisie, has since 1990 pressed the
state for increased government interventions to facilitate Black
involvement in the economy, while the War Veterans Association
threatened the very existence of the ZANU (PF) government with its
demands for compensation. In addition to these varying demands the
state, in response to its decreasing legitimacy, had been forced to deal
with the long neglected demands of land reform. The emergence of these
different agendas represents the difficulty of nationalist politics in
containing the constituencies that have in the past made up the national
alliance, under a unifying vision.
Moreover, in the midst of the embattled state of the ruling party,
there has been a greater willingness not only to confront the Zimbabwean
state, but to begin to confront and re-examine the nationalist past. For
example, during evidence given to the commission to examine the abuse
of War Veteran Funds in 1996, ex-combatants spoke not only of their
present distress, but of their past suffering in the liberation movement.
Examples of the commandist and coercive aspects of the struggles, already
registered in the historiography discussed earlier, were once again brought
to the fore. Among the most harrowing evidence presented was that of
the women ex-combatants. The Minister of State for Gender Issues, Oppah
Rushesha reported:
Being a women it was very difficult to survive on your own at that age
(17). We had thugs . . . We had these rapists taking advantage of us
being young women.73
In addition the Secretary of ZANU, Edgar Tekere, warned that the
President was surrounded by 'imposters' who have engaged in the
'falsification of the liberation war history'.74 Enraged ex-combatants further
challenged the legitimacy of the ruling elite, by staging a demonstration

73 Vie Herald, 26/8/97.

74 The Financial Gazette, 28/8/97.
134 PROBLEMATISING NATIONALISM IN ZIMBABWE

at the central symbol of the liberation struggle, namely the National

Heroes Acre, during the annual celebrations in August 1997. Thus the
contemporary problems of the Zimbabwean state have placed new
questions about the past on the agenda. Our historical perspectives and
agendas always relate to our contemporary political concerns. Therefore,
unpacking the authoritarian notions of unity peddled by nationalist
politicians has become as essential for understanding the history of
nationalism, as it has for current debates on democratisation in Zimbabwe.