Abstract
This collection surveys the theatre produced in Zimbabwe from the last days of colonialism in the 1970s right up to 2009 when the country’s post-independence political and economic crisis, which had started in November 1997, had slowed down significantly. The slowdown followed the inauguration of a Southern Africa Development Community (SADC) brokered Government of National Unity (GNU) that brought together the then ruling ZANU PF party (under the late Robert Mugabe) and its chief post-independence political adversary, the Movement for Democratic Change (MDC) under the late Morgan Tsvangirai. We use the establishment of the GNU of 2009 as a cut-off point for this collection not least because the political and economic turmoil that characterised the colonial and postcolonial Zimbabwean state became highly enmeshed with the nature and extent of the country’s theatre and cultural production as alluded to in the title of our edited collection.
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Notes
- 1.
The Union of South Africa was formed on 31 May 1910 unifying different dominions that had emerged out of the Anglo-Boer conflict, namely the Cape Colony, the Natal Colony, the Transvaal, and the Orange River Colony. It included the territories that were formerly the Orange Free State. It was a self-governing dominion of the British Empire and it seemed logical that another dominion under the same empire, Southern Rhodesia, become part of the Union, but that failed in 1922. The Union was dissolved after the 1961 constitution which formed the Republic of South Africa.
- 2.
The exact number of people killed has not been scientifically verified and the estimates depend on which source one is using. According to Eliakim Sibanda (2005), Nkomo put the figure at 3000, church officials at about 1500 and the CCJP report (1997) at 3750. Eliakim Sibanda is content with the average between 3000 and 10,000.
- 3.
Samuel Ravengai is co-author of this introduction and two other chapters in this collection.
- 4.
Some of Stephen Chifunyise’s plays include the following: Not for sale (1984), Medicine for love (1984), When Ben came back (1984), Intimate affairs (2008), Lovers, friends and money (2008). Tsitsi Dangarebga’s only known play is She no longer weeps (1987). Ben Sibenke wrote My uncle Grey Bhonzo (1982) Dr Madzuma and the vipers (n.d) and Chidembo Chanhuwa/The polecat stunk (n.d). Walter Muparutsa did not write any known play, but adapted Shona novels to theatre with Mbare based Chiedza Theatre Company.
- 5.
Owen Seda is co-author of this introduction and two chapters in the collection.
- 6.
The reflective approach is sometimes called mimetic for the reason that meaning is assumed to lie in the object, person, idea, or event in the real world. Language, according to this paradigm, works as a mirror to reflect or imitate the truth that already exists (see Hall 1996, p. 24).
- 7.
The intentional approach holds that it is the speaker or author who imposes their meaning on the object, event, idea or person through their choice of language (see Hall 1996, p. 25).
- 8.
The dissidents numbered not more than 2000 and by the time of the amnesty in 1988, only 122 dissidents surrendered to the state.
- 9.
Super ZAPU (with no allegiance to ZAPU) was formed by apartheid South Africa from disgruntled elements of ZIPRA and former black Rhodesian soldiers as well as refugees from Dukwe camp in Botswana to fight on behalf of South Africa in Zimbabwe. They were retrained and supplied by South Africa to kill civilians and engage ANC linked uMkhonto weSizwe (MK) soldiers who used Matabeleland as a transit space to fight in South Africa (see Sibanda 2005, p. 261).
- 10.
The first spring rains that wash away the chuff and dirt just before summer begins. Metaphorically, therefore the operation was to clean up the dirt (political malcontents, ‘dissidents’).
- 11.
Since its founding in 1999, the MDC party has broken into several factions that have maintained the same name with the leader’s initial at the end. The party referred to in this collection is the main one formerly headed by Morgan Tsvangirai while he was alive and Nelson Chamisa after the former’s death.
- 12.
A Gramscian term which he uses to distinguish a group of intellectuals produced by the education system of the dominant polity. The group grows organically within the dominant ruling class and when fully formed performs the intellectual work of the ruling class.
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Ravengai, S., Seda, O. (2021). Introduction: Contested Forms, Spaces and the Politics of Representation in Zimbabwean Theatre—A Historical Perspective. In: Ravengai, S., Seda, O. (eds) Theatre from Rhodesia to Zimbabwe. Contemporary Performance InterActions. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-74594-3_1
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