Books published by University of Zimbabwe Publications

This volume explores the prehistory of human rights in Zimbabwe. It asks whether there are democratic legacies from pre-colonial polities and what limitations then existed on human rights. It also asks what colonialism contributed to the discourse of human rights and democracy despite its denial of both to Africans. Contents: pre- colonial states of Central Africa as embodiments of despotic culture; archaeological evidence of political structures; democracy and traditional political structure 1890-1999; imperial and settler hypocrisy and double standards and the denial of human rights; black elite responses to ideologies of democracy; the law courts in Rhodesia; interaction between white and black trade unionism; and the Build a Nation campaign, 1961-62.

World War II has long been acknowledged as a watershed in modern history of Africa, yet there are few books that examine the years of the war in a particular African country. This book helps to fill this gap byanalysing the wartime mobilisation of settlers, soldiers and labourers in colonial Zimbabwe. It examines the sacrifices demanded of ten of thousands of Africans who were coerced into settler production as their contribution to the British war effort. Africans did not remain passive in the face of this onslaught, and the book also addresses their efforts to make their own history, especially on relation to the post-war rebellions of 1945 and 1948.

Zimbabwean human rights historiography often assumes that pre- colonial African politics were democratic; whilst colonialism implies a total denial of human rights. It further assumes that Zimbabwean nationalism was in essence a human rights movement; and that the liberation struggle, which led to the overthrow of colonial oppression, reinstated both human rights and democracy. This, the second volume on the historical dimensions of human rights in Africa, reconsiders questions of nationalism, democracy and human rights. It asks why the first 'democratic revolution' was frustrated in Africa, despite the democratic dimensions of the early nationalist movements. It considers possible causes of the resulting post-independence authoritarianism in Zimbabwe as centralism, top-down modernisation, or 'development'; and it reviews the outcomes of a commandist state. Common themes running through the book are the ambiguities and antitheses which concepts of nationalism and democracy imply; and the delicate, but necessary balancing which discourse on majoritarian democracy and human rights is bound to produce. This in-depth historical analysis by some of Zimbabwe's leading intellectuals and academics sheds essential light on some of the conflicts, traumas and human rights dilemmas that the country is experiencing at present.