White Narratives

The post-2000 period in Zimbabwe saw the launch of a fast track
land reform programme, resulting in a flurry of accounts from white
Zimbabweans about how they saw the land, the land invasions, and their
own sense of belonging and identity. In White Narratives,
Irikidzayi Manase engages with this fervent output of texts seeking
definition of experiences, conflicts and ambiguities arising from the
land invasions. He takes us through his study of texts selected from the
memoirs, fictional and non-fictional accounts of white farmers and
other displaced white narrators on the post-2000 Zimbabwe land
invasions, scrutinising divisions between white and black in terms of
both current and historical ideology, society and spatial relationships.
He examines how the revisionist politics of the Zimbabwean government
influenced the politics of identities and race categories during the
period 2000–2008, and posits some solutions to the contestations for
land and belonging.