Paper short abstract:

Zimbabwe’s postage stamps issued since 1980 are used to explore the ZANU(PF) state’s difficult relationship with history and commemoration via a multi-country comparative study, individual stamp images, analysis and discussions with Zimbabwean artists and stamp designers.

Paper long abstract:

This paper uses Zimbabwe’s postage stamps issued since 1980 to explore the ZANU(PF) state’s difficult relationship with history and commemoration. The paper will include data and insights from a large-N comparative study using content analysis, but the main focus is on individual stamp images, analysis and discussions with Zimbabwean artists and stamp designers.

The analysis raises questions about the Zimbabwean state’s self-depiction to both domestic and international audiences. It reveals intriguing differences between Zimbabwe and its neighbouring states, as well as change over time.

In the first decades of independence, nationalism and history seem to have been excised from the Zimbabwean state-building project – Zimbabwe doesn’t mark its own independence, nor its heroes. The commemoration of historical events is almost entirely absent, and few, if any named historical individuals are memorialised. Rather, the themes that predominate are idealised images of a ‘modern’ developmental state, and what Mwangi (2002) describes as ‘ambiguous art’ depicting norms and desired futures, detached from history and individuals.

Unusually, most Zimbabwean stamps have been locally designed and printed, creating a distinctive archive of images which were domestically produced, and which have been carefully documented by local collectors. Although Rhodesia’s stamps have been used as data sources by scholars including Josiah Brownell (2019), only one short and somewhat obscure – but perceptive – academic article by R.S. Roberts (2006) considers the post-colonial production. This is an under-utilised data set with much potential for thinking about how the past is invoked and utilised for political purposes.