Paper short abstract:

I intend to explain the role that rural migrants had in the construction of the nationalist discourse which emerged in colonial Zimbabwe from the mid 1950s and in linking rural and urban protest strategies.

Paper long abstract:

This paper explains the role that the rural migrant had in the construction of the nationalist discourse which emerged in colonial Zimbabwe from the mid 1950s and in linking rural and urban protest strategies. It examines these initiatives that entailed breaking away from the 'created' rural ethnic identities and ascribing to a multi-ethnic/national affiliation that found articulation in nationalism. The act of migration itself, as the article argues, was a form of political resistance as this greatly weakened the powers of colonial institutions as migrants grew increasingly independent of the coloniser's reach. The article also assesses earlier forms of overt resistance that were spread by returning migrants through such bodies as the Rhodesian Native Association (RNA). I argue that migrants were indispensable to such processes and the eventual reach that nationalism attained in the imagination of the envisioned post-colonial order. The article speaks directly to the case study area of Harare (Salisbury) and Goromonzi and intends to bring out some saliencies that can easily be papered over in national accounts of similar subject matter. The article makes case specific analysis of the impact of the 1970s liberation struggle in the Goromonzi District. This entails an assessment of the disruption of the social processes and changes that had been carried over into the rural spaces prior to the outbreak of the war. The article observes the differential impact of war in different communities without making generalised assumptions on displacement, destruction of property, death etc.