This study investigates how selected Zimbabwean poets use their poetry to re-imagine and rewrite Zimbabwean history to create new identities. It seeks to achieve this by analyzing the poetry of Musaemura Zimunya, Chenjerai Hove, Dambudzo Marechera, Philip Zhuwao, Freedom Nyamubaya and some other women poets from the anthology A Woman’s Plea and John Eppel’s poetry. The study argues that history and identity are unstable concepts whose meanings and usages are influenced by a variety of factors. It further contends that while the significations of history are generally split between how it is regarded in the academic discipline of history and its meanings outside the academic discipline, the controversies surrounding history are about the ways of representing the past. The study builds its central arguments around this existence of multiple ways of ordering the past, and asserts that poetry is also a form of representing history which utilizes its own rhetoric to authorize its versions of the past and construct identities in its own unique ways. These arguments are raised in Chapter One. The analysis of the selected poets’ texts in Chapters Two, Three, Four, Five and Six links them to the arguments raised in Chapter One. It critiques the versions of histories and the nature of identities that are represented differently by different poets. The study in these chapters reveals that poetic narratives are unstable accounts of both the past and identity, but it is this instability that allows poetry to interrogate narrow concepts of what is ‘real’ in history. There are both similar and dissimilar trends that abound in the selected poets’ texts which reveal that even within the poetic mode of representation, there are layers of understanding of the metaphorical symbols which we use to fix the meanings of Zimbabwean history and identities. The study applies different theoretical approaches to the work of each poet in order to show how each has different contribution to make towards the recovery of Zimbabwe’s past and how it speaks to our present. / Thesis (DLitt)--University of Pretoria, 2011. / English / unrestricted

La synthèse du graphène par traitement thermique d’un substrat de carbure de silicium (SiC) est une technique prometteuse pour l’intégration de ce nouveau matériau dans l’industrie, notamment dans les dispositifs électroniques. L’avantage de cette méthode réside dans la croissance de films minces de graphène de taille macroscopique directement sur substrat isolant. Toutefois, avant d’intégrer ce matériau, il convient d’en contrôler la synthèse et d’en moduler les propriétés. Dans ce travail de thèse, nous étudions les propriétés structurales et électroniques du graphène obtenu par la graphitisation des polytypes 3C-, 4H- et 6H-SiC. A partir de diverses méthodes de caractérisation, telles que la diffraction des électrons lents (LEED) ou la microscopie et spectroscopie à effet tunnel (STM/STS), nous avons vérifié, dans un premier temps, que le caractère discontinu du graphène sur les bords de marches peut introduire un confinement latéral supplémentaire des électrons dans le graphène. Dans un second temps, l’observation des singularités de Van Hove nous a permis de démontrer l’effet de confinement unidimensionnel dans les régions d’accumulations de marches du SiC. Enfin, l’introduction de désordre dans nos couches de graphène induit une réduction de la densité de porteurs de charges dans les couches. De même, ce désordre conduit à une transition de phase quantique entre le régime localisé et le régime d’effet Hall quantique. / The synthesis of graphene by thermal decomposition of silicon carbide (SiC) is a promising technique for the integration of this new material in the industry, especially in electronic devices. The advantage of this method lies in the growth of macroscopic graphene films directly on an insulator substrate. However, before using this material in electronic devices, it is advisable to control its synthesis and modulate its properties. In this thesis, we present the structural and electronic properties of graphene obtained by graphitization of 3C- , 4H - and 6H- SiC polytypes. Various characterization methods were used, including low energy electron diffraction (LEED) and microscopy and scanning tunneling spectroscopy (STM / STS). Based on STM / STS measurements, we show that the discontinuity of epitaxial graphene at the step edges may introduce an additional lateral confinement of electrons in graphene. The observation of Van Hove singularities in the STS spectra confirmed the one dimensional confinement of graphene in step bunching regions of SiC.Finally, we show that when disorder is introduced on our graphene samples, the charge carrier density is reduced. This disorder lead to the observation of a quantum phase transition from a localized regime to a quantum Hall effect regime.

This research provides an analytical reading of five southern African war novels, in a transnational study of the experience of war as represented by the novels' authors. In order to situate the texts within a transnational tradition of writing about modern warfare, I draw on Paul Fussell's work on the fictional writings of the Second World War in combination with Tobey Herzog's work on the writings of America's war in Vietnam. Through a reading of Sousa Jamba's Patriots and Mark Behr's The Smell of Apples. I illustrate that while these and other southern African war texts can be situated within a transnational tradition of writing about modern warfare, they also extend the tradition by adding new and previously silenced voices. I then turn to a focus on specific experiences of southern African anti-colonial war as represented in Pepetela's Mayombe and Mark Behr's The Smell of Apples. These texts are read in light of Franz Fanon's extensive writings on the nature of colonial violence and with a focus on the role of the victim and perpetrator in violent resistance to colonial oppression. Following this, and keeping with my examination of the experience of war in southern Africa, I read Pepetela's Mayombe. Sousa Jamba's Patriots and Chenjerai Hove's Bones with a view to highlighting their writing of women in times of war. Using the work of Florence Stratton, this section exposes the great difficulties faced by women in times of war as a result of war's complicity in the maintenance of patriarchal societal structures. Finally, I read Chenjerai Hove's Bones and Mia Couto's Under the Frangipani as post-war texts so as to highlight the authors' use of organic images to imagine post-war futures that are not tainted by the experience of war. In examining this topic, I aim to suggest that all of the texts studied show war to be a continuum that results in failed societies. I therefore read the texts as active interventions that seek to break the destructive cycle of the region's wars in the hope of better and constructive futures. / Thesis (M.A.)-University of KwaZulu-Natal, Pietermaritzburg, 2005.