Suchergebnisse

1. Making settlers out of pioneers : white women and the development of Rhodesia, 1890-1940 -- 2. The politics of pots and pans : Miriam Staunton, gender norms and the Federation of African Women's Clubs, 1950-1970 -- 3. "Think[ing] black": Eileen Haddon, multiracialism and majority rule, 1953-1965 -- 4. Struggles within the struggle : Diana Mitchell, opposition politics, liberalism, and women's liberation, 1965-1979 -- "Imperialists stuck in a time warp"? : white women, memory and the history of Rhodesia.

ABSTRACTThis article examines one of the most intractable problems that a newly independent nation encounters; the dissonance between the rhetoric of a revolutionary movement and its subsequent treatment of women in nationalist and supposedly decolonial projects. In drawing on interviews and archival research carried out in periodicals, newspapers and Hansard, the article examines the optimism, disillusionment and betrayal of Zimbabwe's women in the first decade of independence. Exploring women's variegated roles during the country's war of independence, this article argues that many women believed that their participation in national liberation would be a precursor to a broader programme of cultural and societal emancipation. Yet, as is shown, governmental thinking placed women as consumers and not producers of new nationalist culture. In particular, the grim reality of the situation was unambiguously shown just three years into independence through 'Operation Clean‐Up', whereby thousands of women in Zimbabwe's main cities of Harare and Bulawayo were indiscriminately detained with state machinery arguing that the women were prostitutes, vagrants and beggars. A blatant effort to curtail women's autonomy in urban spaces, the machinations of 'Operation Clean‐up' demonstrated an uneasy coherence between colonial and post‐colonial thinking regarding the 'appropriate' place for women in the new nation.

This article examines one of the most intractable problems that a newly independent nation encounters; the dissonance between the rhetoric of a revolutionary movement and its subsequent treatment of women in nationalist and supposedly decolonial projects. In drawing on interviews and archival research carried out in periodicals, newspapers and Hansard, the article examines the optimism, disillusionment, and betrayal of Zimbabwe's women in the first decade of independence. Exploring women's variegated roles during the country's war of independence, this article argues that many women believed that their participation in national liberation would be a precursor to a broader programme of cultural and societal emancipation. Yet, as is shown, governmental thinking placed women as consumers and not producers of new nationalist culture. In particular, the grim reality of the situation was unambiguously shown just three years into independence through 'Operation Clean-Up', whereby thousands of women in Zimbabwe's main cities of Harare and Bulawayo were indiscriminately detained with state machinery arguing that the women were prostitutes, vagrants and beggars. A blatant effort to curtail women's autonomy in urban spaces, the machinations of 'Operation Clean-up' demonstrated an uneasy coherence between colonial and post-colonial thinking regarding the 'appropriate' place for women in the new nation.

While the first auto/biography of the heroine of the Afrikaner people, Emily Hobhouse was published a mere three years after her death in 1929, and a steady stream have followed since, in the last three years or so there has been a remarkable resurgence in popular accounts of her life and work. This review essay profiles three of the latest biographies written by Robert Eales, Elsabe Brits and Jennifer Hobhouse-Balme, and variously examines her role in the South African War and her ideas regarding pacifism, war and politics.

AbstractUsing the space created by the land invasions, over the last ten years or so there has been a proliferation of exile memoirs written by white Zimbabweans living in the diaspora, which foreground colonial nostalgia and postcolonial anxiety. This article profiles elements of this latest wave of "white (female) writing", arguing that writers such as Alexandra Fuller construct their own personal narratives based on an extremely teleological and narrow interpretation of the history of Zimbabwe. It is argued that memoirs are used as a mechanism to uphold an idealised (i.e. powerful) white identity, because whites' current "destabilised" identity has resulted in them clinging to a seemingly utopian version of both what it meant to be white and the past. The article also examines some aspects of whiteness studies, utilising Peter McLaren's framework to argue that these memoirs are beset by a whiteness of social amnesia.

With the benefit of hindsight, and in light of the current crisis, a growing number of authors have concluded that Zanu (PF) and Robert Mugabe's relationship with socialism was never more than a cynical slogan employed to mobilise the masses. By contrast, this paper will argue that such interpretations are mistaken. Indeed, an examination of Zanu (PF)'s welfare initiatives in the period 1980-1985 uncovers 'episodes of ambiguity' pointing towards a possible socialist future. Yet as this paper also acknowledges, these moments coexisted with and were soon superseded by authoritarian alternatives. The particular nature of Zimbabwe in this period has been much debated. Both at the time and subsequently, many observers questioned why the country had failed to experience the socialist transformation that Zanu (PF) once promised, given the fact that in the early 1980s the government was implementing a type of socialism that was loosely constructed around welfare provisions. This paper revisits the early 1980s when Zanu (PF) to some extent engaged with socialism on more than a rhetorical level; when a socialist future seemed possible.

This article examines some of the core holdings within the Archive for Contemporary Affairs at the University of the Free State, Bloemfontein, South Africa. Prominent amongst this material are the papers of the National Party (NP), the political party that formalised the structures of apartheid. Paying particular attention to the papers of what Hermann Giliomee has termed 'The Last Afrikaner Leaders' alongside recently acquired material concerning post-colonial politics, we argue for the importance of this archive for scholars studying Afrikaner nationalism, at both national and regional level, the rationales and discourses of apartheid and the history of the country more broadly.

In the lexicon of European de-colonisation, counter-insurgency campaigns were fought against anti-imperialism across the periphery of empire from Vietnam to Algeria and from Kenya to Malaya. British propagandists hoped to persuade the inhabitants of South Arabia that Cairos influence was a threat to the freedom of people across the Middle East and to disseminate the message that Egyptian anti-imperialism was counterfeit. During the late 1940's and early 1950's the British government had played a pioneering role in elucidating the organising principles of Cold War propaganda through the medium of a co-ordinated information policy. The eagerness of British administrators in Aden and military planners in Whitehall to direct information policy for the purposes of counter-insurgency led them into direct conflict with the developmentalist view of the Colonial Office. The thin mortar of information policy was ineffective in patching over the attritional effects of the conflict with Nasser at a time when the imperialist edifice was crumbling with alarming speed.