A thesis submitted to the Faculty of Humanities, University of the Witwatersrand, Johannesburg, in fulfilment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy Johannesburg, June 2016 / The study explores the ways in which the self and other are constructed and represented in a wide range of Zimbabwean political autobiographical narratives from 1972 to 2011. In particular, it focuses on the machinery of autobiography and the various narrative strategies deployed by autobiographers of different races, gender, ethnic origins and political persuasions to construct the self and other. It also considers how these representations of the self and other, combined with the narrative strategies used, bear upon the history and politics of Zimbabwe. The argument is advanced that through strategic and careful deployment of narrative in transforming lives lived to lives told, the selected narratives not only reconstruct the self and other but also narrate the history and politics of the nation. Therefore, the deployment of different narrative strategies, which include the uses of: authentication, patronage of authorship, historical recurrence and narcissistic rage, erasure, palimpsest and collaborative voices, and hauntology has resulted in the emergence of a seemingly minor genre into a competing narrative that is threatening to take over the place of hegemonic grand narratives and histories of Zimbabwe. These have all along been largely nativist and based on racial, ethnic and patriarchal prejudices, especially in the manner in which they narrated the political history of Zimbabwe. The study thus argues that the machinery of autobiographies has been deployed as political weaponry to present bleached images of the self and other. This situates Zimbabwe’s political autobiographies as literary and political projects and archives that narrate the nation through the story of the self and other. / MT2017

The Rhodesian and Zimbabwean space-time involved the creation and adoption of hegemonic discourses that influenced ways of behavior, thinking, perceiving reality and particular ways of identity construction based on mystifying nationalisms. In raced and politically charged spaces, such grand narratives depended, for their currency, on stereotypes, essentialisms, domination and dichotomization of ‘nation as narration’. The metanarratives of the two spaces functioned as discursive tools for the legitimation of particular forms of exclusions, elisions and distortions. As discursive and polemical literary tools, these discourses always found sustenance and perpetuation in the existence of a different other. In other words, these constructed narratives sought to use difference as a basis for scapegoating and naturalizing racial, economic, political and resource asymmetries in the Rhodesian and Zimbabwean spaces. Power was wielded not in the service of, but against, the majority who are marginalized. This study explores John Eppel’s writings on the constructions of both Rhodesia and Zimbabwe as ideological spaces for the legitimation of power based on class, race and politics. I argue that Eppel’s selected writings are a literary intervention that proffers a satirically dissident critique of the foundational myths, symbols and narratives of Rhodesian and Zimbabwean space-time. The study argues that Eppel offers literary resistance to unproblematized identity compositions predicated on socially constructed but skewed categories that limit the contours of belonging and citizenship. The Rhodesian space is viewed as a palimpsest upon which is overwritten the Zimbabwean patriotic discourse that also authorize racism, marginalization, power abuse and other forms of exclusion. In examining Eppel’s satiric disruption of both spaces, I use certain strands of the Postcolonial Theory that problematize issues of nation, identity, race, tribe and power. Its usefulness lies in its rejection of fixities, of absolutes and in its general counter-hegemonic thrust. I therefore invoke the theorizations of Frantz Fanon, Homi Bhabha, Maria Lara, Paul Gilroy, Mikhail Bakhtin and Benita Parry. These form the theoretical base with which the study confronts Eppel’s writings on Rhodesia and Zimbabwe. The focal texts used are: Absent: The English Teacher (2009), selected short stories in White Man Crawling (2007) and The Caruso of Colleen Bawn (2004), The Holy Innocents (2002), Hatchings (2006), selected poems from Spoils of War (1989), Songs my Country Taught me: Selected Poems 1965-2005(2005) and D.G.G.Berry’s The Great North Road (1992). I conclude by arguing that Eppel creates a fictional life-world where race, origin, politics, class and culture are figured as polarizing identity markers that should be re-negotiated and even transcended in order to materialize a more inclusive multicultural society. To the extent that both the colonial and post-independence eras cross-fertilize each other in terms of occlusions, creating hegemonic narratives, resort to race, violence, silencing and erasure of certain subjectivities, Eppel advocates the ‘hatching’ of a new national, moral and inclusive ethos that supersedes the claustrophobia of both spaces. / English Studies / D. Litt. et Phil.(English)

This study seeks to understand colonial narratives of Zimbabwe 1860-1900 as a locus of transgression and opposition. I investigate the range and complexity of discourses within the imperial project open to both European male and female writers, their shifts over time or within one or more texts. Narratives of the explorer, missionary, hunter and soldier are examined as a literary genre in which attempts were made to re-imagine the Western self through an encounter with Africans. I consider how positions from which the European in the colonies could speak and write were reformulated. This study will employ Foucauldian discourse theory in an analysis of the British 'civilizing mission' in Central Southern Africa. The Introduction examines existing historical and theoretical approaches in this field and argues for a particular use of Foucualt's insights and vocabulary. Chapter One is concerned with the way European explorers constituted notions of 'civilized nations' in Europe and 'primitive tribes' in Africa . I then question how this process of division and exclusion was reinforced by the mythography of an EI Dorado in the African interior. In Chapter Two I consider how Colonial Man was constituted in different ways by Victorian discourses of adventure, travel and conquest. I also attempt to account for the effects that followed the activation, within colonial culture, of structures of exclusion and division based on race or class. Chapter Three focuses on the economic dimension of a dissident LMS missionary and the sustained resistance to Western philanthropy among the Ndebele. I also examine the later Mashonaland mission where the missionary-administrator became instrumental in the division and control of Africans. In the final chapter I consider discursive formations which sought to constrain African resistance during the 1896-7 Chimurenga and the institutionalization of a settler order in the post-Chimurenga era. / Thesis (Ph.D.)-University of Natal, Durban, 1998.