Land and racial domination in Zimbabwe: An African-centred critical analysis of selected post-2000 Zimbabwean-authored novels

Abstract

The article makes an African-centred analysis selected post-2000 Zimbabwean authored novels that narrativise the land experiences in the country. The African-led land occupations of white-owned commercial farms in Zimbabwe from the late 1990s have necessitated the study and revisiting of the land question in Zimbabwe (formerly Rhodesia). The process that has been defended by the Government as part of the necessary land redistribution exercise to rectify colonial land injustices shows that the land question is as potent now as it was at the inception of colonial settlements. Zimbabwe’s land history has remained consistently contentious because land is the life-blood of the people’s livelihoods, black and white. For this reason, the process and aftermath of the occupations have rocked racial relations in the country and internationally. The controversies arising from the land occupations have culminated in the socio-economic and political instability of the country, and threaten to spill into and destabilise the SADC countries as well. It is against this backdrop that the article makes an African-centred analysis of selected post-2000 Zimbabwean-authored novels that variously respond to Zimbabwean land issues characterising the tumultuous post-2000 period. The view presented here is that literature defines the epicentre of the struggle of ideas, that partially but significantly, define what Zimbabwe is, including how and where she wants to go. Tsitsi Dangarembga’s The Book of Not (2006); Eric Harrison’s Jambanja (2006); John Eppel’s Absent: The English Teacher (2009) and Mashingaidze Gomo’s A Fine Madness (2010) are analysed in this light. The African-centred approach utilised in this chapter is significant in locating both texts and authors within the background that informs their fictional representations. The extent to which texts successfully balance their explorations of land and racial identity and help to influence society to rise above parochial partisan approaches, and encourage people to confront some of Zimbabwe’s land challenges would be worth noting.