Political Iconography: Reading Gender on the Landscape at National Heroes Acres in Zimbabwe

• In Event: 4166 - Section on Marxist Sociology Refereed Roundtables (1 hour)
  In Refereed Roundtable 60min: 3. What’s Love (and Gender) Got To Do With It? Marxist Anaylses of (In)Humanity and Labor

Abstract

Women’s participation in nationalist movements and the liberation war in Zimbabwe are inscribed in the iconology of built monuments at National Heroes Acre. The African liberation iconography at Heroes Acres holds, in Erwin Panofsky’s words, ‘intrinsic meaning’ and, in their examination, one can ascertain “underlying principles which reveal the basic attitude of a nation, a period, a class, a religious or philosophical persuasion…” This public space becomes a place of reference for camouflaging and revealing cultural and political hegemony, class, and gender statuses past and present. The monument to “liberation” is a symbolic and contested landscape. The monument represents the concrete immediacy of nationalist history from Great Zimbabwe to the present as well as an imagined future for the nation. This research shows that the statues and murals represent the bravery of African women fighting oppression and that they encourage possibilities for the future. However, they also serve as markers that some scholars argue re-inscribe a traditional past--including gender roles of women--and send mixed messages for diversity, democracy, or a multi-ethnic community in Zimbabwe. The “symbolic value” that surrounds the “liberation landscape” known as National Heroes Acre is not an inert self-contained environment, but instead a politicized and contested space designed to enhance socio-cultural patterns and ZANU-PF perceptions of the socio-political landscape of independence.

Author

• Lorna Lueker Zukas, National University