Politics and postmemory in Zimbabwe: second-generation narratives of the Gukurahundi violence

Thesis

This thesis examines how a second generation inherited, reconstructed, and mobilised a violent past as a framework for negotiating the politics of the present. While much has been written about how violent pasts become politicised from the top-down, literature on victim communities and second generations focuses predominantly on intergenerational transmission, family trauma, and individual and collective healing. This thesis contends with the politics of postmemory, exploring why and with what implications Zimbabwe’s 1980s Gukurahundi atrocities became central to the second generation’s political imagination and activism.

My research is situated in post-coup Zimbabwe when second-generation Gukurahundi activism broke through decades of state silencing and raised questions about the intergenerational legacies of this unresolved period of state repression. Drawing on interviews with over 150 activists and non-activists as well as observations of public activism and commemorative practices, I argue that members of the second generation constructed narratives of Gukurahundi to negotiate and contest Zimbabwe’s contemporary political order and related ideas about identity, citizenship, and nationhood. First, I show that their political engagement with Gukurahundi was fostered by having grown up between acts of silencing by perpetrators still in power and fragmented and emotive private forms of transmissions that conveyed continuity and ongoing injustice. Second, I argue that members of the second generation mapped Gukurahundi onto their present-day experiences in ways that re-constructed the meaning of past and present. Emphasising ethnic divisions and hierarchies, these narratives were distinct from first-generation narratives in the 1990s, evidencing how Gukurahundi’s meaning was adapted to the concerns of a new political context and generation. Finally, I explore the political implications of these narratives. I reveal a distinct Ndebele narrative of citizenship crisis in Zimbabwe and show how second-generation Gukurahundi activism transcended concerns for justice and healing by contesting and reimagining Zimbabwe’s national order in different ways.

Authors: Reim, L

• DOI: 10.5287/ora-vmomaxjwj
• Type of award: DPhil
• Level of award: Doctoral
• Awarding institution: University of Oxford
• Language: English
• Keywords: Zimbabwe; Gukurahundi; memory; second generations; activism; state violence; citizenship
• Subjects: Violence; Africa; Memory; Citizenship; Transitional justice; Activism