What is it about?
Self-censorship is a natural impulse when writing about contentious issues like the Zimbabwean government's Gukurahundi (Fifth Brigade) atrocities against thousands of innocent civilians in the Matabeleland and the Midlands provinces of Zimbabwe in the 1980s. It compromises accurate representation of human rights, distorts historical memories of painful pasts and enables the offenders to avoid accountability. Admittedly, the political circumstances of the period dictated that the personal safety of the author and truth speaking should have a reasonable balance, and the question as to the extent to which Vera achieved this kind of balance is the one this article seeks to answer.
Featured Image
Why is it important?
I argue that historical novels like The Stone Virgins, while being essentially products of memory and artistic creativity, should be subjected to the test of authenticity when the subjects they deal with involve the human rights of victims and their families, and compete with official versions of truth whose intent is to obfuscate on facts which might, when exposed, lead to accountability and restorative justice. This article's uniqueness is in its refocusing of scholarly analysis on human rights, justice and the need to confront ugly pasts in a manner that is sensitive to the feelings of the victims.
Perspectives
I believe that this article enables the reader to rethink the generally held assumptions about Gukurahundi which official history has fostered on the memorialization of the atrocities for the purpose of justifying illegal state actions and avoiding accountability. The article also uses recently published South African documents to connect the atrocities to global political forces involving the big powers, regional actors like apartheid South Africa and local actors acting in unison with capitalist powers( in their fight with the Soviet Union). It is thus, a refreshingly revealing analysis of local and global politics impacting on innocent civilians, or political canon fodder.
lucas mafu
University of Zululand
Read the Original
This page is a summary of: Reflections on the Limitations Imposed by the Zimbabwean State's Essentialist Interpretation of Ethnicity, Nationality, and Identity on Yvonne Vera's Representation of Human Rights in The Stone Virgins
, Studies in Ethnicity and Nationalism, October 2017, Wiley,
DOI: 10.1111/sena.12247.
You can read the full text:
Contributors
The following have contributed to this page
