Paper short abstract:

The paper revisits ZPRA/ZANLA conflict when mutually hostile stereotypes of the other as product of Soviet/Sino sponsors were reproduced. It stresses the importance of understanding vernacular, corporeal everyday expressions of martial masculinity that rival movements inculcated through training.

Paper long abstract:

The ‘Sovietness’ of ZPRA military culture versus the ‘Chineseness’ of ZANLA is often invoked in part explanation of deadly conflicts between the two rival Zimbabwean liberation armies, when the OAU brought cadres into shared camps in Tanzania and Mozambique under the auspices of ZIPA. The paper revisits an episode that is central to the reproduction of stereotypes of differences between the two. It aims not only to unpick more complex internationalist influences at a particular conjuncture in ZPRA’s war, but also to explain why a simplified opposition of Soviet vs Chinese impacts could flourish among ordinary soldiers. It uses oral histories to provide new insights into cultures of military training, focussing on ZPRA’s notoriously harsh regime formalised at Morogoro camp. The Sino-Soviet divide was not only part of the global Cold War architecture and part of commissars political instruction in each movement. It was also part of the vernacular internationalist political repertoires of mutual insult hurled between ordinary cadres in ‘integrated’ camps, inculcated in embodied form during training and manifest in a multitude of material and performative ways. New insight can be gained into these devastating conflicts, the paper argues, by better understanding of specific regimes of training, the divergent corporeal martial masculinities they inculcated and everyday interactions among soldiers. The mutually damaging stereotypes underpinned by a simplified binary of Soviet/Sino backing that fed conflict were reinforced in its wake, casting a long shadow not only over later stages of the war, but also into independence.