RE-IMAGINING ZIMBABWEAN NATIONHOOD THROUGH FESTIVAL THEATRE: ALLEGATIONS (2009) IN CONTEXT.

Abstract

This paper interrogates Harare International Festival of the Arts (HIFA) as a temporal centre of identity construction which helps in re-envisioning indices of the Zimbabwean nationhood in post-independence. The paper argues that HIFA, as a cultural contact zone, facilitates identity construction and assists in re-envisaging Zimbabwean imagined identities (Anderson, 1991). It also argues that HIFA presents a platform that opens, negotiates and resists normative identity narratives of ‘Zimbabweaness’ through affording the production of plays that challenge the racial binaries and exclusive definitions of those who belong within and/or without the boundaries of Zimbabwe. Through the analytic frames of post-nationalistic concepts of multiculturalism and globalisation, this paper questions these major indices used to frame Zimbabwean nationhood, using texts of intervention at HIFA. In this light, the paper is interested in exploring how the boundaries of Zimbabweaness are constructed and explored at HIFA through Patience Tawengwa’s play, Allegations (2009).