ABSTRACT:
Today, race occupies the heart of Zimbabwe’s nationalist discourses that were revived circa 2000 to prop up the idea of correcting the racial land tenure system. However in the succeeding years this country, once touted as the epitome of progressive African independence, underwent a serious political and economic implosion marked by world-record inflation and a collapse in basic social services. The political ‘crisis’ was rooted in the unfinished business of decolonisation where race, land and nationality were subjected to serious revisions and transformation. The cultural sphere (incorporating the literary sphere) also engaged with the spatio- temporal political discourse to create an emergent racial nationalism which re-defined Zimbabweanality or nativity strictly on the basis of race and origins vis-à-vis land ownership. While not directly involved with the political tussles, literary interventions in the discourse on race and land inevitably engender sympathetic emotions for certain national identity formations. This paper is an attempt to demonstrate the importance of imaginative literature as a cultural site to experience some of the most crucial debates shaping the much debated political landscape of Zimbabwe’s past decade. With the aid of one of the best known literary texts published in the period, the paper argues that the political significance of the novel (Coming Home by Olley Maruma) is tied up with its subtle political hegemonic function in which it celebrates and props up the ZANU (PF) government’s revived race-inspired nationalism.
