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Interpreting Zimbabwe's Third Chimurenga Through Kongonya: Representations of Post-2000 Zimbabwean Dance in Buckle's Beyond Tears: Zimbabwe's Tragedy and Mtizira's Chimurenga Protocol

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  13 August 2020

Jairos Gonye
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Abstract

The Zimbabwean writers Catherine Buckle and Nyaradzo Mtizira reimagine kongonya dance in their works Beyond Tears: Zimbabwe's Tragedy (2002) and The Chimurenga Protocol (2008), respectively. Both the European-born Buckle and the black Zimbabwean Mtizira harness the dance to evoke the post-2000 jambanja experiences associated with Zimbabwe's controversial “Third Chimurenga,” or the fast-track land reform program, beginning in 2000. Their contrasting depictions of dance epitomize the differing views on Zimbabwe's land reform program. Largely, whereas Buckle's novel is a memoir which personalizes a farmer's encounters with dancing African/Zimbabwean “land invaders,” Mtizira's is a panegyric that collectively reimagines a nation's defiant revolution against purported forces of Western imperialism. Both writers’ representations of the post-2000 Zimbabwe's dance performances are therefore colored and compromised by racial subjectivity.

Keywords

chimurengafast track land reformkongonyajambanjaland invasionrepresentations of danceThird Chimurenga
Type
Articles
Information
Dance Research Journal , Volume 52 , Issue 2 , August 2020 , pp. 26 - 40
Copyright
Copyright © 2020 Dance Studies Association

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