Remembering or re-membering? Life-writing and the politics of narration in Morgan Tsvangirai’s autobiography At the Deep End (2011)

Abstract

Morgan Tsvangirai’s autobiography is a construction of both personal and national identities from the 1960s up to 2011. In doing that the autobiography At the Deep End reshapes events from the colonial up to the period of Zimbabwe’s crisis with a view to staking a specifi c, deliberate identity that privileges the self as more sinned against than sinning. This paper interrogates Tsvangirai’s autobiography so as to unpack the conspicuous presences and absences and the motive of such narration. The paper argues that the politics of narration in the book is motivated by the reality of his being a leader of the opposition party in Zimbabwe where he has faced a lot of accusations about his history and leadership qualities. Tsvangirai’s party, the Movement for Democratic Change (MDC) was often branded as a ‘terrorist’ organisation by the ruling party, the Zimbabwe African National Union – Patriotic Front (ZANU PF). We argue that Tsvangirai’s analysis of events is compromised by his view of the self as a possible leader in Zimbabwe. Out of the possible selves generated by his shifty experiences, he privileges the political identity in order to create an aura of relevance in the rugged political terrain of Zimbabwe. Thus the autobiography is constructed in a way that shows remembrance and re-membering of historical accounts.