Both Rhodesian settler novels and ZANU-PF patriotic history erase fluid identities

Evidence

What is left unexplored in the Eurocentric discourses cited above, the texts under discussion in this article, and the ZANU-PF regime’s emphasis on patriotic history as the indispensable modus operandi in determining who belongs and who does not, is that identities are fluid. In his study on colonial settler myths in Southern Rhodesian novels, Chennells (1982) notes that the novels’ major weakness is in their tendency to reduce Southern Rhodesia “to a limited number of images which account for the country and at the same time prevent any more ambitious exploration of its complexities” (p. xviii). — Tavengwa Gwekwerere, Davie E. Mutasa, and Kudakwashe Chitofiri, Settlers, Rhodesians, and Supremacists, 44

Categorization

• XREF: connects to: Harrison’s memoir frames Rhodesian land acquisition as earned by white work ethic — Tavengwa Gwekwerere, Davie E. Mutasa, and Kudakwashe Chitofiri, Settlers, Rhodesians, and Supremacists:…, 48; ZANU-PF reclassified seized farms to shift black beneficiaries onto poorer A1 land — Tavengwa Gwekwerere, Davie E. Mutasa, and Kudakwashe Chitofiri, Settlers, Rhodesians, and Supremacists:…, 31; Colonial censuses imposed a fiction of singular, unambiguous identity on every subject — Benedict Anderson, Imagined Communities: Reflections on…, 649 (+2 more)

Related

• Harrison’s memoir frames Rhodesian land acquisition as earned by white work ethic (similarity 0.83)
• Both settler and liberation epistemologies falsely treat identity as fixed. (similarity 0.82)
• Rhodesian memoirism erases 90 years of black land hunger as legitimate motive (similarity 0.82)
• White farmer memoirs undercut their own entitlement claims by clinging to Rhodesian supremacist discourse (similarity 0.80)
• Some white expelled farmers still refuse to relinquish Rhodesian identity decades later. (similarity 0.78)

Broader Connections

• Rhodesian memoirism erases 90 years of black land hunger as legitimate motive #exemplifies (0.85) — Tavengwa Gwekwerere, Davie E. Mutasa, and Kudakwashe Chitofiri, Settlers, Rhodesians, and Supremacists, 80
• Colonial censuses imposed a fiction of singular, unambiguous identity on every subject #corroborates (0.82) — Benedict Anderson, Imagined Communities, 649
• Some white expelled farmers still refuse to relinquish Rhodesian identity decades later. #exemplifies (0.82) — Tavengwa Gwekwerere, Davie E. Mutasa, and Kudakwashe Chitofiri, Settlers, Rhodesians, and Supremacists, 64