ABSTRACT

This chapter discusses Christopher Mlalazi’s representation of the Gukurahundi in Running with Mother (2012) and “Tsano” (2014). The Gukurahundi is a contested aspect of Zimbabwean history. As implied in the name, which literally translates into “washing away of chaff,” the Gukurahundi is sanitized in state narrative. The government’s use of violence is justified as a solution to the so-called dissident problem. Dissidents were accused of wanting to destabilize a newly found Zimbabwean nation with the help of South African Apartheid. It is argued in this chapter that Mlalazi begins his contestation of the Gukurahundi by reimagining it as a context in which serious crimes of human rights violations were committed by state agents against predominantly Ndebele innocent civilians. Mlalazi publicizes a subject that the Zimbabwean government has done everything to conceal. One could argue like this because, although the Gukurahundi took place in the early ’80s, and had many victims, its injustice has never been addressed.