White Narratives: The Depiction of Post-2000 Land Invasions in Zimbabwe by Irikidzayi Manase

Author:Irikidzayi Manase [Manase, Irikidzayi]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: African, Political Science, World
ISBN: 9781868888252
Google: rAJHEAAAQBAJ
Goodreads: 35254421
Publisher: Unisa Press
Published: 2016-07-19T00:00:00+00:00

Different ‘Consciousnesses’ and Multiple Perspectives on the Land

The different views about and experiences faced during the post-2000 land invasions are linked to the social class, racial and historical divisions that exist in the colonial and post-independent Zimbabwe under focus in the text. Lamb’s narrative style metaphorically indicates the divided worlds that existed and how they lead to the subsequent development of different social and historical consciousness of land in both colonial and post-independent Zimbabwe. The chapters are structured in a narrative continuum that begins at ‘Zhakata’s Krall, 1970’ and ends at ‘Kendor Farm, August 2002’. This indicates the social and spatial temporality covering the colonial period in the 1970s up to the post-colonial period and specifically the year 2002, when most commercial white farms, including Nigel’s Kendor Farm, were invaded and occupied by war veterans. The separated world, owing to racial, class and colonial geographic boundaries that characterise the represented colonial time space is illustrated from the outset in the novel. The protagonists are described as occupying different social and historical spaces as noted in the first two chapters. The experiences during the 1970s are represented as divided into African experiences at ‘Zhakata’s kraal’ (Chapter 1) and white experiences at ‘Riversdale Farm, Headlands, 1971’ (Chapter 2). These divisions are stylistically imprinted in the novel from the outset and metaphorically illustrate the historical and social antecedents of the multiple and opposing perspectives about land in this Zimbabwe. They also, to a larger extent confirm those binary oppositions in existence in colonial Zimbabwe, such that when the writer continues to write in such Manichean style, she fails to destabilise this relational linkage between the black and white Zimbabwean worlds, which has been historically skewed in favour of white Rhodesians and later on white Zimbabweans.

The life experiences of both Aqui and Nigel are also described as divided owing to the impact of the colonially prescribed social and historical boundaries. The colonial space, as noted by Fanon (1963), Noyes (1992) and Kalaora (2011) is a dominated one and divided into various opposing geographical and ideological boundaries. The divisions prevented the colonised subject’s attempt to cross over to the other spaces and as a result they could not easily escape from their marginalised spaces. These geographical and ideological boundaries are represented by nodes that include Riversdale, the white commercial farms, where Nigel grows up, and cities, including Umtali and Salisbury, where Nigel goes for his primary and high school education. Furthermore, the nodes were circumscribed from the black communal rural areas and townships in colonial Rhodesia. The main protagonists’ narratives begin with an outline of this past socio-spatial fragmentation. This therefore implies that the antecedents of the opposing perceptions of the land can best be understood by looking back to Zimbabwe’s history and the associated geographical and socio-economic separations.

The effects of these colonially established social and spatial divisions are still felt during the post-independence period, as the novel’s narrative style proves. Freeman (2005:306–307) examines the opposing political and intellectual opinions focusing on the post-2000 land

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