‘Kutonga Kwaro Gamba’: Politics and the renaming of defence cantonments in the ‘Second Republic’ in Zimbabwe

Abstract

Like Kenya, Namibia, and South Africa, Zimbabwe was one of the countries that the imperial mission had targeted to establish as a settler economy. The objective of creating a white settler colony was evident in the entire colonial system, including place naming. Generally, place naming served political functions of declaring power and authority over the entire colony. While white minority rule ended in 1980, it, however, left some symbolic imprints on the cultural landscape of the independent nation, Zimbabwe. Given that colonialism entrenched white identity on the cultural landscape, this article interrogates efforts by the Mnangagwa government, which assumed political office in November 2017, to dislodge Rhodesian memory from the cultural landscape. This article demonstrates that decolonisation is not an event but an ongoing process that political elites execute whenever they want to serve present political purposes. It interrogates the dialectics of political power and remembering the past in Zimbabwe during the aftermath of the military-induced political change of November 2017. The re-inscription of the landscape that the Mnangagwa regime executed specifically targeted military cantonments throughout the country. This decolonisation process was ostensibly done to dismantle white identities from the cultural landscape. However, this article argues that the place renaming exercise served to write back the liberation war legacy into mainstream history, symbolically declared the regime’s political power, and served to legitimise the political status quo. These political purposes had roots in the succession race and the internal party politics within the Zimbabwe African National Union- Patriotic Front (ZANU- PF) that preceded the political transition.

Bibliometric Analysis of Articles on Collective Memory in History, Geography and Educational Studies

“…Yayın sayılarının son yıllarda artması hem araştırmacıların bu konuya ilgi duyduğu hem de multidisipliner bir konu olduğu için toplumsal bellek araştırmalarının çeşitlendiği sonucu çıkarılabilir. WoS'ta tarih, coğrafya ve eğitim araştırmaları kategorilerinde gerçekleştirilen toplumsal bellek konulu makalelerin güncel eğilimleri incelendiğinde anma kültürü (Adams & Vintizky-Seroussi, 2019;Gustafsson, 2019;Hahn, 2018;Oettler, 2021;Taussig, 2017) mekân (Bareither, 2021;Borges, 2017;Hearn, 2021;Musgrove, 2017;Okechukwu, 2022), şiddet ve politika (Malinova, 2021;Mamvura, 2021;Ranger & Ranger, 2022;Shanes, 2022;Tabaszevska, 2022) WoS tabanlı gerçekleştirilen bu araştırmada tarih, coğrafya ve eğitim araştırmaları kategorilerindeki toplumsal bellek konulu dergi makalelerinde yıllık üretim, güncel eğilimler, en ilgili dergiler, önde gelen araştırmacılar, ülkelerin üretkenlik durumları, en fazla kullanılan anahtar kelimeler ve en fazla başvurulan kaynaklar ortaya çıkarılmıştır. Bu sonuçların bu konu hakkında araştırma yapmayı ve farklı ülkelerdeki yazarlarla iş birliği yapmayı planlayan araştırmacılara genel bir çerçeve sunacağı düşünülmektedir.…”

Praising the Croc, Despising Nero: The Politics of Hero-Worshipping Leaders Through Music and Speech in Zimbabwe

“…Mnangagwa was praised in one of Jah Prayzah's (real name Mukudzeyi Mukombe) songs, "Gamba," which goes "rasvika gamba kutonga kwaro gamba," in English, "the hero has arrived, that's the way the hero rules." To most who celebrated the rise of Mnangagwa and the fall of Mugabe, they are many regrets because he failed to deliver as anticipated of him (Mamvura, 2021b). The song's composer was rewarded much honor even to perform in the presence of the then designated President Mnangagwa.…”