Solidarity Peace Trust

Paul Chizuze : Disappeared 8 February 2012

Mon, 11 Feb 2013 10:48:00 GMT

Solidarity Peace Trust condemns the continued harassment of civic leaders in Zimbabwe

Sun, 20 Jan 2013 18:05:00 GMT

Solidarity Message with the Counselling Services Unit

Thu, 08 Nov 2012 14:38:00 GMT

SPT-Zimbabwe Update No.5. October 2012: Towards another stalemate in Zimbabwe?

Mon, 22 Oct 2012 09:14:00 GMT

A call for nominations for the 2013 Barbara Chester Award

Thu, 04 Oct 2012 06:52:00 GMT

The Constitution Process and Sexual Minority Rights in Zimbabwe

Thu, 21 Jun 2012 07:34:00 GMT

<table width="700px" cellspacing="0" cellpadding="10" border="0" align="center"> <tbody> <tr> <td height="auto" width="700" valign="top" bgcolor="#ffffff"> <center><img src="http://www.solidaritypeacetrust.org/images/SPTlogo.gif" align="center" title="Solidarity Peace Trust Logo" alt="Solidarity Peace Trust Logo"> Solidarity Peace Trust</center> <hr size="1" style="color: rgb(88, 56, 157);"> The Constitution Process and Sexual Minority Rights in Zimbabwe 21 June 2012 <img src="http://www.solidaritypeacetrust.org/wp-content/uploads/2012/06/galz_logo.gif" align="left" alt="GALZ Logo" width="257" height="254"> by Marc Epprecht - Dept. of Global Development Studies and Dept. of History, Queens University, Canada Two flags fly side by side over the corner of a quiet tree-lined street and a busy thoroughfare in one of Harare's inner northern suburbs. There is the red, gold, black and green of Zimbabwe's national standard (let's not talk of the splash of white just now). But beside it flutters something even more colourful: the international symbol of gay pride. The rainbow flag signifies the diversity of sexual orientation and gender identity within the unity of the whole, humanity, democratic rights and freedoms for all citizens. It is a remarkable statement of self-confidence by GALZ (formerly Gays and Lesbians of Zimbabwe), the owner of the property from which the flags have been hoisted. The association itself has been around for over two decades providing social and legal support, counselling, sexual health education, research, and lobbying for sexual minority rights. Its social centre dates from 1996 courtesy of the courage of its founders and the generosity (and discipline) of its principal funders, HIVOS and the Atlantic Philanthropies, notably. GALZ maintains a website and puts out a well-written, sometimes quite combative newsletter/magazine. Among GALZ' numerous other publications is an overview of the history of same-sex sexuality in southern Africa from pre-colonial times (that is, within traditional African cultures), and a thoroughly referenced legal brief that argued for the inclusion of sexual orientation in the proposed (but eventually aborted) 1999 constitution (GALZ 1999). I was at the centre recently to chat with members, and I have to admit my expectations coming in were not all that high. GALZ' long-time director and resident dynamo Keith Goddard, had died suddenly a couple of years ago, while many of the other movers and shakers from the early days had left. I'd heard that following the last police raid, the library and archives had been moved away for safety. Harare in general is a mess, people are close to starving in the rural areas, and I had frankly never seen a tobacco leaf as pathetic as the ones hanging from spindly stalks in the new resettlement farms I had passed through. The press was meanwhile once again full of bile, stereotypes and mockery of homosexuals and the very concept of gay rights. The prospect of elections always seems to bring out this nasty streak in Zimbabwe's political discourse, although of course Zimbabweans are not alone in that regard. From Uganda to Senegal to Burundi, sexual minorities have been the target of increased demagogic attacks and quite explicitly, expansively oppressive legislation in the last few years. Uganda's proposed Anti-Homosexuality Bill would criminalize mothers who didn't report their own children to the police if they suspected homosexual behaviour, among other insanities justified in the name of protecting the nation from immoral foreign influences. Yet in all my years of visiting, GALZ has never looked quite so ... solid. It was not just the flag. The grounds of the centre were neat, the computers new-ish, the staff professional and efficient. And the members who came to my event were all black by the usual measure of these things. They ranged from mature Shona women to nattily dressed young puppies (male "queens"), from articulate and well-informed professionals to somebody smoking mbanje in the back row. I was informed that membership is well above the levels of the late 1990s. There now affinity groups in most of the major cities of the country with outreach projects extending even into the rural areas. My visit to GALZ this time was to present my perspectives as an academic researcher on the current state of the struggle for sexual minority rights on the continent, and in the process to take the pulse of opinion on the topic. More than 100 people turned up on a chilly Friday afternoon to listen, and respectfully to contest my basically optimistic view of things. After a lengthy Q and A, we broke for bread and some enthusiastic dancing. I was not convinced that lgbti (lesbian, gay, bisexual, trans and intersex) people are as oppressed and fearful today as they were in the mid-1990s when the political homophobia (and my own involvement) began. To be fair, no one really tried all that hard to persuade me that they were. Not to say that GALZ is strong, per se. Like most such associations in the region, it remains heavily dependent on foreign donor support. Acts of violence, blackmail, and dehumanizing speech against members are common, while the temptation to gap it to the West or South Africa for asylum or simply to make ends meet is powerful. Yet GALZ has not only survived with growth through the devastating last decade. It has also been able to build bridges with other civil society groups working towards a democratic Zimbabwe. In May, GALZ joined with representatives of several of those groups to present their anxieties about the current situation to the visiting UN envoy on human rights, Navi Pillay, an outspoken supporter of the seamlessness of sexual minority rights with gender equality and all the other rights and freedoms enshrined in the vast array of international declarations, treaties and convenants to which Zimbabwe is signatory. Human rights in a general sense are indeed back in public discourse as Zimbabwe prepares for the end of the Government of National Unity next year. Part of that process is the drafting of a new constitution that would enable free and fair elections - and the rule of law thereafter - in accordance to the high standards enunciated by SADC. A committee of parliament comprised of representatives of all three parties known as COPAC was struck and started gathering public input in 2010. COPAC presented its first draft in February of this year, with further revisions suggested in May. Negotiations are currently stalled, however, and it is not hard to see why. A truly democratic constitution would have dire consequences for the ruling party's grip on power. It would prevent the many layers of human rights abuses, cheating and looting by which ZANU-PF has entrenched itself while driving the economy into the ground over the past decades. No one doubts that the stakes are high, not least of all the security apparatus. Members of the latter have hinted darkly at they would not allow the forces of colonialism to re-take the country, a not-too-subtle threat against the Movement for Democratic Change-Tsvangirai, and a gesture of contempt towards SADC. SADC has nonetheless insisted that the process must be adhered to, while Pillay directly chastised the military for intervening in the discussion. She warned all parties, but with most obvious allusion to ZANU-PF, that human rights are not negotiable or divisible. Unsurprisingly, ZANU-PF has shown little enthusiasm for the constitutional process and has sought to derail it by whatever means it can. It lodged no less than 90 objections to the first draft of the constitution, including over such huge political questions as the devolution of power from the national to provincial jurisdictions and limitations on the executive powers of the president. Judging from coverage in the state-controlled (sycophantic) Herald, however, the biggest threat posed to the nation would seem to be "the gays." On the day of my arrival, a front page story worried about language in the draft that called for no discrimination based on "circumstances of birth." This was a rewording of the original February draft ("natural difference or condition or [...] other status," which had already been rejected by ZANU-PF. The problem? It was too open to interpretation that it included sexual orientation. In case readers didn't get the point, this story was followed by another of a brutal paederastic rape and a warning from visiting American evangelists on how much they love homosexuals as people but hate the sins that homosexuals allegedly commit. The "circumstances of birth" clause was not the only one to raise the alarm for various ZANU-PF critics. Attack dog Jonathan Moyo, for example, denounced COPAC (despite having ZANU-PF members on it!) for using "trickery and deceit" to sneak gay rights into the constitution against the democratic wishes of the mass of the population. Unlike Zambia's new constitution, for example, the draft does not explicitly define marriage and family as based upon opposite-sex unions only. COPAC was hence almost inviting "the gays" to use the document's other generous equality and human rights provisions, or its respectful mentions of international obligations, to press their "scandalous" demands. Competing ZANU-PF factions are meanwhile assiduously courting traditional chiefs and popular evangelical Christian leaders using barely coded language of hate that would be prohibited under the proposed constitution's definition of what would not allowed under freedom of speech. As it happens, gay marriage is not a priority for GALZ, which also adamantly rejects any connection between sexual minority rights and pederasty, rape and bestiality, common misleading associations made by its enemies. GALZ further rejects the notion of gay rights (that is, rights specific to lgbti). It insists, rather, that all it seeks are equal protections against discrimination, violence, and hate speech to those offered (at least theoretically) to the rest of the citizenry. To that extent, the present draft of the constitution is promising. People have of course come to expect abuse and misinformation from ZANU-PF and its fellow travellers, while few were surprised last year when MDC-T leader Morgan Tsvangirai sided with Mugabe on the need to exclude sexual orientation as a category requiring constitutional protection on the grounds that it would be against Zimbabwean culture. Tsvangirai has since stated that he would, after all, accept a clause protecting sexual minority rights but that these were an extremely low priority for his party. Unsurprisingly, therefore, confidence both in Tsvangirai's leadership on this issue and that the present draft of the constitution will be adopted, appears to be low among GALZ members. As for the American "friends" of Zimbabwe who propose to show their love for African homosexuals by offering to cure or convert them back to God's supposed plan, they are a new and worrisome development. The so-called ex-gay movement lends a cloak of moderation or pseudo-scientific validity to the denial of human rights to lgbti. Yet it has been directly linked to the rise of extremist homophobia in Uganda, and has been used as a justification for vigilantism that serves opportunistic politicians well. It is a fraught situation given the other very strong appeals that evangelical Christianity has among Zimbabwe's struggling population. I would nonetheless like to argue that there is greater hope for thwarting the ex-gay movement than might first appear. A new report by the World Bank is a good starting point. That institution is not normally given to strong statements on matters of religious faith or psychological theory. In this case, however, it states rather forcefully that: "An overwhelming body of evidence supported by the international community of professional organizations who have reviewed the extant literature on the efficacy of conversion therapy has rejected it as ineffective, unnecessary, potentially harmful, and ethically controversial. On the basis of expert consensus in combination with a lack of biologic plausibility and efficacy data, reparative or corrective therapy is given a Grade 4, or inappropriate recommendation" (Chris Beyrer et al 2011, xxxiii). The World Bank report, coming on the heels of similar statements from the UNAIDS, WHO, the US government and other weighty international bodies, is a good point to begin critically assessing the commonly-held view that homosexuality and gay rights are a form of Western cultural imperialism, a fad or new religion being foisted upon Africa (hypocritically, since many jurisdictions in the West themselves do not enshrine or consistently enforce said rights). This is a point where ZANU-PF and many of its opponents seem to basically agree. Even if reluctantly accepted as a legitimate extension of human rights, the protection of sexual orientation and gender variance is a luxury that Africans can ill afford, "elitist" in Tsvangirai's terms. In this view, African leaders who do more than pay lip service to the principle are spinelessly kowtowing to donor pressures rather than defending the cultural integrity and other supposedly real interests of their people. Indeed, Malawi's new president Joyce Banda has already received a lot of grief from African critics for her quick and unambiguous denunciation of her predecessors' homophobia. No one disputes that many Africans are sincerely upset by the challenge to traditional culture posed by the emergence of openly gay identities in Africa. And few would deny that there are clear ties between this new-ish kind of sexual politics and "the gay international" (as one Arab critic put it). It is a big mistake, however, to go from there to denying the African-ness, including the patriotism, of African sexual rights activists. Yes, there is sometimes discomfiting pressure from Western donors these days, with no small sums of hypocrisy in their human rights discourse. But my reading of that discourse is that human rights are in fact often rather understated in the broader foreign policy or development priorities. The main thrust of the World Bank report, for example, is to calculate the economic costs of continuing to ignore the HIV pandemic associated with African msm. Using various models, it comes up with dollar and lives-saved figures for different levels of public health interventions. Even the cheapest options (for example, educational materials, partial coverage of the most-at-risk msm with condoms and lubricant) would save tens of thousands of lives each year. The most expensive option would include full coverage of msm with anti-retroviral medications. While it would cost hundreds of millions of dollars continent-wide, it would save billions of dollars depending on how much value is attached to the lives of young adults and children infected at birth. The World Bank report draws on recent data that show up to 15-20% of all new infections in places like Kenya and Senegal involve msm either infecting each other or, more commonly, the wives and girlfriends with whom they also maintain relations. Why would msm also have sex with women? No doubt some enjoy the variety for what they experience as its inherent pleasures. For many, however, wives and girlfriends are a strategy to hide their "real" sexuality from public exposure and the risk that such brings of ostracism from family, loss of employment, violence, and social disgrace. This secretive de facto bisexuality means that a high percentage of the victims of homophobia in Africa are heterosexual women and the children they bear who may carry the infection passed to them from their fathers, something which GALZ has been warning its own members about for many years. How to achieve 100% coverage of msm and the consequent economic benefits? It is an impossible target if men are afraid to be identified due to homophobic laws and social stigma. Human rights are thus strongly implicit in the World Bank argument, however clumsily economistic it may sound. Any leader who wilfully ignores such evidence in the name of supposed African culture (while at the same time wearing Saville Row suits) would be criminally negligent, no? Tsvanigirai's recent lukewarm, if not token nod in favour of the principle of sexual minority rights takes on a new light in that perspective. Terming them "elitist," he is clearly not aware of the overwhelming evidence that connects human rights for all citizens to public health and economic development. Since this connection is clearly stated in Zimbabwe's National AIDS Strategy, he is also clearly unaware of his own government's official (albeit in practice almost totally disregarded) policy. GALZ members on the whole do appreciate the public health argument to the extent that it puts their concerns forward in an ostensibly apolitical, scientific, and morally neutral manner. A range of euphemisms and acronyms (like msm and MARP or most-at-risk-population) is also useful for getting a foot in the door for interventions that might otherwise not make it past the guardians of public virtue. But medicalizing the debate is also highly problematic. How will women who have sex with women be included in an approach that necessarily emphasizes the high risk nature of many current msm practices? How can a stigmatized population avoid further stigmatization if publicity focuses on the health dangers they pose to the general population? How are the goals of self-esteem and political confidence nurtured among young lgbti when the main association representing them prioritizes disease and practices mild deception? And who wants to trust the World Bank? A question then is how to make the case for human rights for sexual minorities without submerging it in medical or pathologizing language while at the same time avoiding the appearance of being "elitist" or simply aping the West? Armed with good research, this is actually not as difficult a task as people often assume. For example, one reason people justify discrimination against gay men is because they do anal and oral sex which are supposed to be against nature. Those practices are widely assumed to be exclusive to gay men (indeed, this was often flatly asserted in the early biomedical research on HIV in Africa). Yet new research shows that anal and oral sex are common among heterosexual couples in Zimbabwe, as elsewhere in Africa. If heterosexuals can do these acts, why can't same-sex couples? If they should not do those act, will, and how will the state then intervene to stop heterosexual couples from their unnatural behaviour? The Western cultural imperialism argument is also getting easier to refute. Is South Africa part of the West? Brazil (where last year for the first time the majority of the population identified as African)? Those two countries co-sponsored last year's UN resolution to include sexual orientation in the list of reasons not to torture, kill or otherwise cause harm to people. Interestingly, the South African ambassador to the UN justified his country's newly assertive foreign policy on this issue by reference to the struggle against colonialism. He pointed out how most of the African countries that persecute lgbti (including Zimbabwe) do so on the basis of laws inherited from the colonialists (he could have added shoddy science, racist ethnography, and colonialist interpretations of scripture). African liberation thus requires decriminalizing sodomy laws, among other inherited discriminatory legislation, as South Africa and Cape Verde have already done and several other countries are currently mooting (eg., the Botswana High Court is considering that application as I write). The turn in South African foreign policy on this issue is important to the Zimbabwean case as South Africa is the "point man" for SADC's monitoring of Zimbabwe's political reform process. President Jacob Zuma has his critics and no doubt holds fairly deep personal reservations about sexual minority rights even in his own country. But he deserves credit for apologizing for homophobic statements he has made in the past, and for supporting the move to square South Africa's foreign policy with the principles laid out in its domestic constitution. It is difficult to see how his party could now accept a public back down to appease ZANU-PF on this file. There has meanwhile been a veritable explosion of new research, art, literature, and film about and by African lgbti. New social media make this material more available to Zimbabwean citizens than ever in history. GALZ members and their allies in civil society can now read about lesbian sangomas in South Africa, legal victories by lgbti in Uganda (Argentina, Mexico, Jamaica, India, and so on in the Global South), an openly gay candidate for senate in Kenya, gay-friendly churches and ministers in Nigeria, queer support groups and networks for Muslims, and much, much more on their (ubiquitous) mobile phones. In short, GALZ members, family and allies need no longer fret that they are alone in Africa or somehow un-African for their beliefs and practices. Nor need African lgbti always and necessarily remain on the defensive. On the contrary, another noteworthy development over the past year is that African activists are no longer passive recipients of the fruits of rights victories in the West. They are taking the fight directly to the West. A suit filed by Sexual Minorities of Uganda earlier this year in a federal court in Massachusets will be a case to watch. SMUG is using US federal law to hold US ex-gay minister Scott Lively and four Ugandan "co-conspirators" accountable for the homophobic violence they are alleged to have fuelled with their activities in Uganda. Should SMUG win it will have done an important service not only for Africans who are anxious about the spread of US-style bigotry, but also for Americans anxious about the role of Christian fundamentalists in fomenting homophobia in the US. I was pleasantly surprised to find that the case was well-known to the GALZ membership. Given all that President Mugabe has said since 1995 about lgbti as avatars of colonialism and continental moral decline, and given Prime Minister Tsvangirai's obvious lack of understanding and commitment to sexual minority rights, it is hard to believe that those rights will be accepted in the constitution as long as these two leaders remain key players in the constitutional debate. The tide, however, is clearly shifting under their feet. <blockquote>Rights reserved: Please credit the author, and Solidarity Peace Trust, as the original source for all material republished on other websites unless otherwise specified. Please provide a link back to http://www.solidaritypeacetrust.org This article can be cited in other publications as follows: Epprecht, M. (2012) 'The Constitution Process and Sexual Minority Rights in Zimbabwe', 21 June, Solidarity Peace Trust: http://www.solidaritypeacetrust.org/1226/the-constitution-process-and-sexual-minority-rights-in-zimbabwe/</blockquote> SELECT SOURCES Beyrer et al 2011. <a href="http://siteresources.worldbank.org/INTHIVAIDS/Resources/375798-1103037153392/MSMReport.pdf">http://siteresources.worldbank.org/INTHIVAIDS/Resources/375798-1103037153392/MSMReport.pdf</a> GALZ. 1999. Sexual Orientation and Zimbabwe's New Constitution: A Case for Inclusion. <a href="http://www.kubatana.net/html/archive/sexual/090702galz.asp?sector=SEXUAL">http://www.kubatana.net/html/archive/sexual/090702galz.asp?sector=SEXUAL</a> <a href="http://www.galz.co.zw/">www.galz.co.zw</a> Zimbabwe: Constitution Parliamentary Select Committee <a href="http://www.copac.org.zw/">http://www.copac.org.zw/</a> For further information, please contact Selvan Chetty - Deputy Director, Solidarity Peace Trust Email: selvan@solidaritypeacetrust.org Tel: +27 (39) 682 5869 Fax: +27 (39) 682 5869 Address: Suite 4 3rd Floor MB Centre 49 Aiken Street Port Shepstone 4240 Kwazulu-Natal South Coast </td> </tr> </tbody> </table>

Perils and Pitfalls - Migrants and Deportation in South Africa

Tue, 05 Jun 2012 10:27:00 GMT

Invitation to launch of new report and video: 'Perils and Pitfalls'

Mon, 04 Jun 2012 07:10:00 GMT

History and Fiction in the Writing of 'We Are All Zimbabweans Now'

Fri, 04 May 2012 07:35:00 GMT

<table width="700px" cellspacing="0" cellpadding="10" border="0" align="center"> <tbody> <tr> <td height="auto" width="700" valign="top" bgcolor="#ffffff"> <center><img src="http://www.solidaritypeacetrust.org/images/SPTlogo.gif" align="center" title="Solidarity Peace Trust Logo" alt="Solidarity Peace Trust Logo"> Solidarity Peace Trust</center> <hr size="1" style="color: rgb(88, 56, 157);"> History and Fiction in the Writing of 'We Are All Zimbabweans Now' 4 May 2012 <img src="http://www.solidaritypeacetrust.org/images/kilgore_mail.jpg" title="'We are all Zimbabweans now' - a novel by James Kilgore" alt="'We are all Zimbabweans now' - a novel by James Kilgore" width="305" height="437" align="left" /> By James Kilgore - Research Scholar, Center for African Studies, University of Illinois, (Urbana-Champaign). This essay is part of an initiative by the Trust that aims to open up the intellectual debates on current politics in the country, and to provide more extended discussions around key issues of central concern to the Trust. We invite you to participate in discussion stimulated by this article by <a href="http://www.solidaritypeacetrust.org/1175/the-writing-of-we-are-all-zimbabweans-now/">following this link </a>and submitting comments on this, or other essays included in a new section on our website known as the <a href="http://www.solidaritypeacetrust.org/zimbabwe-review/">Zimbabwe Review</a>. You may also respond via email: please send your comments to <a href="mailto:discussion@solidaritypeacetrust.org">discussion@solidaritypeacetrust.org</a>. Please note that some comments may be selected for publication on our website alongside the article to further stimulate debate. I began my career as a fiction writer in 2003 at the age of 57. I guess you could say my entry into this world of the writer took place under special circumstances. At the time I was in a California prison, adjusting to a new way of life after spending 27 years as a fugitive. Most of that time I'd spent in southern Africa, working as an educator and helping my partner raise our children. By 2003 all of that was becoming distant memories. To make matters worse, the few bits and pieces of information I did get about events in Zimbabwe were hardly cheering. From afar I was witnessing the descent of a country where I had spent most of the 1980s into political and economic chaos. After awhile I began to realize what was happening in Zimbabwe was not only a struggle about land and political power, it was a struggle over history. Two competing paradigms were vying for hegemony. Robert Mugabe and his inner circle were advancing what Professor Terence Ranger, would later term "patriotic history." This vision laid all problems of Zimbabwe past and present at the doorstep of British imperialismwith white Rhodesians occupying a special category of surrogate oppressor. Patriotic history constituted a unifying cry, an attempt to capture public memory and divert the attention of Zimbabweans from any authoritarianism, corruption, and divisions along ethnic or class lines. Patriotic history's "them and us" clearly delineated the fault lines and papered over any curiosity aroused by the memories of individuals who had suffered at the hands of the Fifth Brigade or those who quietly watched their children starve while political leaders drove by in their BMWs. On the opposite pole, the seizure of white-owned farms by the Mugabe government prompted a resurrection of colonialist history. The few Western media reports I saw pictured beleaguered white farmers under attack by unrelenting, unreasoning Africans. These accounts typically portrayed whites as innocent victims in this process, a well-intentioned minority who had built up the country during Rhodesia days and subsequently joined hands with black compatriots in reconciliation after independence, only to be reviled and dispossessed. Though I only heard of them peripherally, memoirs by white Zimbabweans/Rhodesians soon burst forth to revive the myths of the past. (Buckle, 2001 and 2006; Hunter et al. 2001; Harrison 2006) Like its patriotic counterpart, this resurgent white supremacist history involved simplifying and omitting. Blights on the days of white rule such as the migrant labor system, black disenfranchisement, expropriation of African lands conveniently disappeared. Eric Harrison, on a website named after his memoir Jambanja, encapsulated this view neatly in his description of post-1980 Zimbabwe: <blockquote>Tyranny replaced the democratic process. National self-sufficiency gave way to drastic shortages and malnutrition. Through all this sorry history one thing stood out - the indomitable spirit of the white and black Zimbabweans who were the victims of this insanity. (2010)</blockquote> As a person in prison and as an historian dual urges struck me. The first was to in some way connect to events in Zimbabwe. On a personal level, this was an effort to transcend my incarceration, to link not only with the place and events, but with the people in this hour of conflict and confusion. Writing would shorten the psychological and historical distance between myself and southern Africa, where the bulk of my family, friends, and personal emotions resided. Linked to this was the second urge, perhaps more fantastical: to make some kind of meaningful intervention into what was taking place in Zimbabwe. Given my situation, such aspirations seemed almost laughable. The bulk of the political struggles were being fought on the ground, one place I definitely could not be. However, the struggle over history involved, at least to some extent, a war of words. On that battle front, I was in good shape. I had a lot of time to produce words. Certainly I wouldn't have the last word, but something I wrote might just trigger one or two thoughts in someone far away. For an imprisoned writer, that's grabbing the gold. Besides, even if my words never reached anyone, the act of writing would help me to put my own thoughts about Zimbabwe in order. I decided to write an historical novel. Of course I had one big problem in this endeavour-I'd never written a novel before. My one foray into fiction was a short story published in a community magazine in Melbourne, Australia some two decades earlier. Fortunately, to my knowledge, no copies of that feeble effort had survived. As a novice fiction writer I not only had to create a story, I had to invent a writing process. At the time I started constructing the text, I really had no idea about the details of plot, setting, character, and all the other things they teach people in writing and literature classes. I was flailing in the darkness. When I look back on it, I really don't see how I ever managed to produce a novel in such ridiculous circumstances, but I did. So let me describe how it happened. I'll start with a plot summary, then look at how I tied together the historical paradigms that concerned me with the story I wanted to tell. After that I'll outline how I actually developed the ability to write what became We Are All Zimbabweans Now. Plot Summary The story takes place in early 1980s Zimbabwe, right after independence. The protagonist Ben Dabney, a young American post-graduate student in History, travels to Zimbabwe with a totally idealized picture of Robert Mugabe and the Zimbabwean notion of reconciliation. Ben sees Mugabe as the embodiment of the spirit of Gandhi, Mother Teresa and Martin Luther King, a logical candidate for the Nobel Peace Prize. As an historian, Ben aims to tell the story of the Zimbabwean miracle of reconciliation to the world. Obviously this is going to be story of disillusionment. Ben wends his way through a romance with an ex-freedom fighter, a conflict with the Fifth Brigade in Matabeleland and harassment from the C.I.O. when he tries to investigate the death of Elias Tichasara, a ZANLA guerrilla leader who died in an unexplained car accident right before independence. In the end Ben abandons his project of writing praise poetry for Mugabe and re-works his approach toward history and ultimately life itself. That's it in a nutshell. Now let me explain how I put it together. Developing An Approach to the History My first priority was linking my approach to history with the story. Many writers of historical fiction ignore notions of approach or paradigm, often seeing a hard divide between history and historical fiction. Author William Martin, for example, argues that: <blockquote>The historian serves the truth of his subject. The novelist serves the truth of his tale. (2010)</blockquote> Guy Vanderhaeghe concurs: <blockquote>To what do I owe my primary allegiance? The demands of history or the demands of the novel? In the end, I clearly opted for what I felt was necessary to ensure the artistic integrity of the novel. I entered the camp of Mark Twain who said, 'First get your facts. Then do with them what you will.' I decided the noun novel was more important than the adjective historical. (2005)</blockquote> For many such writers, the goal is to achieve what is alternatively referred to as authenticity, believability, or verisimilitude. The key to all this rests primarily in the details of setting. While lawyers, politicians and business leaders often proclaim that the devil is in the details, Vanderhaeghe offers a totally different slant: <blockquote>As a writer of fiction I live and breathe minutiae, quirky odds and ends of information. For a novelist, it is not the devil that is found in the details. The details are where God resides. A novel cries out for texture to lend it verisimilitude. (2005)</blockquote> In this same paper, Vanderhaeghe goes on to argue that writing historical fiction somehow liberates a writer from the shackles of academic rigor. As he put it: "the lack of evidence provided me with freedom." Hence, the reflections of writers of historical fiction often dwell on quests for the obscure, the hunt for memoirs which detail the color and textures of the curtains in the living room or describe how to make a jug of mead. While I spent considerable time doing such research myself, (which I will discuss below), the authenticity of my story didn't revolve around such details. Rather, the believability of this tale would ultimately hinge on my ability to recreate the political and historical landscape of Zimbabwe in the 1980s. First of all this required me deciding what I actually made of that history, where I stood on the debates and interpretations of Zimbabwean history in the 1980s and how that linked to my project of writing a novel in the early 2000s. Doing this from thousands of miles away in the absence of access to the Internet or a library, meant relying on a few books sent in and tapping into my own knowledge and experience in an effective way. I began by reconstructing the evolution in my own thinking about Zimbabwean history. I harkened back to 1983 when I was teaching Form 2 History at Harare's Mabvuku High School. The Ministry of Education had just scrapped the Rhodesian syllabus and inserted a new nationalist curriculum in its place. The problem was, at that time there were no textbooks or support materials available. We had to create our own. To teach the first Chimurenga/Umvukela, I secured a copy of Terence Ranger's Revolt in Southern Rhodesia. I spent many hours pouring over the ins and outs of Kaguvi, Nehanda, and Mukwati, preparing detailed notes for my students which I then transferred to printed sheets via the mimeograph machine in the hallway outside the Headmaster's office. This was the starting point of my engagement with nationalist historiography-the idea that the colonized were not mere passive victims in the process of colonialism but rightfully resisted. What a great leap forward this was from the leftover Rhodesian textbooks, The Patterns of History, which propagated notions like blacks being better suited for slavery because dark skins could endure the hot sun. The nationalist historiography helped to unearth pockets of African resistance in all corners of colonial society and demonstrated how the struggle for independence was a long, slow, uneven but inevitable process. The insights of nationalism, combined with my reading of Marxist political economy, guided me through my teaching and writing in the 1980s. This culminated in contributing a number of chapters to what became the most popular O level textbook in the country, People Making History (1991 and 1994), a book that, perhaps regrettably, is still sold today. Fortunately, my own evolution did not stop there. For while the nationalist historiography and Marxist political economy shed light on significant aspects of colonial and post-independence history, they also cast some rather malevolent shadows. In particular, the infatuation with the success and moral authority of the armed struggle made many of us too quick to rise to the defense of Mugabe and his inner circle. Most tragically, the light of nationalist inspiration blinded me and a large swath of people in Zimbabwe at the time (including historians) to the scale and significance of the military offensives by the Zimbabwean government forces in Matabeleland during the 1980s. We heard reports of slaughter and repression from people who lived in Matabeleland. We believed those tales but from our intellectual comfort zone the violence in Matabeleland remained a minor blemish on a glorious movement, something akin to the Nhari rebellion or the assassination of Herbert Chitepo. We were also certain (hopeful in fact) that the bulk of "dissident" activity was instigated by the apartheid regime. We still wanted to deny that ethnicity or regionalism could play a significant role in an obviously successful nationalist project. It took a long time to shake the foundations of that belief. Ultimately my discontent with this nationalist paradigm went beyond giving Gukurahundi and all its ramifications a rightful place in history. There were class and gender issues which nationalist historiography also skimmed over. Nationalist-oriented historians focused on the political realm at the highest levels-party structures and position papers, rivalries and intrigues within organizations, and post-independence twists and turns in policy and personnel. My experience with domestic workers, both as a teacher in an evening school as well as in my research, brought my lens down to a lower level. I adopted a "history from below" perspective, one which I saw at that time as a deepening of, rather than a rejection of the nationalist approach. While I remained within the nationalist paradigm, looking at post-independence Zimbabwe from below prompted me to ask some bigger questions, particularly which classes benefited from the ZANU-led government and why. Furthermore, nationalist historiography and histories of nationalism generally had a woeful record when it came to gender issues. Much of nationalist practice and history kept women in the background. Party political positions defended womens' equality but actions reflected something very different. My research into domestic workers led me to engage with another aspect of history from below, the gendered nature of Zimbabwean society and the experience of working class and rural women. In addition to the above issues further consideration of nationalist historiography brought out critiques with regard to issues of ethnicity, spirituality/ religion, urban-rural divides, the implications of political violence as a strategy for liberation and the nature of democracy. Somehow I needed to draw all these threads together and weave them into a story. I was determined that a reader of my work would neither conclude that Robert Mugabe was a saintly savior of the African people nor that whites in pre- and post-1980 Zimbabwe were uniformly champions of peace and racial equality. But I had to complicate things much further while reminding myself that there were aspects of the nationalist historiography such as the emphasis on political economy and race which I could not cast completely aside. In the midst of juggling the complexities of all this, a further complicator arrived one day at mail call, Luise White's book The Assassination of Herbert Chitepo (2003). Her work tore apart notions of absolute historical truth in Zimbabwe, freeing me from the idea that all history must be knowable, that circumstances could never overwhelm the intrepid researcher in a quest for truth. White reminded me that history was not a murder mystery to be solved but rather a set of questions to pursue, guided by a curiosity and at times a desire to be surprised by what you find rather than to simply uncover more evidence which already substantiates what you "know." This morass of ideas continually raced through my head as I lay on various prison bunks or stood in line for trays of goulash in penitentiaries in places like Lompoc, Tracy and Susanville. But without the time for reflection with which prison authorities were kind enough to provide me, I would never have been able to complicate Zimbabwean history enough to write a novel with any measure of authenticity. In my mind, no historical fiction could carry much weight if the writer wasn't as concerned with the interpretations and debates of the history, indeed the politics of the history, as in the vitality of the story. My allegiance was as much to history as to the novel. History in this instance was not only the facts, but how historical theories, interpretations, and debates enter the political arena. Truth v. Fiction: What to Fictionalize The second issue I had to address was the question of fictionalizing versus telling the whole truth. The spectrum of historical fiction ranges from acute realism to magical realism to alternate history to historical fantasy- from tracing every little fact and detail in precision to making it all up. As an academic historian of sorts and a history teacher, it's not surprising that I fell on the realist end of the spectrum, especially since I chose to write about events that took place in Zimbabwe at a time I lived there. Making use of my own experiences seemed to be a vital contribution to the authenticity of my work. However, since this exercise would inevitably rely heavily on my memory of events rather than historians' accounts, I decided to fictionalize all the characters who actually appear in the story with the exception of Robert Mugabe. "Bob" just had to be there. This wasn't simply a creative choice. In the absence of access to sources, I wasn't confident I could gather the necessary details of the lives of people like Eddson Zvobgo, Enos Nkala or Joyce Mujuru to avoid major errors of fact. Of course there were some grey areas in terms of fictionalization. A number of the characters in We Are All Zimbabweans Now bear quite close resemblance to real people. The most obvious example would be Elias Tichasara, a liberation fighter whose untimely death in a car accident looks a lot like Josiah Tongogara's. I chose to fictionalize him simply because his totally fictionalized son and former lover were central characters in my plot. From where I was I had no idea if there was a Josiah Tongogara, Jr. or even an ex-partner of Tongogara's who had his child. Rather than run the risk of slandering such people if they existed, I chose to fictionalize the character, perhaps at the loss of some authenticity. Many other characters are amalgamations. For instance, the somewhat Zvobgoesque Pius Manyeche ultimately had a Maurice Nyagumbo ending. And some of Ben's confrontations with local culture, like kneeling down to a Shona-speaking woman, are incidents which actually occurred to people that I knew in Zimbabwe in this period. At times, my line between fiction and true history was quite fine. However, relying on so many fictitious characters meant paying attention to the accuracy of other elements of the novel. Other than trying to ensure a factual accuracy about events of the period, I also spent considerable time trying to re-create the sensory context so important for a work of fiction. My God wasn't in the details but I couldn't neglect those details either. I didn't want to fictionalize sadza into pasta or Tanganda Tea into Twinings. I spent hours making up what writers call a "sensory diary", a listing of things I saw, heard, smelled, tasted or touched during my time in Zimbabwe. This list was greatly enhanced by the opportunity to read novels by Shimmer Chinodya (1989) and Tsitsi Dangarembga (1988), as well as the brilliant collection of interviews, Mothers of the Revolution by Irene Staunton (1991). This prompted some serious self-reflection. How much had my own perception and analysis of events altered my own memory of them over the years? Could I trust myself as a source? How could I verify my own memories given the limitations of my status of incarceration? For example, I was convinced that I could still accurately recall the coating that roasted matumbu left on the roof of my mouth and that a sip of cold Castle would wash it away. I was also fairly sure that rural bus conductors used to walk around on the top of moving buses but I couldn't exactly recall an incident of this taking place. From a California prison cell, I couldn't test such hypotheses. I chose to accept them as authentic, though I could not verify their absolute "truth." Historical Debate as Plot Device In the first draft of We Are All Zimbabweans Now, Ben Dabney wasn't an historian. Then I read The DaVinci Code. While many criticisms can be made of Dan Brown's work, The DaVinci Code very effectively demonstrated the connections between the power to write and propagate history and the actual wielding of political power. Ultimately the journey of Brown's protagonist was a quest to unpack the forces that lurked behind popular perceptions of the church and religious history. I believed Zimbabwean history held at least as many controversies and intrigues as the history of the church, so I sought to write a novel that would unpack a few of them. Hopefully, though, I didn't make up quite as many events and historical forces as Dan Brown did. Historical debate enters the plot thread of We Are All Zimbabweans Now via Ben. He is an historian who begins with a project of writing the story of his hero, Robert Mugabe. At this point Ben sits squarely in the "great man" school of history, albeit with a nationalist slant. However, shortly into his research, Ben's very supportive supervisor leaves and a Professor Latham takes over. Latham is a Briton who longs for the glory days of the empire. Latham threatens to pull the plug on Ben's funding unless he interviews more whites from the previous government. The sets off the debate inside the historian part of Ben's mind. Then the ZANU ruling circles try to woo Ben. Cabinet ministers welcome his project, promise him the red carpet treatment including an interview with Mugabe if he follows their recommended path. They are lining him up to write what likely would have been the "patriotic" history of that time. Next Ben meets a young British woman historian at the archives. They enter a short, stormy affair where Ben momentarily becomes a part of a cynical expatriate circle, those who are revolted by the racist attitudes of local whites but denigrate any expectation that a Mugabe-led government can do much better. They push Ben toward yet a third historian's role, that of distant, comfortable expatriate eating roast beef dinners served by domestic workers, bemoaning the lack of a good red wine in the shops, and writing obscure, self-serving tomes about minutiae. Finally, through various sets of circumstances, Ben moves out of these circles and travels to the high density areas, then to rural Zimbabwe. His discussions with Marxist guerrilla-turned-agricultural co-op chairperson, Wonder Chitiyo, alert Ben to a hidden history, the story of what took place in the past and what continues to go on in the fields and working class urban areas of Zimbabwe, the places where the majority of the population lives. Ben's journey as an historian unfolds as he tries to sort out which path to follow. In the course of his explorations, he stumbles into the violence in Matabeleland and another side of hidden history emerges. When he tries to bring the violence into the public light, he runs up against the authorities. Throughout the book I have attempted to portray this historical debate not only through Ben's experience but in his internal monolog as well. Unlike Dan Brown's characters, Ben is an historian. He can use the terminology of history to frame the discourse of the monkeys that chatter away in his head. These contestations over history surface in the title of the book as well. Ben first hears the phrase "we are all Zimbabweans now" from an elderly working class gentleman in a cafÃ© where Ben is the only white person. As Ben takes his food from the counter and looks for a place to sit, the old man slides out a chair at his table and offers it to Ben, saying, "take a seat, we are all Zimbabweans Now." In this instance, the phrase is inclusive, reflecting a new attitude where blacks and whites can sit together at the same table in a way they weren't able to do before independence.. By the end of the book, Robert Mugabe has appropriated the phrase and it embodies a new politics. When he says "we are all Zimbabweans now", he means that everyone must come under the hegemony of one party - ZANU. To be Zimbabwean is to be ZANU. To be outside the party or critical of the party is to be something other than Zimbabwean. Expropriating the expressions of ordinary people and using them to express the political project of a ruling party is part of the process of re-writing history- akin to dubbing the farm seizures the Third Chimurenga or labeling MDC members dissidents. The power to write history, is also the power to create the discourse which is used to convey that history. Putting It All Together Weaving all of these processes into a work of fiction was a lengthy learning process. Not only did I have to worry about notions of history but I had to build my own capacity to inject all of this into a novel. In the absence of mentors or literature classes, I relied primarily on getting invaluable feedback on various drafts from friends and reading a lot of how-to books about fiction writing- how to develop a plot, how to build characters, how to write dialogue, etc. Ultimately my novel went through probably half a dozen drafts. I completed the first attempt on a forty year old manual typewriter with a fading ribbon. Then I moved to another prison and struck it rich gaining access to a computer with a hard drive and a printer. I was able to print out my work and read it back to myself in my cell late at night while everyone else slept. By the time I was ready to produce the final product, I had moved again and lost all access to technology. I had to rely on pen and paper to write out 570 pages of semi-legible scribbles which a number of my dear friends and family typed onto a computer and sent to the publisher. Imagine my joy a few weeks later when my wife told me during a phone call that We Are All Zimbabweans Now had been accepted by Umuzi Publishers in Cape Town. Though my writing process was quite atypical, I wonder whether my research process was truly impoverished. Certainly at a technological level, I took a step back in history to the pre-Internet era. Also, my isolation from other scholars or even people with a rudimentary knowledge of Zimbabwe was clearly a handicap. Yet, in some ways, incarceration provided opportunities to reflect and analyze that few scholars and writers in the twenty first century experience. I had no meetings to attend , no deadlines to meet, no children to pick up, no email to check, no SMS messages waiting. I'd never even seen an iPod or a smart phone. I was "free" from such chains. I'm not sure that I'm richer for this experience or that I will lock myself away in a room to engage in reflection for further works, but I'm also more certain than ever that there are many roads to the production of knowledge and the writing of novels and all of them are not paved with URLs and RSS feeds. <blockquote>Rights reserved: Please credit the author, and Solidarity Peace Trust, as the original source for all material republished on other websites unless otherwise specified. Please provide a link back to http://www.solidaritypeacetrust.org This article can be cited in other publications as follows: Kilgore, J. (2012) 'History and Fiction in the Writing of "We Are All Zimbabweans Now"', 4 May, Solidarity Peace Trust: http://www.solidaritypeacetrust.org/1175/the-writing-of-we-are-all-zimbabweans-now/</blockquote> For further information, please contact Selvan Chetty - Deputy Director, Solidarity Peace Trust Email: selvan@solidaritypeacetrust.org Tel: +27 (39) 682 5869 Fax: +27 (39) 682 5869 Address: Suite 4 3rd Floor MB Centre 49 Aiken Street Port Shepstone 4240 Kwazulu-Natal South Coast </td> </tr> </tbody> </table>

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