Political Aesthetics,the Third Chimurenga,and the ZANU-PF Mobilization in Shurugwi District of Zimbabwe

Introduction

The following quote describes a typical political rally in the Shurugwi district of Zimbabwe during the years 2000 to 2008:

Everybody is expected to be at the venue at least two hours before the arrival of the guest of honour. This is to ensure that all are settled and that the stage is warmed for the guest. We sing our party songs. These are usually derived from the Second Chimurenga. They also depict the current struggle for land in the Third Chimurenga. We also do dance and dramas as part of the entertainment. These keep the morale high. We also teach our people the history of our struggle against imperialism. School children, women and men do these. Everyone is free to do it. This is the time to rehearse the slogans, and to gather people’s grievances to be conveyed to the leaders of the party. When the guest arrives we also sing and dance to welcome them. Some of the dignitaries also love to participate and this creates an atmosphere of joy and camaraderie. There are also entertainment breaks in between the speeches. (Interview, 16 June 2010)

This quote describes the general atmosphere at a Zimbabwe African National Union – Patriotic Front (ZANU-PF) political rally in the Shurugwi District. In these rallies, political education and the articulation of party policies take place at the same time and are interposed with singing, dancing, dramas, poetry and other forms of entertainment. Throughout these performances people make use of drums (ngoma), whistles, magagada, hosho and horns, among other instruments, to add flavour to the forms of entertainment. The purpose of these various activities as indicated in the interview above varies: ranging from educating the people at these rallies about the ruling party’s ideology and policies, praising the party leadership, providing political entertainment, filling interludes in the programmes, welcoming guests and new-comers, introducing speakers, and keeping the people occupied before the guests arrive. Generally speaking, these activities are a crucial element of the rallies.

In this article, which draws upon ethnographic research carried out in the Shurugwi district of Zimbabwe, the nature of women’s agency in political violence is examined as well as the political aesthetics of popular mobilization in Zimbabwe. The focus of this article is primarily on the political rallies of the ZANU-PF (which has been the ruling party in Zimbabwe since independence in 1980) which took place during the period of the controversial Third Chimurenga (Chimurenga is a Shona word meaning liberation struggle) (Mlambo, 2010, pp. 43, 63 and 66) between the years 2000 and 2008. During this period of time, performances were deployed as an integral component of ZANU-PF’s coercive mobilization of popular support. The larger question that the article addresses is: what impact was generated by these rallies? The argument is advanced that the impact was a particular “distribution of the sensible” (Ranciere, 2006, p. 4) in which the violence associated with liberation (Chimurenga) and the history of the ZANU-PF was celebrated and promoted against the political opposition. It is argued that the particular political aesthetics associated with these political rallies in essence democratized the commission of violence against the opposition.

The article begins by tracing the genealogy of political aesthetics in Zimbabwe and other parts of Africa. The primary focus is on the period of the Second Chimurenga (the struggle for national liberation) when the ZANU-PF introduced its own particular style of political aesthetics. But the article first traces the genealogy of political aesthetics in Zimbabwe and other parts of Africa to precolonial times when the people used songs and dances to confront the abuses of power by their rulers. This historical account makes it possible to see how political aesthetics in Zimbabwe have evolved since the precolonial period. Focusing on the political aesthetics of the Second Chimurenga then makes it possible to see the continuities with the past and also how the political aesthetics of the past have been adulterated for contemporary political goals. The second section of the article is focused on the political aesthetics of the ZANU-PF mobilization of popular support during the Third Chimurenga. The third section of the article discusses the importance of the patronage system in mobilizing ordinary villagers to participate in the ZANU-PF rallies, which contributed to the violation of the rights and dignity of those who opposed the ZANU-PF during this controversial period.

Political Aesthetics: The Theoretical Frame

Working with the concept of “productive contradiction” in the context of the relationship between aesthetics and politics (Rockhill, 2011, p. 28), Ranciere provides a useful framework for examining this relationship. In Ranciere’s conceptualization,

politics […] is fundamentally an aesthetic affair – and vice versa – since it is, above all, a matter of establishing and modifying a sensory framework distinguishing the visible from the invisible, the sayable from the unsayable, the audible from the inaudible, the possible from the impossible. (ibid.)

In fact, Ranciere (2006, p. 13) contends: “[t]here is… an aesthetics at the core of politics… [and this aesthetics can be understood] as the system of a priori forms of determining what presents itself to sense experience.”

Thus, through what Ranciere calls the distribution of the sensible, politics like aesthetics, attempts to enforce particular ways of “seeing, feeling, acting, speaking, and being in the world with one another” (Porter, 2007, p. 17) and “Ranciere suggests that art or aesthetic practices… can be political to the extent that they play a key function in this distribution of the sensible” (ibid.). In this regard, “politics happens not only through the disruption of a certain aesthetic organization of sense experience but through the eruption of a distinct aesthetics” (Wolfe, n.d.).

In this article, the focus on political aesthetics is used to reveal how certain “works of art or performances are involved in politics” (Ranciere, 2006, p. 14), and to reveal how political aesthetics resulted in the engendering of a certain kind of political affect and emotive nationalism which were intended to retain the ZANU-PF party in power. By focusing on the performances at ZANU-PF rallies during the Third Chimurenga, this article explores how the use of political aesthetics helped to fashion not only the “sayable and determine the relationship between seeing, hearing, doing making, and thinking” (ibid., p. 4), but also to delineate those who the ZANU-PF ideology identified as belonging to, were the enemies of, and foreign to Zimbabwean society. In addition, this article explores how this use of political aesthetics contributed to a culture of violence during the Third Chimurenga.

Tracking the Genealogy of Political Aesthetics in Zimbabwe

In their work Power and the Praise Poem, Vail and White (1991) trace the history and illuminate the positive functions of praise poetry among the people in precolonial and colonial Southern Africa. According to Vail and White, besides informing the chiefs and colonial work foremen of their grievances, the poetry also served to critique these leaders’ decisions.

In a similar way to how poetry was used as critical commentary from below to check the abuses of rulers in Southern Africa, praise poetry called Oriki was used in precolonial Yoruba society in West Africa (Barber, 1999). According to Bakhtin (1984), in European history bawdy humour and a carnival tradition also permitted commoners to offer a relatively benign criticism of the church and the state. However, it should be noted that Bakhtin’s work has been severely criticized by Mbembe (1992) for its lack of relevance to post-colonial Africa. Mbembe contends that the postcolonial state has arrogated the grotesque to itself to affirm its power. At any rate, in the autocratic polities of the precolonial past, it appears that poetry was used to contest the difficulties experienced by the people, advance their grievances and to limit the abuse of authority by their rulers. From the above, we can deduce that the practice of power in the precolonial era was not rigidly top to bottom and at times it operated from different locations, even from below (Foucault, 1978, pp. 93–94).

Similarly, women could also perform dances to register complaints against abusive husbands or their relatives. In this regard, performances were useful for claiming an improvement in their conditions and for contesting domestic repression. Among the Shona these performances were done during collective labour times called nhimbe or close to the dare, which was the meeting place for men (Schmidt, 1992, pp. 20–21) in order to receive more attention. In the patriarchal precolonial polities of what is today Zimbabwe, songs were the most common and effective way that women used to draw community attention to the abuses committed against them.

In this regard, it is important to note that the elders of Shurugwi corroborated that this use of songs was utilized by precolonial women to confront abusive marital, family or societal injustices. For example, the following excerpt from an interview (April 2010) conducted in Shurugwi revealed that:

Women who were in abusive marriages sang songs to make their situations public. It was a report to the clan elders about their plight. Remember women were married by the community elders for their sons, and it remained the duty of the elders to ensure that these women were protected. Usually, such women would wait for an occasion that drew the most attendances and sing their complaint. Other women would join in the singing to shame the abusive man. Once the ceremony for which people had gathered passed the elders would sit the abuser down, and implore him to respect the wife and them, which in most cases reduced the abuse.

This interview, besides highlighting the importance of songs in redressing abuse also shows the importance of community mediation in resolving family disputes and in helping to protect women. Also this interview reveals how women used the songs to enlist the solidarity of other women to oppose their abuse.

Our research also found that men in precolonial Shurugwi also used poetry to complain to their in-laws in cases where there were delays in the handing over of new brides or excessive lobola (bride price) demands. These men would wake up very early in the morning, go out of their sleeping hut, and sing songs about their complaints while playing a traditional form of guitar chipendani. After such “performances” the in-laws would often gather together and initiate the process of handing over the bride.

Thus, songs were important tools used by those in weak positions to mediate unequal power relationships. They were used to convey grievances and to communicate with those who exercised various forms of power. They were also used to speed up and correct social processes such as marriages (Finnegan, 1992, pp. 214–224). And they were used to press for better living conditions or to contest autocratic leadership (Pandya, 1988, pp. 133–143).

However, the use of songs was just one of the methods that Shona-speaking women utilized to confront abuse. In some instances women used the naming of children and dogs to highlight their undesirable conditions. In fact, there were certain names used by the Shona people that registered their tribulations such as husband abuse, unfair family or societal treatment, times of plagues, and their displeasure with their rulers (Schmidt, 1992, 19–21). In addition, there were other acknowledged channels that safeguarded women from victimization (Beach, 1980, p. 93). In fact, in the Shona governing code called Ishe Vanhu a ruler’s worth was measured by the respect he commanded from his subjects and the extent to which he ensured the people’s rights were respected. Failure to respond to the demands of their subjects could result in the subjects switching allegiance, emigrating, rulers being forced to drink poison (muteyo) or various forms of censure (ibid., p. 94; Bennett, 1993, p. 32; Quashigar, 1999, p. 43). Furthermore, the fear of the wrath of the ancestors plus the checks provided by spirit mediums helped to contain the abuse of power by rulers in the precolonial Shona states (Mudenge, 1988, p. 65).

The Second Chimurenga and the Transformation of Political Aesthetics

During the Second Chimurenga songs and poetry were crucial tools used in developing support for African nationalism, both inside and outside white-ruled Rhodesia. Outside the country, they were used in the refugee camps where most of these songs were composed. Most were adapted from traditional songs (Pandya, 1988, p. 132) and some from Christian songs (Mtisi, Nyakudya, & Barnes, 2009, p. 58). Besides providing entertainment to the refugees and combatants, these songs “musicalized and transformed the woes of everyday life” (Moorman, 2004, p. 264). They spread political awareness among the African population by pointing out the ills of white-settler colonialism and the necessity for armed struggle to overthrow the colonial system (Bhebe, 1999, p. 97). Thus, they spread and reinforced African nationalist grievances. They were also meant to call upon the protection of the ancestral spirits and gain their support for the war as well as to thank the foreign countries who supported the struggle (Pandya, 1988, pp. 134–139).

However, although songs were used to criticize leaders in precolonial times they lost this function once they were appropriated by the national liberation struggle (Gilman, 2009a, p. 345), and they were increasingly used to “aggrandise political leaders […] through such means as metaphors, the listing of achievements and strengths, and the expression of gratitude” (Brecht, 1977, p. 80). In fact, this genre of political aesthetics abstracted and simplified reality when it was used to create super-politicians. In Zimbabwe the adulteration of the traditional use of songs resulted in the portrayal of nationalist leaders as saintly and above criticism. Simultaneously, these songs were used to condemn and de-legitimize rival nationalist leaders and opponents within the national liberation struggle (Ranger, 2003, p. 2). In the case of ZANU and ZAPU this practice stemmed from the fact that the leaders commissioned artists at the camps in Mgagao, Tembwe, and Chimoio to sing about the central role these leaders were playing in articulating the problems of the “masses” (Vambe, 2000, p. 75). It became therefore common for leaders to be extolled and to be referred to in laudatory terms.

Inside the country, most of these songs were sung at all the night time rallies called pungwes (Tungamirai, 1995, p. 42). Although they carried similar messages with those sung in the camps outside the country the songs sung inside the country were more disguised or coded “to mislead and fool the [Rhodesian] authorities” (Pandya, 1988, p. 134). While allowing for the audience to map their grievances to the lyrics, this coding was aimed at ensuring the security of the performers and the audiences to avoid being attacked by the Rhodesian security forces. The pungwes were meant to create a bond between the local communities and the guerrilla fighters as well as to motivate the guerrillas themselves (ibid.).

While the pungwes were primarily meant for ZANU political mobilization (Bhebe, 1999, p. 97) they were also used to incite violence against witches and people who were considered sell-outs to the Rhodesian authorities (Pandya, 1988, p. 145). The slogans that were shouted praised ZANU and its leadership, while at the same time condemning the White supremacist Rhodesian state and the rival nationalist movements (ibid, pp. 46–147). This practice was carried over into the post-independence era against the opposition parties such as ZAPU, UANC and ZANU-Ndonga in the 1980s and 1990s, and more recently against the MDC.

It should also be noted here that in the urban African townships there were groups who organized themselves as popular musical bands. They composed and performed protest songs. Some of these groups were Thomas Mapfumo and the Blacks Unlimited (Vambe, 2000, p. 77) and the Harare Mambos (Pandya 1988, p. 139).

The Third Chimurenga’s Political Aesthetics

In the post-colonial period and specifically in the post-1999 era the ritualization of these political performances continued (Gilman, 2009a, p. 340). These performances consisting of singing, poetry and dancing were employed to venerate the ruling party leadership and disseminate their party ideology (Kriger, 2003, p. 75). These political aesthetic practices simultaneously extolled ZANU-PF’s role and denigrated the other political parties’ contributions to the Second Chimurenga (ibid.). The songs and poetry that were performed emphasized the mythical powers and the invincibility of the ZANU-PF and the indispensability of its leadership. The party’s leadership was extolled for “organising, executing, and winning the war, and for ‘freeing’ the masses from colonial bondage” (Vambe, 2000, p. 75). This practice further adulterated the role of music as a means used by the lower classes to contest arbitrary power. On the contrarty, “it [was] now a conduit for supporting a party, not social commentary” (Gilman, 2009a, p. 346). Even popular artists like Thomas Mapfumo and Oliver Mtukudzi, who were possibly caught up in the euphoria of independence, joined the bandwagon of hero-worship and the creation of the personality cult associated with the ZANU-PF leaders in their songs (Vambe, 2000, pp. 76–78).

Vambe warns against misinterpreting the relationship between popular artists and the regime, since certain artists may have genuinely held similar views to that of the party leaders or they may have been caught up in the euphoria of independence and/or for marketing purposes and to get access to the media they may have chosen to align their songs and poetry with that of the ideology of the political leaders (ibid., pp. 76–77). However, during the 2000–2008 period the songs sung by prominent Zimbabwean musicians were frequently performed alongside the ZANU-UP political mobilization efforts in which the opposition was subjected to condemnation, defaming and shaming, threats and the violation of their rights and dignity.

The spectacular nature of the public humiliations and terrorist methods that were deployed were similar to the strategy used by the Rhodesia Front during the period of white minority rule in the late 1970s. This strategy involved, to use Bhebe’s words (1999, p. 111), “the use of terror and psychological terror in trying to ‘convince the minds and win the hearts’ of the people.” The methods of coercive mobilization and indoctrination of the masses used during the Second Chimurenga were revived. The re-enactment of the pungwes and the adoption of war language of this period were deployed in the Third Chimurenga against the ZANU-PF’s opponents. President Mugabe also donned combat fatigues (Alexander, 2003, p. 99) and sought to raise the status of ZANU-PF to that of the eternal heir and guardian of Zimbabwe’s sovereignty against what he characterized as Western imperialism. The songs that were produced and used during this period created the myth that President Mugabe and ZANU-PF were the “natural and indisputable political heir[s] … of the past,” and thus reinforced “anti-pluralistic tendencies in political thinking in Zimbabwe” (Vambe, 2000, pp. 76–77).

In Shurugwi, it is interesting to note that there were no special groups that sung and performed at rallies. Anyone could start the songs. However, everyone was supposed to join in the singing. Not singing was equated with disloyalty and invited suspicion. Singing, especially the new songs, was regarded as a demonstration of positive support for ZANU-PF. Under these circumstances, the active participation of women and men in the performances at the political rallies served to incite violence against the opposition and to mythologize the power of ZANU-PF. The fear of being labelled as disloyal contributed to “everyone” singing and fractured the distinction between performers and spectators. Besides the noticeable difference between those who led the singing, there were no other clear lines of separation, since all those who were in attendance were supposed to know the songs and to participate in the singing.

By singing the songs at the ZANU-PF rallies the women helped to spread the party’s ideology and policy agenda. As Finnegan (1992, p. 220) has argued, this activity “reinforce[d] their own beliefs and ensure[d] that all members of the movement ha[d] mastery of the political aims and the means needed to achieve them.” Women were clearly placed at the center stage of the rituals at these political rallies: in the dances, songs and recitation of poetry. The women were the largest group that wore party attire: the wrap-around cloths with the party colours, the leaders’ faces and emblems, the party T-shirts and the party head gear. It was in this political attire that women welcomed party dignitaries and provided entertainment at the rallies.

While most of the dignitaries were men, women performed the central role on such occasions, and literally kept these political rallies going. Added to this, women generally constituted the majority of the audience at these rallies. This was partly a result of the depopulation of men who had emigrated to South Africa and Botswana or away working in urban areas. Thus as Gilman (2009b, p. 4) contends, women “make substantial contributions to political parties in their capacities as symbols, advertisers, voters, morale boosters, and mobilizers of support” (Gilman, 2009b, p. 4).

In Shurugwi, women were the face of politics, since they were the most visible and most vocal participants at political gatherings. They led in the singing, in shouting the party slogans, in welcoming the political guests and in providing entertainment for all those who attended political rallies. At the rallies which the author attended in 2010, it was clear that for those who were coerced to attend these political events the entertainment provided by the women served as an entertaining side to the otherwise ritualised attacks on the opposing MDC, the threats that were made against its supporters, and the promises of development for the district. The political aesthetic roles performed by women at these rallies clearly helped to mythologize the party officials and the heroic contributions made by ZANU-PF during the Second and Third Chimurenga. The women who performed these roles stood out in sharp contrast to the ordinary men who were usually mute participants and who took a back seat. The most active men were usually those who held leadership roles. If there were some people who exhibited the qualities of forced attendance it was generally the men who took a back-seat role.

Importantly, the performances carried out by the women also reinforced the inequalities between them and the men at these political events. In theory, these songs and dances provided a potential platform where women could air their grievances and problems. Women also may have felt at times they were in control of the proceedings because of their predominant role in the singing and dancing. Nevertheless, the dances, songs and poetry were devoid of the traditional social commentary function and served only to glorify the parties and the country’s male political leaders. They were mostly performed by women who had the lowest economic and political status (see also Gilman, 2009a, p. 345), and who showered unqualified praise on the male political leaders. In Shurugwi they were drawn largely from the communal peasant farming wards, and they represented the most vulnerable members of the local population both in terms of hunger and poverty during the period between 2000 and 2008.

The male dignitaries at these events would usually offer prepared speeches, sometimes in English, which no doubt was above the comprehension of most of the ordinary women who were present since they were generally only conversant in the local languages. Besides offering speeches, which constituted the main agenda item in these rallies, the dignitaries also led the participants in the recitation of party slogans. Occasionally the dignitaries offered gifts to some of the outstanding performers. This practice symbolically underscored the inequality of the patron-client relationship in both the political-economic hierarchy between the political leaders and the women participants, but also the gender inequalities (ibid., p. 353).

In these situations, the women sweated from their active involvement in dances and singing, while the men acted more as spectators who occasionally clapped their hands during the speeches and to the dances performed by the women. The senior party dignitaries generally sat at a high table. After the dances, the women would sit on the ground, and if there was no shade they sat in the sun. They were usually separated from the men who sat in a different area. In most cases the two groups were separated by the dignitaries who sat in the center. Unlike the women, the ordinary men sat on whatever seats, chairs or platforms that were available.

An even bigger difference existed between the women and the chosen delegates and leaders who were seated around a high table littered with fruits, water and cool drinks. Gilman (2009a, p. 338) and Wai-Teng Leong (2001, p. 9) both posit that this physical arrangement dramatises the differences between the two in terms of power and status. As Wai-Teng Leong (2001, p. 9) says, “officials and authorities are not the participants [in the singing]. They are reviewers, and their position of dominance is marked off from subordinates by an elevated platform from which they can look down upon people and comfortably observe the event.”

Thus on the whole, the differences in the stages occupied by the three categories at rallies symbolically and literally reinforced the gender and power hierarchies in the district as well as the country. The hierarchy of differences was also further highlighted by the apparel worn by the women and the distinguished guests. As already pointed out, the women wore party regalia including head scarfs, T-shirts, and wrap-arounds. In contrast the guests wore suits and on a few occasions caps that identified them with their party (Gilman, 2009a, p. 349). At other times some leaders wore shirts made in the party colours, which represented their relative affluence compared to the T-shirts worn by the women.

Songs and the Promotion of Violence

The Shurugwi public performances conformed to the “socio-political imaginary of the subject populations” (Karlstrom, 2003, p. 64) and were used as spectacles showcasing both the power of the ZANU-PF and the use of violence. They provided spaces in which to denounce, if not condemn, the opposition. This situation can be seen clearly in the song Zimbabwe ndeyeropa, (Zimbabwe was born of blood). Another song that became a theme song at ZANU-PF rallies was Nyatsoteerera (Listen carefully). This song became popular during the presidential run-off election of June 2008, and was eventually recomposed and disseminated on an album by the Mbare Chimurenga Choir. Another popular song was Handimbochema kana vaMugabe varipo (I will not cry if Comrade Mugabe is there) which exalted President Mugabe. As Ndlovu-Gatsheni (Ndlovu-Gatsheni, 2009, p. 275) points out, this song was adapted from a Christian hymn and in some ways draws parallels between President Mugabe and Jesus Christ. The popular song Nora was also repackaged into a commercial video by the late Minister Elliot Manyika and Taurai Mteki. Such songs were performed alongside those that denigrated and criminalized the MDC and its leadership. In essence these songs created a particular kind of “distribution of the sensible … that divide[d] the [Zimbabwean] community into groups, social positions, and functions” (Ranciere, 2006, p. 3).

The songs that were sung at rallies were buttressed by popular songs and videos that also glorified ZANU-PF and were regularly played on the sole national television and radio stations. Musicians like Simon Chimbetu released Hoko (Peg) and Kustate House kure (It’s a long route to the state house). Amos Mahendere, Delani Makhalima, and “The Born Frees” made similar videos. In these videos, Mugabe was the main character and/or his speeches were superimposed on the music (Sibanda, 2012, p. 6). The opposition MDC-T also used praise-singing musicians who glorified the party and its leadership. Notable examples were Member of Parliament Paul Madzore and Francia Chikunguru (ibid., p. 7). The party’s Department of Information also launched an album at the end of 2011 (ibid.).

Alongside these songs equally powerful slogans were used. In Shurugwi, as in the rest of the country these slogans were premised with “Forward with” the ZANU-PF leaders and their programme, and “Down with” the people and things associated with the “sell-outs” of the MDC. The lyrics in the songs and slogans often emphasized spilling blood and or the importance of blood-letting in the past struggles of the ZANU-PF. Violence was given value, because it is through violence that blood is let. In ZANU-PF ideology and official state discourse this violence was characterized as emancipatory and used in defence of Zimbabwe’s sovereignty. Blood was also conceived as sacrificial in these songs. The song Zimbabwe ndeyeropa exemplifies this. It is a song made up of one stanza, and four out of the five lines (80 percent) refer to the spilling of blood. The shedding of blood is placed at the heart of ZANU-PF rhetoric. Besides extolling its history in spilling blood, the song shows how “violence was ingrained into the political culture of ZANU” (Sachikonye, 2011, p. 11).

These songs to a certain extent invited people to engage in violence to defend the country against the so-called sell-outs. Those that supported the opposition were branded as anti-revolutionaries, traitors, and enemies unworthy of the democratic right to belong to a political party of their choosing. The songs also stressed that both the struggle before national independence and after independence depended on sacrificing blood. The songs often conveyed the idea that blood was shed for the nation’s birth, and blood was necessary for its continued survival. According to many of these songs, the militants that died in the struggle for independence sacrificed their lives for the country’s independence, and those fighting in the Third Chimurenga also were called upon to sacrifice their lives if necessary for the defence of the nation’s independence.

Speeches by senior government officials buttressed the need for continued sacrifice. President Mugabe, for example, said: “We shed a lot of blood for this country; we are not going to give up the country for a mere X on a ballot. How can a ball point pen fight with a gun?” (Report of the Pan African Parliament, 2008, p. 13). Sacrifice, in this fashion (Ndlovu-Gatsheni, 2009, p. 158) was therefore conceived in the blood of the guerrilla fighters and the civilian victims during the Second Chimurenga and the blood that was shed during the Third Chimurenga. Thus sacrifice is a relation to the ability to “gift” one’s own life, a sort of immeasurable gift. ¹

It is true that it was largely through the armed struggle that the white minority Rhodesia Front government was forced to negotiate the transition to majority rule. However, its articulation in the post-1999 era was essentialized to privilege ZANU-PF’s heroism in the struggle for independence at a time when it was facing dwindling support even in the rural areas that had been its stronghold since the 1960s and 1970s struggle for independence (Raftopoulos, 2009). This rendition of history also conspicuously ignored or glossed over the importance of negotiations in contributing towards independence, the role that regional and international countries played in bringing the armed belligerents to the negotiating table (White, 2003, p. 18), the contributions of other liberation movements like ZAPU and the importance of support from the international community in the struggle for independence. As a result, the emphasis on that role of ZANU-PF in violence should be seen as an essentialized recalling of the Second Chimurenga and the liberation era songs that were adapted and repeated in the 2000s re-inscribed violence on the minds of the rural Shurugwi subjects.

The particular brand of repressive masculinity encapsulated in this narrative had a profoundly negative effect on the country. The overall effect was to alter gender relations in the country, as gender roles were violently spelt out in the form of a virulent discourse of male superiority. It was in this context that in Zimbabwe homosexual men, those in the opposition and those whose masculinities were not in sync with those of ZANU-PF were feminized and brutalized because they did not conform to the ZANU-PF image of masculinity. This masculinity led the ZANU-PF to deploy troops in the Democratic Republic of the Congo civil war, engage in violence in farm takeovers, initiate virginity tests, and engage in aggressive homophobia, among other things (Campbell, 2004, p. 18).

Insidious violence against those in the opposition was encoded in the songs. The education or reorientation mentioned in the song Nora for example was a soft form of packaging violence because that education was mostly done via beatings at rallies. The condemnatory slogans such as: “down with Tsvangirai, MDC, sell outs or running dogs” besides belittling those targeted also encouraged this genre of violence. In this context, “down” had a loaded meaning. It could be interpreted as down to the grave, simply being ridiculed, or literally being forced to lie down to receive a beating, which was the commonest form of punishing dissent. As Kahiya argues, these kind of slogans became “a war cry to crush opponents; physically that is” (Kahiya, 2010). This resembled a similar appropriation of slogans in the early 1980s against the ZAPU and ZIPRA (Kriger, 2003, p. 76).

By also referring to the issue of land redistribution at a juncture of increased joblessness and pressure on the communal lands of the district, it played on the emotions of the peasants who needed a redress to their plight. Crucially this also helped to forge a very close and dangerous link between obtaining land and violence, and also between land and national sovereignty. Whilst land reform was the core rallying point for rural and urban African populations during the Second Chimurenga, other issues were equally important. For example, democracy, workers’ rights, women and students’ rights also made people join the liberation struggle (Ranger, 2003). It would therefore be simplistic to reduce the independence struggle to a struggle merely for agrarian reform. Some of the worst scenes of brutalities in Shurugwi District happened on the farms as the land hungry wrestled with the farm owners and their workers for land. It was therefore not surprising that people in the district chose to refer to the land seizures as jambanja (violence/war) and those who were resettled on seized land or farm occupiers as majambaja (fighters).

In addition to these factors, the person of President Mugabe was glorified. He was equated with the bravery of heroes and given a central role in the struggles running from the Second to the Third Chimurenga. Above all, Mugabe was portrayed as indispensable. A look at the slogan called MAZDA reinforces this creation of a personality cult. MAZDA was an acronym for Mugabe Achatonga Zimbabwe Dakara Afa or Mugabe will rule Zimbabwe till he dies, justifying his continued rule as a president for life. Its continued repetition, in the context of an incessant campaign of intimidation directed at the opposition which was characterized by widespread displacements, torture, and an increase in murder of the opposition supporters in the run-up to the presidential run-off election of 2008 and the military commanders’ threats of a coup d’état in the event of President Mugabe’s loss in the run-off election, profoundly affected the citizens.

As Kertzer states (in Gilman, 2009a, p. 352), the repetition of rituals is an “important means of channelling emotion, guiding cognition, and organising social groups.” Also, it “works to inculcate messages and values and also to create an enhanced ritual space” (Gilman, 2009a, p. 352). Life in Zimbabwe without the “great leader” was made to seem difficult to imagine. This also comes out strongly in the song Nora, where his bravery is exalted. At one level Mugabe was personified as the ZANU-PF. At yet at another level he was personified as the key actor in the struggle for the national liberation of Zimbabwe. The President’s personality, his long presidency and his grip on both his party and country were venerated as both God-given and incontestable. However, as Tekere (2007) contends, this veneration made a travesty of the history of the Second Chimurenga.

As such, the songs and slogans were designed to justify Mugabe’s continued reign. Above all, they helped to naturalise violence as an integral part of the ZANU-PF culture. People were violated, beaten, threatened and shamed in the company of these songs and chants. It was intended for more people to witness them and to be intimidated. This was done at rallies where there were a lot of attendees. In addition, threats to violence were issued on national television and through mass circulating print media owned by the state that reached an even larger audience. The clearest case of this was the call for the “death of the tea boy [Tsvangirai],” who was Mugabe’s opponent (Zimbabwemetro). As Foucault posits, large crowds are necessary in such cases because:

An execution that was known to be taking place, but which did so in secret, would scarcely have any meaning. The aim was to make an example, not only by making people aware that the slightest offence was likely to be punished, but by arousing feelings of terror by the spectacle of power letting its anger fall upon the guilty person (Foucault, 1979, pp. 58–59).

In this manner, the ZANU-PF gained a lot of mileage through showcasing its power. This use of violence was used “largely to re-enact power rather than as a means to justice” (Foucault, 1978, pp. 135–136).

To the extent that this use of violence in Shurugwi district could take place in public and the perpetrators were able to do so with impunity, mythologized the power of the perpetrators in the eyes of the spectators. It also served to stress the fact that ZANU-PF’s rhetoric was indeed underwritten by an actual use of violence in real terms. Besides providing a catalyst for the perpetrators, the reference to violence in the political songs provided a form of entertainment for the audience, some of whom also found entertainment and amusement in the tortures committed at these rallies. In Shurugwi it is in this latter category of political performances that the agency of women in the violence was higher, and it is in this category that the central role of women as participants in the dances and in the violence was located. This genre invokes Bakhtin’s use of the terms “grotesque and obscene” (Bakhtin in Mbembe, 1992, p. 4). For Bakhtin, this refers to the adoption of a language that subverts authority. Mbembe, contends that in post-colonial Africa the “grotesque and obscene” has been embraced by most post-colonial governments. This is manifested in the “timing and location of those occasions which state power organises for dramatising its own magnificence” and secondly, “in the actual materials used in the ceremonial displays through which it makes manifest its majesty,” and “the specific manner in which it offers these, as spectacles, for its subjects (cibles) to watch” (Mbembe, 1992, p. 4).

Following up on this, the performances at rallies, portrayed in radio and television, exhibit the grotesqueness and obscenity of the state as the “principal locus of both the self-narration of power and the places in which it imagines itself” (Ibid., p. 19). And, at rallies women took a central role in the execution of those performances that valorized the power of violence. However, there is a need to be wary of overstating the role of the state in generating, the “aesthetics of power” because some “popular political imaginary” emerges outside the state even when it supports the hegemony (Karlstrom, 2003, p. 61). In this regard, therefore, there is need to acknowledge that “subalterns” potentially can create subversive meanings as they wrestle to absorb, survive and resist power and do not necessarily agree to reproduce dominant discourses and meanings of given texts.

Patronage, Performance and Violence

The violence of the Third Chimurenga involved both planning and participation (Mamdani, 2001, p. 5) as well as authorization and commission (Feldman, 1991, p. 3; Foucault, 1978, pp. 93–94). Planning and authorizing took place in the capital Harare, while the execution and commission of the violence took place at the local community level. In this regard, it was the locals, including ordinary villagers, war veterans and party youths, who identified the “enemy” targets: the farms to invade, the opposition supporters to be attacked, the tactics and strategies to use, and how to graft localized struggles and conditions on to the national level authorizing discourse.

Conceptualizing the violence in Shurugwi in terms of a Foucauldian discourse on the multivalent sources of power and the different relationships is helpful in terms of unpacking the various categories of perpetrators of violence in Shurugwi. There were perpetrators at different levels depending on the political, social and economic power at their disposal. Some took a more active role while others had more at stake. Those in lowly positions had a smaller stake in the political violence, hence their minimal contributions. Their participation seemed to have been spurred by the desire to benefit materially in an economy of severe shortages. The importance of patronage needs to be discussed in this regard. At the same time, a more muddied analysis of the modes through which violence took place is required. As Alexander and Chitofiri (n.d., p. 5) would say, this is “to emphasise the way in which such practices were woven into the organisation of violence, creating particular kinds of incentives, expectations and relationships.” Broadly speaking, the benefits, goods and services gained through participation in the violence included freedom from physical harm and being included on lists of those who could access farms, as well as access to certain goods and services in short supply. The main political movements in Zimbabwe controlled patronage goods and services. In the case of the ZANU-PF this was through its control of state resources as the party in control of the government, and in the case of the MDCs (both factions) because of access to internal and external sources of funding. However, for the MDCs, this took the form of a counter and at times clandestine patronage system because its supporters were the target of discrimination and violence.

Once this situation was established people had to prove the worth of their political loyalty in order to continue to access the benefits or they could be labelled “sell-outs.” Importantly, this helped to complicate the already tenuous zone between perpetrators and victims. By belonging to one side, one became guilty by association in those cases of violence committed by or in the name of the party they supported. This situation added a group dimension to the individualized commission of violence for most of the women in Shurugwi.

In Shurugwi, the case of “Chipo,” a middle-aged woman, illustrates the importance of the system of patronage.

The interview reveals the impact of the economic catastrophe that the country and Shurugwi suffered between 2000 and 2008. This catastrophe was the result of industrial closures, economic sanctions, and the collapse of the agricultural sector resulting from the unplanned farm takeovers and a series of natural disasters in the form of floods and droughts. As a consequence, there were unprecedented job losses, rampant unemployment, astronomical and unprecedented inflation, and a desperate situation in which citizens found it difficult to survive (Makina, 2010, pp. 100–101). It was in this environment that desperate women often participated as performers at the political rallies.

Under such dire conditions, some rural women in Shurugwi renounced their support for the opposition and joined the ZANU-PF because of its access to land and state resources, which it selectively distributed in the form of patronage to its supporters. As indicated above, Chipo transformed herself over night from supporting the MDC to supporting the ZANU-PF and even rose over a short space of time to the level of a ZANU-PF ward executive. While these kinds of public renunciations were humiliating, they paradoxically provided the women with the opportunities to reap some financial, material and security rewards. In an environment where the commodities needed for daily survival were scarce, performing at political rallies enabled these women to access these commodities. Goods such as mealie-meal, the staple in the district, were sold or were given for free at these rallies. By participating actively in these forms of political aesthetics, women such as Chipo, were placed in good stead to receive the hand-outs or be placed in front of the queue to purchase goods that were in short supply but which were available at the rallies.

Besides basic goods such as mealie-meal, maize and cooking oil that were either given or sold at rallies or the Grain Marketing Board (GMB), active membership in the ZANU-PF (and the MDC) entitled one to other scarce goods and services (Alexander & Chitofiri, n.d., p. 5). These included agricultural inputs, scotch carts, ploughs and other agricultural implements. Access to jobs in the civil service was also possible for strong participation in ZANU-PF politics. The desire to live and escape poverty was therefore a crucial factor in enticing women to participate in political performances. This has to be put in the context of the patronage system that was created by the national ZANU-PF hierarchy. The President, for example, gave out computers, food, buses, farm equipment, cows (Mail and Guardian, 18 February 2008) or pay rises for civil servants at rallies (Congressional Research Service, 2008).

Elsewhere, giving out alcohol, selling goods that were in short supply such as soap, mealie-meal and cooking oil, offering free uniforms, making promises to pay kids’ school fees, and handing out cellphone lines, were used to attract participation in the performances and attendances at the rallies (Zimbabwe Electoral Support Network, 2008). High Court Judge Rita Makarau also made reference to this practice of patronage, when she passed judgement on the Elton Mangoma vs Didymus Mutasa case:

I am satisfied that throughout the constituency, villagers were threatened with the withholding of food and other hand-outs and were denied these if they supported the MDC… the perpetrators of this practice were the leadership of ZANU-PF at the village levels and the war veterans residing in the constituency.

She also stated that “[i]t has been my finding that corrupt practices were committed in respect of the election of the [ZANU-PF] respondent. Villagers were denied food and other hand-outs and resettled farmers were intimidated with loss of their land if they voted for the [MDC] petitioner” (Solidarity Peace Trust, April 2006).

In addition, party attire, such as wrap-around materials (mazambia), and T-shirts, scarfs, whistles and flags were not randomly given out. They were allocated according to the level of participation by individuals in party political activities. The most active participants besides providing entertainment also advertized political parties on national media. Except for flags and whistles, most of these items became important fashion apparel in an era of austerity in which it was considered luxurious to buy new clothes. This political apparel filled the gap, and they became important everyday fashion items both inside and outside of the political arena. This was in addition to the symbolic role the attire played in identifying those who supported or belonged to one of the political parties. The role of this political paraphernalia became especially crucial around elections, which were the moments of the most intense inter-party violence.

Women were coerced to participate in order to obtain material benefits on the one hand, and on the other hand they experienced symbolic empowerment from the material benefits they acquired. They might have been coerced literally and figuratively to perform, but they also in turn ended up surviving the scathing poverty of that infamous decade. One might be tempted to posit that this ended up as a somewhat skewed but beneficial relationship.

However, we ought to note that as the economic conditions became dire and overall survival a mammoth task, state repression and coercion also worsened. This was the result of the transformation of politics into a form of war by ZANU-PF (Foucault, 1980, pp. 89–90). Faced with a strong opposition, which perhaps was the strongest in the post-independence period, ZANU-PF increasingly called upon its coercive apparatus in the form of the security forces to mobilize support for its survival. Alongside this was also the deployment of “war” language, reminiscent of the Second Chimurenga, which clearly categorized opponents as outsiders and enemies who had to be annihilated.

In this background, as Mbembe has established for Cameroon and Togo, there was always the possibility of a resort to violence “not just to bring a specific political consciousness into being but make it effective” (Mbembe, 1992, p. 4). This placed the women in an untenable position. To navigate their survival in such an economy women had to engage in active politicking. For example, dancing at rallies became almost dancing for survival. This further complicates the symbiosis we attempted to posit above because what the women got was unequal to what they were forced to give out.

Confronted with state excesses that demanded unquestioned loyalty to ZANU-PF, women had to participate as a form of public gesture. Threats to violence, and examples of what could befall “sell-outs” sustained the belief in the strength of the tactics of intimidation. Aware of their shortcomings women felt obliged to take part in the economy of these performances in the public rallies. They saw more reward in being seen as belonging and being co-opted as insiders than to seek resistance and disengagement that invited the label of sell outs and/or public violation. The women had to know the slogans by heart, and were expected to keep abreast with changes within these slogans. By repeating these slogans and songs the women were put through a regime of indoctrination. Through this, the images and words were engraved as epitaphs on their minds. The above speaks to Ruddick’s (2010) assessment of fear in generating for the under classes, moments of empowerment. In this way, faced with little freedom, the women passively participated in order to avoid painful encounters, such as threats and actual physical violence.

The above has to be taken together with the dissemination of a powerful state propaganda, that of a nation at war against the British, the European Union, the United States of America and their local agents in the form of the MDC. In the propaganda campaigns, graphic images of the suffering during the Second Chimurenga, the aggressive speeches and calls for sacrifice for national sovereignty compelled the submission of women. We ought to note, however, that in the ZANU-PF narrative there were a range of very emotive issues that were raised, which had a powerful resonance among the poor citizens of the district. These included, inter alia, land redistribution and the fight against Western imperialism that threatened the recolonization of the country.

The combination of political repression and the harrowing economic climate leading to forced participation is amplified by the performances of music stars at what were termed national music galas. These were all-night music festivals (galas), featuring emerging and established music stars and screened live on the sole national television broadcaster, organized at or around important national days including Heroes’, Independence, and Unity days and 21 February festivals or the deaths of state heroes. Besides the dollars they made, musicians showed their allegiance to ZANU-PF, the “official custodian” of these important national days on the calendar of Zimbabwe. This is notwithstanding the fact that some songs and performances could have contained anti-ZANU-PF or subversive subtexts.

The galas also advanced the image of ZANU-PF. The background stage was covered in ZANU-PF colours and campaign messages usually from its election manifestos. As Mbembe (1992, p. 25) has observed:

by dancing publicly for the benefit of power, the ‘post-colonised subject’ is providing his or her loyalty and by compromising with the corrupting control that state power tends to exercise at all levels of everyday life (over benefits, services, pleasures…) the subject is reaffirming that it is incontestable…

Again, performances by the different groups were often interspersed with excerpts of speeches made by President Mugabe and other leaders associated with ZANU-PF including Tongogara, Chitepo and Joshua Nkomo. At times there would be images from the Second Chimurenga shown. All these buttressed ZANU-PF’s emancipatory narrative and its claims to hold power. In this fashion, galas became an important component of the “cultural nationalism” (Ndlovu-Gatsheni & Willems, 2009, p. 946) that ZANU-PF deployed to further legitimate itself. In the process, these performances helped to buttress the narrowed reimagining of the history of the nation, and the history of the struggle for Zimbabwe, especially the history of the Second Chimurenga, along ZANU-PF terms. Crucially, also, was the fact that because some of the most popular musicians performed their songs and dance routines meant that ZANU-PF got maximum marketing to both the rural and urban constituencies. Advertising to the young people and to urban constituencies was particularly vital for ZANU-PF that was suffering constant defeats in the urban-based constituencies and whose policies did not carry much support from the younger voters.

At another level the galas were organized to offer a monologic function. In this regard, “rally organizers attempt[ed] to control the messages that emerge[d] to ensure that they conform[ed] to the party’s goals” (Gilman, 2009a, p. 339). In this fashion, galas became the “reincarnation of the night vigils (pungwes) that whipped people into common liberation thinking and kept them informed, educated and united” (Ndlovu-Gatsheni & Willems, 2009, p. 953) not least also because they were staged at night like pungwes. It was in this context that some musicians went out of their way to compose such praise songs for ZANU PF as Tambaoga’s “Blair is a toilet,” and Hosiah Chipanga’s VaMugabe vanopa asi njere ndodzatisina (Comrade Mugabe gives but we lack wisdom). I recall watching on national television, Minister Saviour Kasukuwere giving Tambaoga Zimbabwe Z$50,000,000 after a performance. While it showed his appreciation of the performance, it also emphasized the economic and political ties that existed between those who were performing and the ZANU-PF leadership. Importantly, some of these big stars wore the gala regalia, especially T-shirts and caps which produced a huge impact. As Rappaport (in Gilman 2009a, p. 349) suggests, these performers “are not only transmitting messages they find encoded in a canon. They are participating in becoming part of the order to which their own bodies and breadth give life.” Thus, they link “their presentation of identity at the event to the party” (Gilman, 2009a, p. 349).

Performing at these galas went beyond aggrandizing the ZANU-PF. It was simultaneously a space for pursuing personal benefits for the musicians. Strategically utilizing the “alliances as well as lines of cleavages” (S. Hall in Vambe, 2000, p. 76) by participating in the galas these artists benefited from the publicity, their music got more air play and/or remained playing on the sole state-controlled media. Performing at galas was especially important for young and upcoming musicians who were involved in the fledgling “Urban Grooves” genre (Ndlovu-Gatsheni & Willems, 2009, p. 954). These artists sought all the publicity they could get in order for them to compete with established musicians and music genres. There were instances when certain musicians were barred from national radio and television for being seen as anti-ZANU-PF. More air play too meant more royalties. It also stands to reason that the ZANU-PF tried in the same process to calm if not win over the restive urban population through providing entertainment at subsidized prices amid a worsening economic decline.

Galas also have to be taken together with other government-led projects that sought to shepherd people’s thoughts by controlling what they consumed from the media. First, was the paternalist moves leading to the establishment of the Media Ethics Committee to protect the citizens “from the irresponsible, out-of-control private media” that was characterized by “unprofessional” “unethical behaviours” and the production of “harmful information” (Willems, n.d., pp. 8–9). It was due in part to this that some private media houses such as The Daily News and The Zimbabwe Standard were either harassed or forced to shut down (ibid.). There were other rather forceful measures that targeted citizens such as “Operation Remove your satellite Dishes” in 2008 aimed at cutting off people from accessing eTV and BTV (the state run television of neighboring Botswana), which the state considered harmful to the creation of “patriotic citizens” (ibid, p. 9).

Second, was the production and excessive playing of ZANU-PF jingles on national TV and radio stations. This excess can be exemplified by the fact that between 2000 and 2004 there were produced nine different jingles on the Third Chimurenga. These were played with alarming regularity of about 288 times a day on radio and 72 times on television, about 8640 and 2160 times monthly, respectively (Eyre, 2005) to a nation whose majority relied almost exclusively on these media.

Conclusion

This article has highlighted the importance of political aesthetics in the promotion of violence and the continued reign of the ZANU-PF in Zimbabwe during the Third Chimurenga. This aesthetics simultaneously legitimated ZANU-PF politics while condemning the politics of the MDC(s). It therefore became an important function of the ZANU-PF’s coercive mobilization of popular support. At the local level, this political aesthetics was crucial in highlighting the power relations of the state in the District of Shurugwi. It is in this web of interactions at the district level that this article has focused on the agency of rural women in promoting and sustaining political violence. Through their performances at the political rallies, women played an important role in the violence. This is notwithstanding the fact that some women also sometimes played other more direct roles in the perpetration of violence. At this level, this discussion has challenged the common notion that women are mute victims in conflict situations. It also suggests that perceptions of victimhood and gender in the Third Chimurenga need to be revised.