Rhetorical Stratagems and the Historical Mortal Remains in the “Second Republic” as a Crisis Management: Reflections on Shimmer Chinodya’s Harvest of Thorns (1989)

In reminiscence of the protracted journey of the Israelites out of Egypt to Canaan which took forty years in the wilderness, Zimbabweans evoked this biblical epic during the coup when the former president, Robert Mugabe, was forced by the military to step down from power. The resemblance between these two events involving peoples from different historical epochs and distinct geographical points is informed by shared traits of long suffering, fortitude and anticipation of freedom. The Israelites enslaved by Egyptians during Pharaoh’s reign and the Zimbabweans under Mugabe’s rule endured numerous crises that threatened their daily survival. The story of the Israelites’ hard walk to freedom became legendary among ordinary Zimbabweans as they consoled themselves with the sanguine dream of eventually getting to ‘Canaan’—a land of milk and honey after the demise of Mugabe. The military intervention and the ultimate removal of Mugabe after his 37-year reign of terror prompted jubilation across the political spectrum in Zimbabwe, the region and beyond in expectancy of a new post-Mugabe society. Drawing from Achille Mbembe’s theorisation of the postcolony, this chapter explores the aesthetics of vulgarity and articulations of grotesque in the ‘Second Republic or New Dispensation’ vis-à-vis the political crisis management in Zimbabwe’. It is within this context that this study revisits and re-contextualises Shimmer Chinodya’s fictional text, Harvest of Thorns, in order to examine and comment upon the emerging realities of the post-Mugabe society in an attempt to offer deep insights about history’s mortal remains and a return to history. The chapter argues that Zimbabweans have remained in captivity and troubled by power in the same way the Israelites endured long suffering. Zimbabweans are, therefore, desperately longing for a Moses to take them to metaphoric Canaan—that is, the ultimate attainment of socio-economic and political freedoms.