Paper short abstract:

This paper aims to analyze a contemporary chief election in Northern Zimbabwe showing how the different layers of history and "traditional" histories informing about this political practice interrelate but were also contested throughout the succession dispute and final election

Paper long abstract:

The present paper will discuss the ritual election of a chief (the first post-Independence election in this chieftaincy) in the mid-Zambezi Valley, Zimbabwe, that took place in 2006. During the succession dispute different social actors (mainly lineage ancestors through their mediums, the descendants of the two eligible houses and local authorities at the district level) made use of the history and "traditional" histories in different ways.

Based on the author´s fieldwork, the purpose of this paper is twofold. First, to look at this case beyond a presentist gaze by showing how histories related to a precolonial past (such as those referred in myths about ancient chiefs and warlords who conquered the area, as well as genealogies of the "owners of the land" in this chieftaincy) were actualized and reframed in ritual context throughout the succession dispute and final election of the chief. During the same period some factions of the chiefly lineage "appropriated" oral histories about this lineage collected by colonial administrators in the 1950s (available at the National Archives of Zimbabwe) to legitimize by these means their position as eligible throughout the process of the election. The second aim, linked to the first one, is to attempt to historicise these practices by relating different layers of history and "traditional" histories as narrated by local actors.

This case study wil also reflect on methodologies and on the limits and potentials of oral histories to understand present-day chief successions (and elections) where lineage ancestral politics articulate with local government policies.