Crafting Identity In Zimbabwe And Mozambique

Crosses conventional theoretical, temporal, and geographical boundaries to show how the Ndau of southeast Africa actively shaped their own identity over a four-hundred-year period.

This book is the first major work to explore the utility of the border as a theoretical, methodological, and interpretive construct for understanding colonial public health by considering African experiences in the Zimbabwe-Mozambique borderland. It examines the impact of colonial public health measures such as medical examinations/inspections, vaccinations, and border surveillance on African villagers in this borderland. The book asks whether the conjunction of a particular colonized society, a distinctive kind of colonialism, and a particular territorial border generated reluctance to embrace public health because of certain colonial circumstances which impeded the acceptance of therapeutic alternatives that were embraced by colonized people elsewhere. It asks historians to look elsewhere for similar kinds of histories involving racialized application of public health policies in colonial borderlands.

Independent Museums and Culture Centres in Colonial and Post-colonial Zimbabwe presents case studies that grapple with the issue of ‘decolonising practice’ in privately owned museums and cultural centres in Zimbabwe. Including contributions from academics and practitioners, this book focusses on privately run cultural institutions and highlights that there has, until now, been scant scholarly information about their existence and practice. Arguing that the recent resurgence of such museums, which are not usually obliged to endorse official narratives of the central government, points to some desire to decolonise and indigenise museums, the contributors explore approaches that have been used to reconfigure such colonially inherited institutions to suit the post-colonial terrain. The volume also explores how privately owned museums can tap into or contribute to current conversations on decoloniality that encourage reflexivity, inclusivity, de-patriarchy, multivocality, community participation, and agency. Exploring the motives and purpose of such institutions, the book argues that they are being utilised to confront deeply entrenched stigmatisation and marginalisation. Independent Museums and Culture Centres in Colonial and Post-colonial Zimbabwe demonstrates that post-colonial African museums have become an arena for negotiating history, legacies, and identities. The book will be of interest to academics and students around the world who are engaged in the study of museums and heritage, African studies, history, and culture. It will also appeal to museum practitioners working across Africa and beyond.

This comprehensive overview traces the evolution of modern Mozambique, from its early modern origins in the Indian Ocean trading system and the Portuguese maritime empire to the fifteen-year civil war that followed independence and its continued after-effects. Though peace was achieved in 1992 through international mediation, Mozambique's remarkable recovery has shown signs of stalling. Malyn Newitt explores the historical roots of Mozambican disunity and hampered development, beginning with the divisive effects of the slave trade, the drawing of colonial frontiers in the 1890s and the lasting particularities of the north, centre and south, inherited from the compartmentalized approach of concession companies. Following the nationalist guerrillas' victory against the Portuguese in 1975, these regional divisions resurfaced in a civil war pitting the south against the north and centre, over attempts at far-reaching socioeconomic change. The settlement of the early 1990s is now under threat from a revived insurgency, and the ghosts of the past remain. This book seeks to distill this complex history, and to understand why, twenty-five years after the Peace Accord, Mozambicans still remain among the poorest people in the world.

This book examines the national borders and borderlands of Zimbabwe through the presentation of empirically rich case studies. It delves into the lived experiences, both past and present, of populations residing along the borders between Zimbabwe and its neighbours, i.e., Zambia, Botswana, South Africa and Mozambique. It locates these lived experiences within the political economy of Zimbabwe, and highlights a wide range of themes pertinent to borders, including health, COVID-19, marginalisation, resource access, conservation, human-wildlife conflicts, civil wars, politico-economic crises, border jumping and cross border trade. The borderland communities discussed also include ethnic minorities such as the Tonga, San, Ndau, Shangane, and Kalanga. Overall, the book demonstrates the centrality of borders to the Zimbabwean nation-state and the importance of reading history, politics and society from the borderlands. The book fits into the wider prevailing literature of border and borderlands in Africa and beyond and thus has appeal far beyond Zimbabwe. Its diverse themes also relate to topics covered in multiple disciplines, including history, anthropology, and sociology. Academics, development specialists and policy makers will benefit in different ways from the depth and breadth of the analysis in the book.

The debate about ethnicity in sub-Saharan Africa has come to an uneasy consensus in the 1990s, but it has to be asked if we are really close to a solution. How can comparative and historical views help to inform the debate? In this work, seven scholars bring in a long-term perspective to ethno-cultural solidarities, which they explore within a multi-disciplinary framework. This return to the 'heart of the ethnic group', twenty-five years after Elikia M'Bokolo's and Jean-Loup Amselle's path-breaking reinterpretation of ethnicity in Africa, argues for a reappraisal of approaches to ethnicity that have been adopted in recent decades. Focusing on two major geographical regions of the African continent - Senegambia including Guinea-Bissau and Sierra Leone, and the area of Southern Tanzania and the northern half of Mozambique -, the chapters in this volume provide a new historical interpretation of the processes of identity-building in sub-Saharan Africa.

This book takes the established fields of orality, performance, and first-century Christian healthcare studies further by combining analogues of praise performances to Apollo, Asclepius, and those from the Dondo people of South Eastern Zimbabwe to propose that Jesus's healing stories in Mark's Gospel are praise-giving narratives to Jesus as the best folk healer within the region of Capernaum. The book argues that the memory of Jesus as the folk healer from Capernaum survived and possibly functioned in similar contexts of praise-giving within early Christian households. The book goes through each healing story in Mark's Gospel and imaginatively listens to it through the ears of analogue from praise-giving given to Greek healers/heroes and similar practices among the Dondo people. The power, completeness, and effectiveness in which Jesus healed each of the mentioned conditions provoke praise-giving from the listeners to the best folk healer in the village. In each instance, while Mark is calling for attention to the new healer, more so, he is raving praise-giving.

The book provides empirically-rich case studies of the lives and livelihoods of marginalised ethnic minorities in colonial and post-colonial Zimbabwe, with a specific focus on diverse rural areas. It demonstrates the dynamic and complex relationships existing between ethnic minorities and livelihoods, and analyses the ways in which projects of belonging (and identity-formation) amongst these ethnic minorities are entangled in their respective livelihood construction projects, and vice versa. The ethnic minorities include those considered indigenous to Zimbabwe, and those often defined as ‘aliens’, including ethnicities with a transnational presence in southern Africa. The ethnicities studied in the book include the following: Chewa, Doma, Tonga, Tshwa San, Shangane, Basotho, Ndau, Hlengwe and Nambya. By studying their livelihoods in particular, this book offers the first full manuscript about ethnic minorities in Zimbabwe. In doing so, it highlights the significance of these ethnic minorities to Zimbabwean history, politics and society.