Healing the Wounds of Gukurahundi in Zimbabwe


Book Description

This book is based on a participatory action research project carried out with a group of former Zimbabwe People's revolutionary Army (ZPRA) which was the armed wing of the Zimbabwe African People's Union (ZAPU) which was led by the late Joshua Nkomo. ZPRA was the primary target of Gukurahundi, a pogrom by the Mugabe government which left an estimated 20 000 civilians dead and countless others tortured in the early 1980s in Matebeleland, Zimbabwe. It has been almost 30 years since the violence ended, but there has never been an official healing and reconciliation programme or truth commission into the atrocities. The government chose the path of amnesia by granting a blanket amnesty to all involved. The regime has enforced a culture of silence over the event through repression and intimidation. The book is a culmination of a two year journey, by the group and the author, of an exploration of group-based self-healing approaches to the pain caused by the violence of Gukurahundi.




National Healing, Integration and Reconciliation in Zimbabwe


Book Description

This book brings together scholars from diverse backgrounds to provide interdisciplinary perspectives on national healing, integration, and reconciliation in Zimbabwe. Taking into account the complex nature of healing across moral, political, economic, cultural, psychological, and spiritual dimensions of communities and the nation, the chapters discuss approaches, disparities, tensions, and solutions to healing and reconciliation within a multidisciplinary framework. Arguing that Zimbabwe’s development agenda is severely compromised by the dominance of violence and militancy, the contributors analyse the challenges, possibilities and opportunities for national healing. This book will be of interest to scholars of African studies, conflict and reconciliation, and development studies.




Political Messaging in Music and Entertainment Spaces across the Globe. Volume 1.


Book Description

'Political Messaging in Music and Entertainment Spaces across the Globe' uniquely expands the frontiers of political communication by simultaneously focusing on content (political messaging) and platform (music and entertainment). As a compendium of valuable research work, it provides rich insights into the construction of political messages and their dissemination outside of the traditional and mainstream structural, process and behavioral research focus in the discipline. Researchers, teachers, students and other interested parties in political communication, political science, journalism and mass communication, sociology, music, languages, linguistics and the performing arts, communication studies, law and history, will find this book refreshingly handy in their inquiry. Furthermore, this book was conceptualized from a globalist purview and offers readers practical insights into how political messaging through music and entertainment spaces actually work across nation-states, regions and continents. Its authenticity is also further enhanced by the fact that most chapter contributors are scholars who are natives of their areas of study, and who painstakingly situate their work in appropriate historical contexts.




National Accountability for International Crimes in Africa


Book Description

This book critically examines the issues pertaining to the Rome Statute’s complementarity principle. The focus lies on the primacy of African states to prosecute alleged perpetrators of international crimes in their respective jurisdictions. The chapters explore states’ international and domestic obligations to hold perpetrators of international crimes to account before the national courts, and demonstrate the complexity of enforcing national accountability of alleged perpetrators of international crimes while also ensuring that post-conflict African states achieve national healing, reconciliation, and sustainable peace. The contributions reject impunity for international crimes whilst also considering these complexities. Emphasis further lies on the meaning of accountability in the context of the politics of selective international criminal justice for crimes committed before the establishment of the International Criminal Court.




The Stone Virgins


Book Description

Winner of the Macmillan Prize for African Adult Fiction An uncompromising novel by one of Africa's premiere writers, detailing the horrors of civil war in luminous, haunting prose In 1980, after decades of guerilla war against colonial rule, Rhodesia earned its hard-fought-for independence from Britain. Less than two years thereafter when Mugabe rose to power in the new Zimbabwe, it signaled the begining of brutal civil unrest that would last nearly a half decade more. With The Stone Virgins Yvonne Vera examines the dissident movement from the perspective of two sisters living in a small township outside of Bulawayo. In a portrait painted in successive impressions of life before and after the liberation, Vera explores the quest for dignity and a centered existence against a backdrop of unimaginable violence; the twin instincts of survival and love; the rival pulls of township and city life; and mankind's capacity for terror, beauty, and sacrifice. One sister will find a reason for hope. One will not make it through alive. Weaving historical fact within a story of grand passions and striking endurance, Vera has gifted us with a powerful and provocative testament to the resilience of the Zimbabwean people.




Civil Society and Peacebuilding in Sub-Saharan Africa in the Anthropocene


Book Description

This book examines civil society's peacebuilding role in sub-Saharan Africa in the context of climate change and the pursuit of environmental peace and justice in the Anthropocene. Five main research themes emerge from its 20 chapters: · The roles of environmental peacemaking, environmental justice, ecological education and eco-ethics in helping to mitigate the impacts of climate change · Peacebuilding by CSOs after violent conflicts, with particular reference to accountability, reconciliation and healing · CSO involvement in democratic processes and political transition after violent conflicts · Relationships between local CSOs and their foreign funders and the interactions between CSOs and the African Union's peace and security architecture. · The particular role of faith-based CSOs The book underlines the centrality of dialogue to African peacebuilding and the indigenous wisdom and philosophies on which it is based. Such wisdom will be a key resource in confronting the existential challenges of the Anthropocene. The book will be a significant resource for researchers, academics and policymakers concerned with the challenge of climate change, its interactions with armed conflict and the peacebuilding role of CSOs. · This pathbreaking book shows why peacebuilding analysis and efforts need to be urgently re-oriented towards the existential challenges of environmental peace and justice. · It explains the emerging conceptual frameworks which are needed for this new role. · It explains the critical role that CSOs - local and international - will play in implementing this new peacebuilding approach, with particular reference to sub- Saharan Africa.




The Idea of Matabeleland in Digital Spaces


Book Description

The Idea of Matabeleland in Digital Spaces: Genealogies, Discourses, and Epistemic Struggles establishes a debate and dialogue between critical and post-/de-colonial approaches in the study of subalternity in online media representations. Editors Khanyile Mlotshwa and Mphathisi Ndlovu curate chapters that deal specifically with the intersectional subalternity of Matabeleland, a political and geographical region in the Southwest part of Zimbabwe comprising of three provinces: Matabeleland South, Matabeleland North, and Bulawayo metropolitan province. The subalternity of this region emerges in politics and popular culture, including media, as intersectional in terms of ethnicity, region, gender, class, and beyond. This book argues that in online spaces the liberatory politics of Matabeleland emerges as trapped in coloniality.




The Routledge International Handbook of Posttraumatic Growth


Book Description

The Routledge International Handbook of Posttraumatic Growth offers a rich covering of approaches to different traumatic and stressful experiences in relation to posttraumatic growth (PTG). This handbook explores the benefits that individuals, couples, families, organizations, and communities can experience following the struggle with highly stressful and potentially traumatic events. Split into seven parts and written by a diverse international team of multidisciplinary contributors who provide a comprehensive overview of PTG, topics include religious and spiritual aspects of PTG, gender in PTG, PTG in LGBTQ+, perinatal bereavement, and more. The Routledge International Handbook of Posttraumatic Growth represents an essential resource for students, researchers, and professionals, including social workers, psychologists, nurses, mental health counselors, and psychiatrists. Chapter 1 of this book is freely available as a downloadable Open Access PDF at http://www.taylorfrancis.com under a Creative Commons [Attribution-Non Commercial-No Derivatives (CC-BY-NC-ND)] 4.0 license




Justice, Mercy, and Well-Being


Book Description

This collection of essays examines how God's justice and mercy intersect in the lives of individuals and their communities, with a view to the establishment of personal and social well-being in the world. The authors, drawn from England and Australia, approach the theme from a variety of methodological and interdisciplinary perspectives. Theological, exegetical, historical, healthcare, moral, and visual arts approaches are brought to bear in an investigation relevant for the identity and mission of the church in a world characterized by cycles of revenge, the perpetration of injustice, and the marginalization and persecution of various ethnic groups. The practical outcome of these studies has wide-ranging relevance for our attitudes toward indigenous peoples, the well-being of single and married people, healthcare throughout the ages, the spiritual care of people (including those suffering dementia), the personal experience of trauma, issues of moral judgement, and the abiding value of the creative arts.




Zimbabwean Communities in Britain


Book Description

This book examines why Zimbabwean immigrants in Britain should be viewed as a product of ethno-racial identities and prejudices developed and nurtured during the colonial and post-colonial phases of Zimbabwe’s history. In the absence of shared historic socio-economic or cultural commonalities, the book will tackle the key question: ‘Are Zimbabweans in Britain demarcated by race and ethnicity an imagined community?’ Through an analysis of personal interviews, and secondary and primary sources, it identifies and engages historical experiences that had been instrumental in constructing diasporic identities and integration processes of Zimbabwean immigrants. With most literature tending to create perceptions that Zimbabwean immigrants are a monolithic community of Blacks, the book’s comparative analysis of Blacks, Whites, Coloureds and Asians unveils a multi-racial community fragmented by historic racial and ethnic allegiances and prejudices. It is essential reading for scholars and researchers interested in migration, African Diaspora, and colonial and post-colonial studies.