AEGIS ECAS 2007 - View abstract

Panel	6. Zimbabwe: Callenges and Opportunities
Paper ID	182
Author(s)	Madamombe, Esrina Pedziseni
Paper	No paper submitted
Abstract	The dismantling of colonialism, coupled with the crises of contemporary Zimbabwe, seem to have left Zimbabweans in a problematic and contradictory space of ambivalence: whether to momentarily re-invent themselves or to let themselves be assimilated within the establishment; whether to wholeheartedly embrace the new dispensation or to distrust it; to celebrate joyfully or to indulge in a bit of healthy skepticism; to erase unified and uniform identities in favor of diversity and difference; whether to help in buttressing the new political and economic structures or to want to overhaul them totally; to be pessimistic or optimistic. All this, perhaps, is the direct result of a heritage (or heritages) of violence and disruptions, social and political explosions and implosions and so forth. To expect the society out of the nightmare of colonialism and into the difficulties of presiding years to adjust quickly and find new beginnings is to perhaps underestimate the depth of suffering that the people went through and are still going through. In the atmosphere of suspense after the official end of hostilities in 1980 identities (and lack of them) and loyalty to nation building could seldom be taken for granted. Men and women’s lives underwent a labeling and mislabeling and were lost and found and lost again and re-found. To those ordinary Zimbabweans living outside the privileges of power, life has never been easy and may never be so. They know conflict, oppression, betrayal, poverty, want, invisibility and perpetual second-class citizenship. For them it would seem the future is not a simple putting of two and two together to make four. It is rather a vast and difficult sea of trials and tribulations, erosions, buildings, possibilities, collapses, triumphs, low points, fulfillments, dispossessions, fragmentations, coalitions, disjunctions, dispersals, contests and discontentments. The challenges and opportunities that the people of Zimbabwe face in some instances give them hope but consequently the feelings of disillusionment and despair are not far away. A challenge to some brings hope and the opportunity to succeed while to others it becomes a stumbling block too awesome to overcome. Ultimately, it is a cycle wheeling from hope to disillusionment or from disillusionment to hope and on and on and on the cycle goes. The researcher is therefore in this paper searching out the interstices where meanings, significances and ramifications of the post-colonial community are negotiated and re-negotiated; with special focus on the peoples’ hopes and disillusionments dramatized in short prose fiction. It is the aim of this paper to focus upon this largely marginalized space, highlighting the challenges and engagements with hope and disillusionment dramatized in short prose fiction. This study seeks to explore some of Zimbabwe’s short story writing in English so as to analyze, interpret and evaluate ideas using insights from the postcolonial theory. Through this particular study, the researcher also endeavors to bring to the fore arguments and responses about the question of identity, neo-colonialism, poverty, family, love and friendship in the light of hope and disillusionment as portrayed by the writers.

Hope and Disillusionment: A Post-colonial Critique of Zimbabwean Short Stories