Conceptualising and revealing political resistance in Zimbabwe through (re)naming roads in Bulawayo

Abstract

The Zimbabwe central government issued a directive in November 2019 and early 2020 gazetting three statutory instruments for changes to names of buildings and streets as a directive to all local authorities to comply. In February 2020, the Bulawayo City Council undertook a (re)naming process of its roads and streets to celebrate and immortalise largely Ndebele state and Zimbabwe African People’s Union party icons. Consequently, this process of naming and renaming the roads became a contested process, highlighting and revealing political resistance, values, convoluted identities, and politics of belonging. This article frames and analyses these contested processes of naming (and renaming) of Bulawayo roads and the ‘contested’ names of the roads as a means of exposing resistance by the people of Matabeleland against cultural and political hegemony in Zimbabwe. This article considers and deploys the concept of naming as a cultural phenomenon to explore the intersection between sociocultural and political imperatives of the process and identity, celebration of and resistance to hegemonic values and domination. From this perspective, the engagement with this contestation latent in the street-naming process we adopt your suggestion reveals deep-seated ambivalence towards nationhood, political relevance, historicity and identity.