Cultures of Change in Contemporary Zimbabwe

Oliver Nyambi lectures in the Department of English, University of the Free State in South Africa and is currently a fellow of the Alexander von Humboldt Foundation hosted by Susan Arndt in the Professorship of English Studies and Anglophone Literatures at Bayreuth University, Germany. Tendai Mangena is Associate Professor of African Literary and Cultural Studies at Great Zimbabwe University in Zimbabwe and a Research Fellow in the Department of English at the University of the Free State in South Africa. Gibson Ncube lectures in the Department of Modern Foreign Languages, Stellenbosch University and is currently a Fellow at the Stellenbosch Institute for Advanced Study in South Africa.

Introduction: The 2017 coup and cultures of change in Zimbabwe (Oliver Nyambi, Tendai Mangena and Gibson Ncube) Part I: Spectacles of change in the Second Republic 1. The patriotic present: The urgency of now in Zimbabwe’s ‘new’ dispensation (Cuthbeth Tagwirei) 2. The spectacle and semiotics of the Presidential scarf in Zimbabwe’s "Second Republic" (Obert B. Mlambo & Ezra Chitando) 3. Mugabeism otherwise? A critical reflection on toxic leadership and Zimbabwe’s "New Dispensation" (Shepherd Mpofu) 4. Theatres of Struggle in post-Mugabe Zimbabwe (Nkululeko Sibanda) 5. Derisive imaginaries of the death and burial of Mugabe and the nascent aesthetics of coercive power in "Second Republic" politics (Irikidzayi Manase) 6. The spectre of Mugabe: land, change and discursive politics of dispensations in Zimbabwe (Oliver Nyambi) Part II: Tropes of ambivalent "transitions" 7. "We must aspire to be a clean nation": Ambivalences of transition in "New Dispensation" metaphors of dirt (Tendai Mangena) 8. Gukurahundi revisited in the Second Republic: trauma, memory and violence in Novuyo Rosa Tshuma's House of Stone (Gibson Ncube) 9. Spectacles of transition: texts and counter-texts in the historiography of Zimbabwe in transition (Muchativugwa L. Hove) 10. A déjàvu of Orwellian ‘proportions’: Re-reading Animal Farm in the context of Zimbabwean politics of change (Thamsanqa Moyo & Esther Mavengano) Part III: Dis/continuing political cultures 11. Narrativising dis/continuities in ZANU PF intra-power politics (Terrence Musanga) 12. A nation burdened by an unappeased ngozi? A ‘folk’ cultural perspective on Zimbabwe’s stagnation (Mickias Musiyiwa) 13. In and out of court: Zimbabwe’s perennial framing of opposition politics as ‘nuisance needing judiciary pacification’ (Edmore Dube) 14. Auxillia Mnangagwa’s ‘Amaihood’ and the cultural politics of the Zimbabwean First Lady in the "New Dispensation" (Umali Saidi)