Abstract:
This thesis provides a historical analysis of the history of violence that was associated with the land dispossession in Zimbabwe and its impact on the Vakaranga people. It contributes to an understanding of the historiography of the struggle for liberation in Zimbabwe with special focus on the first and second Chimurenga and the ensuing forms of political sabotage associated with the struggle for land.
The thesis unmasks the violent racial policies which were established by the Rhodesian government to facilitate that the issue of land from its rightful owners and submitting it into the hands of the colonizers. The land Apportionment Act was a watershed Act which divided the Zimbabwean land into racial zones with the most fertile land being taken by the colonizers while the VaKaranga were relegated to the reserves (maruzevha). The thesis also evaluated the role played by the Church as handmaids in the land theft in Zimbabwe as evidenced by vast pieces of mission land which was allocated to churches by the colonial regime.
Post-independence strides to allocate land to the poor VaKaranga based on the Lancaster House Agreement failed to yield the much-anticipated results. The willing seller willing buyer clause became the greatest stumbling block in post-independence efforts to redistribute the land. The experience of the VaKaranga`s loss of land remains under-researched in Zimbabwean historiography. The thesis contends that the VaKaranga land question deserves serious historical investigation in order to understand and appreciate the reason they engaged in the Third Chimurenga (Jambanja) or Fast Track Land Redistribution (FTLR).
The thesis also demonstrated empirically, that women no longer take their plight for granted as evidenced by a group of women who climbed the highest mountain pick in Zimbabwe mount Nyangani in protest against the unbalanced land tenure system. Women demonstrated that the centre no longer holds when they demanded gender equality in land ownership against the backdrop of the VaKaranga patriarchal society which only allocates a small piece of land to a wife called tsevu to grow women related crops such as groundnuts (nzungu) and roundnuts (nyimo).
Finally, the thesis engaged a liberation theological paradigm, making use of the praxis cycle as a methodology. Anchored in a deconstructive approach, primary and secondary sources were used in the construction of a new narrative. The research presents a challenge to Black Theologies of Liberation for failing to propagate a theology which challenges the colonial and post-colonial Empire, with a specific emphasis on the exclusion of women.
