Prisoners of Rhodesia

During the Zimbabwean struggle for independence, the settler regime imprisoned numerous activists and others it suspected of being aligned with the guerrillas. This book is the first to look closely at the histories and lived experiences of these political detainees and prisoners, showing how they challenged and negotiated their incarceration.

"This book brings to light for the first time the extraordinary stories of political prisoners in settler-ruled Zimbabwe. It adds a new dimension to our understanding of nationalist struggle, challenging the guerrilla war-dominated focus of both academic studies of this era and official nationalist narratives promoted then and since by Zimbabwe's ruling party. In doing so, the book builds on a rich collection of oral and written sources, many representing the voices of ordinary men and women, to tell a compelling tale of repression and resistance within Rhodesian prisons as well as to explore the longstanding legacies of imprisonment up to the present. In these tales Munochiveyi finds both tremendous strength and a profound post-colonial disillusionment." - Jocelyn Alexander, Professor of Commonwealth Studies, University of Oxford, UK

'A massive contribution to the history of the liberation struggle in Zimbabwe. Through extensive deployment of rich multiple sources, the author paints a convincing and substantiated picture inside and outside prisons and major detention centres during the war. The vivid testimonies by former detainees and other people and the author's telling narratives about the humiliation, poverty, destitution, landlessness, and social dislocation facing former political prisoners clearly shows how they have been 'marginalized and silenced by post-colonial elites fixated upon monopolizing the liberation struggle for their own political ends.' Amust-read for African historians and social scientists.' - Wazha G. Morapedi, Associate Professor of History, University of Botswana

'Prisoners of Rhodesia is the first academic book-length study on the topical subject of political imprisonment in Zimbabwe. It is based on extensive and superb empirical historical research, combining archival and oral sources. The product is a ground-breaking academic contribution that extends frontiers of knowledge in Zimbabwean historiography in particular and African colonial political history in general.' - Professor Sabelo J. Ndlovu-Gatsheni, Archie Mafeje Research Institute, University of South Africa, author of Do "Zimbabweans" Exist? Trajectories of Nationalism, National Identity Formation and Crisis in a Postcolonial State (2009)

Munyaradzi Bryn Munochiveyi is an Assistant Professor at the College of the Holy Cross, USA.