| Sumario: | Post-independence Zimbabwe has been plagued by episodes of violence often triggered by power contestations between ZANU-PF and the opposition. The scale of violence tends to differ spatially and temporally. For the Ndebele, Gukurahundi – the yet-to-be-acknowledged genocide which left over 20,000 people dead remains the epitome of state brutality against civilians. However, public debates and commemorations of Gukurahundi are suppressed and criminalised by the government. In response, the Ndebele have developed alternative strategies to subvert the state's anti-memory activities. Drawing on the works of Maurice Halbwachs on collective memory and Pierre Nora's explication on sites of memory, this study examines how selected Highlanders F.C. supporters' songs are performative acts of remembering Gukurahundi and expressions of resistance to the power bloc. We explore how these songs serve as powerful mnemonic devices that not only express collective memory of violence but also assert an essentialist Ndebele identity. They appear to assign collective guilt to all Shona speakers for collaborating with the state to execute Gukurahundi. Resultantly, some song lyrics appear to encourage violent resistance to all forms of perceived Shona hegemony. The paper therefore advocates for the opening up of public spaces for the memorialisation of Gukurahundi to break this cycle of violence.
|
|---|