Overview

Violence has powerfully shaped the history of Matabeleland from the 1890s to the 1980s, and silence has surrounded the history of this region of Zimbabwe, excluding it from national memory. This text aims to break the silence and redress the imbalance of Zimbabwe's national history. North America: Heinemann; Zimbabwe: Weaver Press

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Reviews

'Anyone who wants to understand Zimbabwe's current path to authoritarian rule would do well to begin with this richly-layered and thought-provoking study.' - Shula Marks in The English Historical Review '... a powerful indictment of the present through a longer historical lens.' - David Simon in LUCAS Bulletin '... should be compulsory reading for anybody wishing to begin or end an insurgency war.' - Jan-Bart Gewald in African Studies Review '... an incisive, captivating, lucid and in-depth investigation of the relationships between anti-colonial resistance, nationalism, ethnicity and religion... This is a people's book - one that not only the people of Nkayi and Lupane will identify proudly with, but indeed all the people of Zimbabwe and the continent at large. It is a publication that should grace the bookshelves of discerning scholars of Africa and her history.' - Pathisa Nyathi in African Affairs 'This is a complex and fascinating book...revisionist history in the best sense of the term - challenging the orthodox view of an established historiography by bringing to light new data and subjecting it to fresh interpretation...the best account yet available of Zimbabwe's dreadful violence in the 1980s, and should be essential reading for all those interested in understanding the nature of the post-colony in Africa...In understanding violence, detail and context matter; and while social scientists may be frustrated that the authors of Violence and Memory have largely ignored social theories of violence, they will surely welcome the emphasis upon events and their gestation. This is an important book that should be widely read.' - David M. Anderson in Journal of Modern African Studies 'Just as Ranger helped pioneer modern Zimbabwean historiography, he and his co-authors, Jocelyn Alexander and JoAnn McGregor, blaze a new trail by writing this sensitive and detailed history of Matabeleland, a region long marginalized in Zimbabwean scholarship. Violence and Memory stands out as one of the very few insightful scholarly studies that analyze the history of this usually neglected part of the country... 'Yet, as Violence and Memory so cogently shows, not only does Matabeleland have a history which matters , but its people's colonial and post-colonial experiences and their coping strategies testify to the resilience of the human spirit under very difficult circumstances, which were characterized by persistent state-perpetrated violence. While the broad themes that the book deals with, namely anti-colonial resistance, nationalism, religion, the guerrilla war and the post-independence dispensation, are common to Zimbabwean historiography, the authors manage with great skill to convey the uniqueness and peculiarity of the Shangani historical experience and to show how the complex interplay of national policies and local realities produced a distinct ethnic identity and nationalism, and shaped the people's collective memory... 'Violence and Memory is a path-breaking study, which draws on an impressively wide array of oral, archival and secondary sources to unravel the history of Shangani and analyze important issues hitherto left unstudied...The book's additional strength lies in the fact that despite its geographically narrow focus on Shangani, it manages to contribute to on-going discourses on questions of ethnicity and identity, warfare and violence, and the nature of the African crisis , among other issues. 'Both the authors and publishers should be complimented for producing a book which is presented in a style and language that are easily accessible to both the specialist and the lay reader, which is well illustrated, professionally edited and aesthetically packaged and which makes an invaluable contribution to African studies. Violence and Memory is highly recommended to Africans and Africanist scholars and anyone interested in understanding the forces that shaped Zimbabwe's historical development and the roots of Zimbabwe's present condition.' - Alois S. Mlambo in Journal of African History 'Cette histoire sociale de deux districts de la province du Matabeleland North - Nkayi et Lupane - qui constituaient avant l'independance lat reserve tribale de Shangani, est doublement bienvenue. D'une part, comme la soulignent les auteurs, l'histoire du Matabeleland a ete relativement negligee en comparaison avec d'autres regions du Zimbabwe, de meme que la contribution a l'emancipation nationale de la Zimbabwe African People's Union (Zapu) de J. Nkomo a ete occultee par une histoire officielle ecrite par et au benefice de la Zimbabwe African National Union (Zanu-PF) de R. Mugabe. D'autre part, ce travail rigoreux et riche, combinant les competences d'historiens et de geographes, articulant sources orales et ecrites, atteste la qualite eminente de la nouvelle generation des chercheurs travailant sur ce pays d'Afrique australe.' - Daniel Compagnon in Politique Africaine

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