RECONCILIATION WITHOUT JUSTICE? AN ANALYSIS OF THE FILM, RECONCILIATION IN ZIMBABWE, THE FIRST TEN YEARS
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.25159/1727-7140/1606Keywords:
documentary, Chimurenga, forgiveness, reconciliation, ZimbabweAbstract
The aim of this article is to explore the idea of reconciliation and justice in the documentary film, Reconciliation in Zimbabwe, the first ten years (1990). This film is one of the very first and few films to deal with the themes of reconciliation and justice from the perspective of the moving image. At the centre of the film narrative is how different political constituents in Zimbabwe between 1980 and 1990 think about the question of reconciliation and the possibility of ultimate justice. Coming immediately after the war, the film debates the varied and diverse expectations of Zimbabwean whites and blacks, and the role of memory in relationship to the new politics of tolerance proposed by the Prime Minister of Zimbabwe, Robert Gabriel Mugabe. The article argues that the significance of the film lies in the desire to balance hotly contested perspectives on what constitutes reconciliation and justice in Zimbabwe.
References
Arendt, H. 1958. The human condition. Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press.
Avruch, K. and B. Vejarano. 2001. Online Journal for Peace and Confl ict Resolution l4 (2): 1–2, 37–76.
Bhabha H. 1990. Nation and narration. London: Routledge.
De Waal. V. 1987. The politics of reconciliation. London: David Phillip.
Derrida, J. 2001. On cosmopolitanism and forgiveness. New York: Routledge
Fanon, F. 1963. The wretched of the earth. London: Penguin Books.
Gecau, K. Culture and the tasks of development in Africa: lessons from Kenya. In Cultural struggle and development in Southern Africa, ed. P. Kaarsholm, 75–93. Harare: Baobab Books.
Godwin P. and I. Hancock. 1993. Rhodesians never die: the Impact of war and political change on White Rhodesia c. 1970–1980. Oxford: Oxford University Press. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1093/acprof:oso/9780198203650.001.0001
Johnson P. and D. Martin. 1981. The struggle for Zimbabwe. London and New York, monthly Review Press.
Mamdani, M. 1994. When victims become killers. Colonialism, nativism, and the genocide in Rwanda. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.
Mandaza, I. 1987. The state and politics in the post-white settler colonial situation. In Zimbabwe: the political economy of transition, 1980–1986, ed. I. Mandaza, 21–74. Harare: Jongwe Press.
Manungo, K. 1991. The peasantry in Zimbabwe: A vehicle for change. In Cultural struggle and development in Southern Africa, ed. P. Kaarsholm, 115–124. Harare: Baobab Books.
Nhema, A. and P.T. Zeleza. The resolution of African conflicts: The management of conflict resolution & post-conflict reconstruction. Oxford: James Currey.
Nkomo, J. 2001. Nkomo: the story of my life. Harare: SAPES Trust.
Nhongo-Simbanegavi, J. 2000. For better or worse: Women and Zanla in Zimbabwe’s liberation struggle. Harare: Weaver Press.
Smith, V. 1992. The documentary impulse in contemporary U.S. African-American fi lm. In Black popular culture, ed. M. Wallace, 56–64. Seattle: Bay Press.
Verdeja, E. 2004. Derrida and the impossibility of forgiveness. Contemporary Political Theory 3: 23–47. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1057/palgrave.cpt.9300103
Zizek, S. 2008. Violence: six sideways refl ections. New York: Picador.
Downloads
Published
How to Cite
Issue
Section
License
Copyright will be vested in Unisa Press. However, as long as you do not use the article in ways which would directly conflict with the publisher’s business interests, you retain the right to use your own article (provided you acknowledge the published version of the article) as follows:
- to make further copies of all or part of the published article for your use in classroom teaching;
- to make copies of the final accepted version of the article for internal distribution within your institution, or to place it on your own or your institution’s website or repository, or on a site that does not charge for access to the article, but you must arrange not to make the final accepted version of the article available to the public until 18 months after the date of acceptance;
- to re-use all or part of this material in a compilation of your own works or in a textbook of which you are the author, or as the basis for a conference presentation.
