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Narratives
of Progress: Zimbabwean Historiography - 'Progress' in Zimbabwe
Conference
Amanda
Atwood, Kubatana.net
November 08, 2010
'Progress' in
Zimbabwe Conference index
page
View audio file details
Speaker:
Ian Phimister
Discussants: Muchaparara Musemwa, Pathisa Nyathi
Ian Phimister
opened the discussion asking how have notions of progress played
out in Zimbabwean historiography, and how do we go forward with
those. He pointed out that in southern Africa national liberation
is perceived as the just and historically necessary conclusion of
the struggle between The People and the forces of racism and colonialism.
The implications of this are two fold: That liberation movements
are progressive, and their coming to power represents the end of
a process. So for them to be overthrown would mark a counter-revolutionary
victory for the forces of reaction. It is this assumption that underpins
patriotic history.
Listen
In Zimbabwe,
this interpretation attitude puts Zanu PF as the alpha and omega
of Zimbabwe's past, present and future. Its key components
are land and race, bounded by loyalty to the liberation movement,
and its reassertion of soverinty against external interference,
especially where this external interference has taken the form of
selective Western support for human rights. Zimbabwean history,
in this version, is reduced to a succession of Chimurengas in which
the present dispensation is the legitimate heir to Nehanda and Kagvui.
Listen
Responding to
Phimister, Muchaparara Musemwa observed that over the past two decades,
Zimbabwean historiography has continued to grow - whether
patriotic or radical. He said the growth has been bolstered by Zimbabwean
born historians who critically address Zimbabwean nationalist history.
But we have hardly seen the development of a radical paradigm as
distinct from a liberal and Africanist agenda - there is no
guiding paradigm. Sharing his work particularly looking at water
resources in Bulawayo, Musemwa spoke of the need for an environmental
history that looks at the interaction of the human and natural environment,
and the human impact on the environment. Understanding environmental
history, he argued, would make us better able to understand current
social and environmental issues such as cholera, water shortages,
power shortages, and livelihoods issues.
In his response,
Munyaradzi Nyakudya asked how does curriculum, the teaching of history,
determine what history gets written next generation around. He observed
that history students at the tertiary level have to take a "national
and strategic studies" module. Cynically, students assume
it is meant to indoctrinate them, so there is an assumption that
teaching history in university is all "patriotism."
This lowers the incentive for more radical and liberal young thinkers
to want to study history within Zimbabwean universities. But, he
noted, in the colonial period, Zimbabwe had a racist settler history
but somehow nationalist historiography still developed. So if lecturers
are critical and provoke independent thought, independent history
will still be written.
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