Epilogue: Life Beyond Bars and Legacies of Incarceration in Colonial and Post-Colonial Zimbabwe, 1965–2000

Abstract

This chapter is about the impact of incarceration beyond Rhodesian jails and detention centers. It also reflects upon the legacy of liberation wartime political detention and imprisonment, specifically accounting for the silencing and marginalization of this history vis-à-vis the post-colonial meta-narrative of Zimbabwe’s liberation struggle history. First, accounting for the impact of political incarceration is partly based on the historical fact that when African political activists were imprisoned or detained, their normal lives ended for the length of their prison sentences or, in the case of detention, for an open-ended and undefined period of years. Confinement in Rhodesian prisons and detention centers therefore translated to fractured social and economic lives for the prisoners‘and detainees’ own lives and those of their dependents. In their oral testimonies and prison/detention letters, ex-political prisoners and detainees told stories of impoverishment, dislocated social lives, and bleak futures, which their incarceration caused. Dependents of those who were confined, particularly women and children, also gave testimonies of economic disempowerment and vulnerability due to the incarceration of their family members. Secondly, in analyzing the legacy of political confinement, I recognize that in the post-colonial period, the triumphant ZANU PF¹ government glorified and reified a historical account of the liberation struggle that singularly emphasized the heroic role of liberation struggle ex-guerrillas and trumped the histories, memories, and contributions of political detainees and prisoners to the struggle for freedom.

When I returned to my rural home soon after coming from prison, my homestead was lying in ruins. I had also lost my other son, and so I thought of concentrating on rebuilding my family again. My husband had been laid off from work because he was constantly harassed by Rhodesian soldiers who accused him of knowing something about “terrorists” since I, as his wife, was in prison on charges of harboring terrorists. I abandoned our rural home and came here in Salisbury (Harare). I survived through vegetable vending, selling tomatoes and other vegetables in the streets. I managed to stay in the city through renting a room in the Mabvuku African Township. Up until now, I have worked for ZANU since independence in 1980, even though I do not have anything to my name and even though I am poor… (sobs uncontrollably) During the recent land reform program, I tried to get a piece of land, but I failed. Yet, during the liberation struggle, because of our incarceration, we lost all our livestock, property, and livelihood. I was disillusioned as to why I could not get a piece of farming land during the land reform.

Interview with Amai Kadengu, Central Harare, Zimbabwe, September 20, 2006

No one anticipated that we would be forgotten. Personally, I thought all my sacrifices had gone to waste because no one in government remembered us. As ex-detainees, we all thought we had been abandoned and no one ever saw us as a people worth remembering.

Interview with Victor Kuretu, Mufakose Township, Harare, Zimbabwe August 24, 2006