‘Gukurahundi Continues’: Violence, Memory, and Mthwakazi Activism in Zimbabwe
研究了津巴布韦2017年政变后，年轻一代行动主义者如何重新讲述1980年代的国家暴力事件古库拉洪迪，并将其与争取姆特瓦卡齐民族独立的诉求联系起来，揭示了沉默如何使历史创伤延续并激发新的民族主义运动。
Abstract One effect of Zimbabwe’s 2017 coup was to unleash a new wave of public engagement with the unresolved state repression of the 1980s, known as Gukurahundi. This wave was led by the ‘post-Gukurahundi generation’ and particularly by activists whose narratives of Gukurahundi were entwined with calls for a separate ‘Mthwakazi nation’. This article explores these activists’ stories of Gukurahundi and asks why they broke through into the public realm after decades of relative silence. It argues that Mthwakazi activists’ engagement relied on an interpretation of Gukurahundi not simply as a discrete historical event, but as the clearest expression of an ongoing ‘Grand Plan’ of ethnic marginalization. This narrative was foundational to the construction of a moral order that divided the country along ethnic and regional fault lines, ultimately legitimizing Mthwakazi nationalism. The paper roots this narrative’s emergence in two interrelated processes. Speaking to the role of silencing in keeping conflicts alive across generations, it examines how the ‘noisy silence’ that has surrounded Gukurahundi in both public and private has meant that Gukurahundi lingered as a readily available interpretative lens. This lens became meaningful when the second generation, faced with political and economic marginalization, was grappling for meaning and political belonging.