Articles · Vol. 6 No. 1 (2010): Africa Review of Books, Volume 6, n° 1, 2010 · Pages 9

Historicizing the Ndebele

  • James Muzondidya
    James Muzondidya Pact Zimbabwe, Harare, Zimbabwe. https://orcid.org/0000-0003-2246-1038 (unauthenticated)
    JAMES MUZONDIDYA is Research Manager for the Zimbabwe Institute, a Zimbabwean policy development think tank with offices in Harare and Cape Town. His research interests are in African politics and he has written extensively on various aspects of Zimbabwe’s political economy....
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Abstract

The historical and contemporary experiences of the Ndebele people have generally been marginalized in academic and public discourses about Zimbabwe. Their history has also been a subject of great controversy, exaggerations and distortions, repeated by both the Ndebele people themselves and outsiders. Building on these distorted historical memories and myths, the Ndebele people have been invariably represented as ‘heroic warriors’, ‘noble savages’ or ‘bloodthirsty savages’ in the historical and popular accounts that abound...

Keywords

Ndebele Hegemony Memory and Historiography

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Author Biography

  • James Muzondidya, Pact Zimbabwe, Harare, Zimbabwe.

    JAMES MUZONDIDYA is Research Manager for the Zimbabwe Institute, a Zimbabwean policy development think tank with offices in Harare and Cape Town. His research interests are in African politics and he has written extensively on various aspects of Zimbabwe’s political economy. His latest publication is a journal article, ‘The Zimbabwean Crisis and the Unresolved Conundrum of Race’, in the Journal of Development Studies, 26.1.10.

References

  1. Beach, D.N., 1986, War and Politics in Zimbabwe, 1840-1900, Gweru: Mambo Press.
  2. Bhebe, N., 1973, ‘Some Aspects of the Ndebele Relations with the Shona’, Rhodesian History, vol. iv.
  3. Cobbing, J.R.D., 1976, ‘The Ndebele under the Khumalos’, Ph.D. thesis, University of Lancaster.
  4. Cobbing, J.R.D., 1974,‘The Evolution of Ndebele Amabutho’, Journal of African History, vol. xv, no.4.
  5. Lye, W.L., 1969, ‘The Ndebele Kingdom South of the Limpopo River’, Journal of African History, Vol. xi, pp.87-104.
  6. Ranger, T.O., 1985, The Invention of Tribalism in Zimbabwe, Gweru: Mambo Press.
  7. Rasmussen, R.K., 1978, Migrant Kingdom: Mzilikazi’s Ndebele in South Africa, London: Rex Collings.
  8. Summers, R. and Pagden, C.W., 1970, The Warriors, Cape Town: Books of Africa.
  9. Wallis, J.P.R., 1945, The Matabele Journals of Robert Moffat, 1829-1860: 2 Volumes (Chatto and Windies).

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Vol. 6 No. 1 (2010): Africa Review of Books, Volume 6, n° 1, 2010 →