Liberation War Veterans and Masculinity in Zimbabwe

In the period from the year 2000 to 2008, Zimbabwe was characterized by instability relating to liberation war veterans expropriating land and properties belonging to white farmers and multinational companies. On a lesser scale expropriations by liberation war veterans have continued up to today, and their ramifications are manifested in present-day Zimbabwean society. During expropriations, veterans typically display images of power, performing masculinities grounded in military heroism and valour, stemming from ideologies of the liberation war. Drawing on historical and anthropological perspectives grounded in discussions of gender and heroism, I focus on the relation between social identity and land expropriation, and how land expropriations in Zimbabwe are fuelled by former soldiers’ construction of heroic masculinity through their narrative and experience of the liberation war. Through discussion of political and economic issues of land expropriation in Zimbabwe, I explore the relation between social identity and land property/expropriation. Thus, I focus on the link between cultural expressions of physicality, as well as the themes of masculinity, war and land expropriation, and observable features of the physical body, as an avenue to understand how masculine norms are construed and constituted by liberation war veterans in Zimbabwe. But, as Critical Studies of Men (CSM) emphasizes, too narrow a focus on masculinity as a primary and underlying cause of everything that men do in society can be problematic. Hence, going beyond an isolated focus on masculinity, I further analyse how land expropriations are driven by other factors, for example, nationalism, colonial dispossession and decolonization, as well as the politics of the postcolonial state.