Making History in Mugabe's Zimbabwe

Politics, Intellectuals and the Media

Blessing-Miles Tendi

 

Synopsis

The crisis that has engulfed Zimbabwe since 2000 is not simply a struggle against dictatorship. It is also a struggle over ideas and deep-seated historical issues, still unresolved from the independence process, that both Robert Mugabe's ZANU PF regime and Morgan Tsvangirai's MDC are vying first to define and then to address. This book traces the role of politicians and public intellectuals in media, civil society and the academy in producing and disseminating a politically usable historical narrative concerning ideas about patriotism, race, land, human rights and sovereignty.

Review

By bringing clarity, sense and cohesion to the highly contentious political rhetoric of Zimbabwean politics, the author has made an important contribution to research on contemporary Zimbabwe. - Charles Laurie, Modern African Studies

Author

Blessing-Miles Tendi is Zimbabwean. He was educated at the Universities of Cambridge and Oxford. Tendi is a United Kingdom-based researcher in African politics.