Paper short abstract:

Zimbabwean nationalism has elicited widespread academic interest since 2000, with a focus on its degeneration into nativism and violence. This paper seeks to provide a historical grounded analysis of the constriction of Zimbabwean nationalism and to evaluate how Zimbabwe was imagined.

Paper long abstract:

Zimbabwean nationalism emerged prior to the 1960s but assumed mass character in the 1960s when the name Zimbabwe began to be used for the imagined postcolonial state. It emerged as an intellectual project drawing from pre-colonial and global ideological resources to contest Rhodesian settler colonialism. At the centre of the making of Zimbabwean nationalism was the synthesis of various identities cascading from pre-colonial and colonial periods to construct a Zimbabwean nationalism. This paper seeks to provide a historically grounded analysis of the mechanics of the construction of Zimbabwean nationalism and to critically reflect on the imagination of thye postcolonial state of Zimbabwe.