White Narratives: The depiction of post-2000 land invasions in Zimbabwe

By Irikidzayi Manase

The post-2000 period in Zimbabwe saw the launch of a fast track land reform programme, resulting in a flurry of accounts from white Zimbabweans about how they saw the land, the land invasions, and their own sense of belonging and identity. In White Narratives, Irikidzayi Manase engages with this fervent output of texts seeking definition of experiences, conflicts and ambiguities arising from the land invasions. He takes us through his study of texts selected from the memoirs, fictional and non-fictional accounts of white farmers and other displaced white narrators on the post-2000 Zimbabwe land invasions, scrutinising divisions between white and black in terms of both current and historical ideology, society and spatial relationships. He examines how the revisionist politics of the Zimbabwean government influenced the politics of identities and race categories during the period 2000 2008, and posits some solutions to the contestations for land and belonging.

• Language: English
• Publisher: NISC (Pty) Ltd
• Release date: Dec 29, 2016
• ISBN: 9781920033484

Irikidzayi Manase

Irikidzayi Manase teaches in the Department of English at the University of the Free State, Bloemfontein Campus, South Africa. His areas of research fall within the broader area of literary cultural geographic studies of South Africa, Zimbabwe, Southern Africa and Africa. He has read papers at both local and international conferences and published on: imaginaries about and urban youth cultures of Johannesburg, Harare and South Africa's Limpopo province; the human condition and mapping of spaces in South African science fiction and speculative literature; transnational African migrant experiences; and literatures about the constitution of senses of self and belonging in relation to the land issue and crisis conditions in post-2000 Zimbabwe.