A Zimbabwean Playwright’s Mockery of the Restraint Clause in the Lancaster House Constitution

Abstract

This paper analyses the debilitative effects of the restraint clause in the negotiated 1979 Lancaster House Constitution that called for a moratorium on the possibility of constitutional reforms during the first 10 years of Zimbabwe’s independence. That clause effectively meant that reforms related to the nature and form of land (re)settlement, let alone radical repossession, could not be entertained until after 1990. This paper argues that George Mujajati’s play, The Wretched Ones, dramatises the negative impact that this restraint clause had on the majority of the black population of Zimbabwe in the first 10 years of their independence as the state could not radically redistribute land to correct the imbalances of the colonial era. Thus, the paper attributes the glaring poverty and misery among the majority of the black characters in the play to that restraint clause, a clause that continued to benefit white settlers, such as Mr Buffalo in this play, who had appropriated land by force during the colonial era. The paper concludes that land redistribution is a powerful tool in the fight against poverty in countries where the majority of the people live in rural areas.