TYRANNY, PARODY, AND ETHNIC POLARITY - RITUAL ENGAGEMENTS WITH THE STATE IN NORTHWESTERN ZIMBABWE

This paper seeks to explore how the post-colonial Zimbabwean state has engaged in ritual, performative, and ultimately tyrannical demonstrat ions of power, both at the centre and at the peripheries of rule. Equa lly, it seeks to explore how the subjects of rule reciprocally interpr et and performatively engage with the slate. Finally, it attempts to s how how ethnicity figures differently in distinct loci of state-making . Beginning with ail analysis of the 1984 Independence Day celebration s, I move to briefly discuss the origins and practice of ethnocidal te rror by the Zimbabwean army in Matabeleland beginning in 1983. Then th e focus shifts to Gokwe District in the northwestern part of the count ry, where I review the ways in which the consolidation of ZANU-PF loya lties through violence was conjoined with authoritarian developmentali st discourse and practice. The latter half of the paper analyzes engag ements that occur within minor theatres of bureaucratic power in Gokwe , at cotton delivery depots and agricultural field days. These are sho wn to be scenes in which the authority of state - and the forms of mod ernity it embodies and demands - is both performed and acknowledged, a sserted and subverted. In these venues and on these occasions, the pla y of ethnic difference has less to do with Exclusive access to an impl icitly 'Shona' nation, and more to do with the demand to be included w ithin a broader project and ethos of modernity.