Re-Living the Second Chimurenga: Memories from Zimbabwe's Liberation Struggle

by Fay King Chung

In her memoirs, Fay Chung presents her first-hand experience of the Zimbabwean liberation struggle and the reforms of the country’s educational system, which followed. She gives her personal interpretation of Zimbabwe’s trajectory over the last thirty years from a nationalist uprising, through the promises of the first independent government, to the present turmoil of land invasions, new democratic challenges, and political violence.

Chung’s memoirs--in many ways controversial--offer a valuable and thought-provoking introduction to modern Zimbabwean history and burning issues in the contemporary politics of Southern Africa.
This book will be of great interest, not only to students and researchers, but also to a wider group of readers concerned with politics and development in Africa and with the Zimbabwean experiment in social transformation from the 1970s to the present.

This edition of Fay Chung’s memoirs has an introduction by Preben Kaarsholm--an experienced Danish Zimbabwe scholar--that situates her narrative and reflections in the context of debates around Zimbabwe’s modern history and current political and economical crisis.

Genres: Africa

320 pages, Paperback

Published April 1, 2006

Reviews

[Limbikani]

A good book to help one understand Zimbabwe before 1980 and also the decade afterwards. She's been criticised for being unfair to groups like the MDC but I didn't find much to describe as unfair in that regard. What I find curious is how she seems to normalise the problems in Zimbabwe especially after 1990 as problems to be expected of an African country. In that regard she doesn't hold the leadership especially in Zanu-PF responsible for the economic decline, resting the problem mostly on circumstances and the West. I suspect her refusal to give clarity on the post-1980 period as much as she did on the pre-1980 period is probably because most of the actors after independence currently hold positions of influence politically and she was reluctant to cause any problems.

A lot has happened since the book came out in 2005. It will be very interesting if she would do a second edition with a wider perspective on the developments in Zimbabwe since then. It'd also be very interesting to see if she'd adjust her opinion about the players involved, especially leaders in Zanu-PF and Zanu-PF itself as a whole.

[Jacqueline Nyathi · Rating 4 out of 5]

Although I think her very firm views on the reasons for Zim's problems are quite coloured by her prejudices and politics (& therefore, perhaps, lack nuance), Fay Chung showed quite a clarity of vision that we should have learnt from. It's profoundly disappointing that we did not.

Highly recommend.