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This volume explores the challenges and solutions experienced within Zimbabwe’s economic and social spheres, with particular reference to the “crisis years” (2000–2008) and the “promising turn” (2009–2012). This latter phase was prompted by the formation of the Government of National Unity (GNU). The contributors to the volume pay attention to how individuals and institutions sought to respond to the crisis, critiquing the reactions of various actors and exploring solutions to the various challenges that were experienced. Chapters in this book include reviews of agricultural subsidies, a gendered approach to poverty, the collapse of service delivery (including a particular focu...
The Art of Survival: Depictions of Zimbabwe and the Zimbabwean in Crisis offers a fresh, interdisciplinary examination of a period against which development in Zimbabwe is often measured, one epitomized by the severe shortages and runaway inflation of 2008. While journalistic stories of the 1998–2008 era often privilege the reductive stories of woe, defeat and crushed hopes, this volume explores how survival was still possible in those circumstances. The book offers insights into how ordinary Zimbabweans battled the odds by making startling innovations in language use to legitimize new survival strategies, how they weaved new songs and reinterpreted old ones to fight for survival, how social institutions such as churches reinterpreted popular gospel, and how authors, playwrights and dramatists crafted works that acknowledge the unprecedented difficulties and yet find humour, laughter and love in unusual places. This work will appeal to both scholars, who will appreciate the depth of the analysis, and the general reader.
Zvishavane, in southern Zimbabwe, is an arid yet starkly beautiful terrain where small-scale farmers struggle with fragile soils and erratic rainfull for often fruitless returns. Yet it was here that Zephaniah Phiri had the wisdom, vision and strength of character to transform a resource-starved subsistence plot into a fertile smallholding. This book is Mr Phiri's story. It is more than a simple environmental story; it reveals the family survival strategies of a man with immense courage, wisdom and generosity. Distilled by Mr Phiri's sage reflection and told in his own words, the story is imbued with his idioms, his rhythms and his experience. One feels refreshed-inspired by this champion of human dignity; a man whose endurance enabled him to found one of the first indigenous NGOs in Zimbabwe - the Zvishavane Water Project. From here Mr Phiri is able to convey the power of self-reliance throughout the often neglected small-scale farming sector of southern Africa. Far beyond this broad community, the book invites readers to celebrate the boundless potential for human fulfilment.