Jocelyn Alexander, JoAnne McGregor and Terence Ranger
Violence and Memory is the history of the former Shangani Reserve in Northern Matbeleland now known as Nkayi and Lupane. It is a rich and evocative study of the forced movement of people into a sparse wilderness area, in order to create a 'homeland' for the Ndebele after the conquest of the Ndebele state in the late 19th Century, and the emergence of this area in to a central platform of nationalist politics for the Zimbabwe African People's Union (ZAPU). The book explores, both the central theme of violence, not only under settler colonialism, but under the post-colonial dispensation, and the memory of that violence over a long period of time. Central to the study however is the development of nationalist politics in a particular rural setting, as a result of a complex interplay of rural and urban figures, and a combination of local grievances with broader territorial meanings of becoming national. Moreover the book explores the ways in which nationalist politics developed a moral economy, through which leaders and their practices, both in the anti-colonial struggle and in the form of the post colonial nationalist government, were held accountable according to norms and promises of nationalist objectives.
ISBN: 0 85255 642 X, 2000.