ABSTRACT
This chapter examines the discourse on the political and politicisation of national memory in post-2000 Zimbabwe. It explores the aesthetical dimensions of the political autobiography as a serious site for not only contesting hegemonic narratives of national history but also recuperating politically erased memories of becoming a nation. The focus is on how Edgar Tekere deploys certain autobiographical strategies that enable him to use his ostracised memory of the liberation struggle to recentre marginalised histories, historical personalities, and ideas of the liberation struggle that speak to the crisis of political legitimacy in post-2000 Zimbabwe. Tekere’s entrance into the fiercely polarised discourse on the political significance of history in the context of crisis is to be expected, considering his outspokenness and well-documented disquiet over Zimbabwe African National Union Patriotic Front and Robert Mugabe’s political monopolisation of the history of the liberation struggle.
