{"id":525,"date":"2014-06-07T17:08:00","date_gmt":"2014-06-07T17:08:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/mrmushava.wordpress.com\/2014\/06\/07\/rangers-engagement-with-zimbabwes-nationalist-politics\/"},"modified":"2026-10-25T14:34:12","modified_gmt":"2026-10-25T14:34:12","slug":"terence-ranger-and-the-zimbabwean-nationalists","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blockspaceballads.com\/?p=525","title":{"rendered":"Terence Ranger and the Zimbabwean Nationalists"},"content":{"rendered":"\n\n\n\n
<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n
Writing Revolt<\/span><\/b><\/i><\/td>\n<\/tr>\n<\/tbody>\n<\/table>\n
Book: Writing Revolt<\/span><\/b><\/div>\n
Author: Terence Ranger<\/span><\/b><\/div>\n
Publisher: Weaver Press (2013)<\/span><\/b><\/div>\n
<\/div>\n
Terence Ranger\u2019s latest memoir \u201cWriting Revolt: An Engagement with African Nationalism, 1957-67\u201d is a vastly riveting account which tags the historian in the mid-century revolutionary ferment.<\/span><\/div>\n
<\/div>\n
\u201cOf the making of many books about Zimbabwe there seems to be no end,\u201d Ranger observes in his 2011\u00a0instalment\u00a0for \u201cAfrica: The Journal of the International African Institute,\u201d assigning\u00a0\u201cinexplicably popular white Zimbabwe memoirs\u201d to an ephemeral shelf life cluster.<\/span><\/div>\n
<\/div>\n
We have heard patronising dirges for Zimbabwe by former Rhodesians whose potency, for the most part, inheres in how much they qualify for carbon copies of the conventional characterisation of our country as a trouble spot shorn of its yesteryear allure.<\/span><\/div>\n
<\/div>\n
While such books are guaranteed an immediate audience, being flavoured to the tastes of the dominant market segment, they are flawed, subjective and negligible in the long term.<\/span><\/div>\n
<\/div>\n
Then there are, within the Zimbocentric outburst, books which Ranger calls diamonds that need no international license to be traded and consumed. Their claim to durability is historical rigour and occupation with relevant Zimbabwean issues.<\/span><\/div>\n
<\/div>\n
\u201cWriting Revolt,\u201d a compendium of historical nuggets and autobiographical sketches, can be safely uploaded into the latter domain by virtue of its attention to detail and ideological proximity to the African cause.<\/span><\/div>\n
<\/div>\n
Native responses to colonialism, including trade unionism, rapid response unit Christian Action Group coordinated by Tolstoyan Guy Clutton-Broke and all-out firebrands such as the African National Congress, National Democratic Party, ZAPU and ZANU are recounted with a firsthand aptitude.<\/span><\/div>\n
<\/div>\n
Drawn from an extensive dumpsite of Ranger\u2019s correspondence with the principal political activists including prisoners and exiles, family and academic colleagues and his co-conspirator John Reed\u2019s diary, the tome benefits from engaging personal conversations as opposed to a sequence of technical references, that firewall of scholarship.<\/span><\/div>\n
<\/div>\n
Reed\u2019s diary entries, which recurrently stream into the narrative, capture with Boswellian meticulousness the dons\u2019 exploits in the looming storm. <\/span><\/div>\n
<\/div>\n
Ranger explains the dual bearing of his book. \u201c\u2018Writing Revolt\u2019 might mean producing a record of the African awakening which I witnessed during those ten years. And it might mean the process which led me to write that first book (Revolt in Sothern Africa 1896-7). This book is therefore intended as both a history and historiography.\u201d <\/span><\/div>\n
<\/div>\n
Drama and intrigue knock the reader right from the cover where Ranger and his wife Shelagh, decking a Ndebele fur hat and animal print coat respectively in an apparent show of camaraderie, are seen off the Salisbury airport by Maurice Nyagumbo, Joshua Nkomo, James Chikerema, Robert Mugabe and Reed at the Salisbury airport on the day of his deportation from Southern Rhodesia.<\/span><\/div>\n
<\/div>\n
Ranger was ejected from the country in February 1963 for political subversion, precisely his participation with the outlawed Zimbabwe African People\u2019s Union for which was a district vice-chairperson. He had also fallen foul of the system with his work on \u201cRevolt in Southern Africa\u201d which was in bold variance with settler policy to annihilate authentic African history.<\/span><\/div>\n
<\/div>\n
Prior to his expulsion, Ranger served a three-month restriction where he was confined within a three-mile radius of his University College of Rhodesia and Nyasaland (UCRN), now University of Zimbabwe, workstation. The restriction was levelled as a death-knell against his political activity and research interests.<\/span><\/div>\n
<\/div>\n
\u201cThough I am aware that the history of our country will be put in its perspective by one of our lot, who will not be accused of prejudice when certain facts are in question, it is also vitally important that a person like yourself should go the whole hog in pioneering the insights of Zimbabwe\u2019s history,\u201d George Nyandoro wrote Ranger, commiserating with him on the debilitating prospect of the restriction his research.<\/span><\/div>\n
<\/div>\n
While the memoir is recorded with particular emphasis on the period between 1957 and 1967, Ranger tucks in an autobiographical preamble stranding from 1929, the year he was born, to 1957, when he came to Salisbury as a 28-year old academic only to be entangled in the political dynamics of an epoch in history.<\/span><\/div>\n
<\/div>\n
Despite being part of a wafer-thin section of unbigoted, progressive Europeans, Ranger confesses embracing \u201cinoperable and ridiculous\u201d ideas about Africa in line with the mainstream characterisation of Africa as the backyard of civilization when he came to Southern Rhodesia.<\/span><\/div>\n
<\/div>\n
Some of these were imbibed from a teenage literary inventory featuring Rudyard Kipling, Rider Haggard and Joseph Conrad. Ranger denies retaining the odd effects of such an education in his adult responses to Africa, as they got washed away in real-time interactions with the African realities.<\/span><\/div>\n
<\/div>\n
Racist sterilisation of education to efface pre-colonial African achievements as a ploy to disorient natives was endemic in the colonial system. Ranger elicited a backlash for asserting, against conventional dogma, that Great Zimbabwe was built by the Africans. <\/span><\/div>\n
<\/div>\n
The monumental site, which still majestically attests the sheer ingenuity of the Hungwe people centuries on, has been erroneously ascribed to foreigners based on white supremacist scruples which rule out blacks\u2019 capability of civilisation on their own. <\/span><\/div>\n
<\/div>\n
The Khami ruins were also an object of Rhodesian propaganda. \u201cIt was official doctrine that none of them (Zimbabwe and Khami) \u00a0had been built by Africans and the South Rhodesian government used to insert \u2018causeries\u2019 in the African press to prove that Great Zimbabwe had not been built by the Bantu,\u201d recalls Ranger.<\/span><\/div>\n
<\/div>\n
There has been a sustained effort to salvage black pride by reverting to forgotten accomplishments as a stimulus to perform again. Matthew Ashimolowo\u2019s \u201cWhat\u2019s Wrong with Being Black?\u201d and Mensah Otabil\u2019s \u201cBeyond the Rivers of Ethiopia\u201d feature in the sprawling inventory to this end. With the Black History Month upon us, it is pertinent to draw the incentive for fresh exploits from the yesteryear feats.<\/span><\/div>\n
<\/div>\n
Ranger initially fell foul with the establishment when, during his tenure as UCRN warden, he embarked on the desegregation of student quarters in the interest of inclusivity. One emotive case involved Sarah Chavunduka, the first African female student. Fellow students and their parents fiercely resisted her acceptance into the girls\u2019 halls of residence and Ranger was branded a \u201cNigger lover\u201d for his efforts. The matter spilt into press and parliament with inordinate racist abandon.<\/span><\/div>\n
<\/div>\n
One of the unsettling letdowns in the book is noted Zimbabwean intellectual Stanelake Samkange\u2019s cowardly withdrawal from nationalist politics for a comfort zone outside the country. \u201cI appear to have come to the conclusion that one of the most important principle \u2013 that of love of one\u2019s fellow men and sacrifice and service towards other people is not worth it and is plain rubbish,\u201d Samkange wrote Ranger in 1964.<\/span><\/div>\n
<\/div>\n
\u201cTerry, if I could get a job outside this country I would take it and go for many long years. There is nothing to fight for here \u2013 it is not worth it,\u201d he wrote. Samkange returned to politics towards independence and was part of the Zimbabwe-Rhodesia project but lost in all subsequent elections before quitting for good.<\/span><\/div>\n
<\/div>\n

<\/p>\n

Counter-attitudes and hostilities subsequent to the nationalist split knock the reader as an undue united anti-climax to the movement. Had Professor Ranger proceeded to beyond 1967, the story might have been more ideal but not with its downsides.<\/span><\/span><\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Writing Revolt Book: Writing Revolt Author: Terence Ranger Publisher: Weaver Press (2013) Terence Ranger\u2019s latest memoir \u201cWriting Revolt: An Engagement with African Nationalism, 1957-67\u201d is a vastly riveting account which tags the historian in the mid-century revolutionary ferment. \u201cOf the making of many books about Zimbabwe there seems to be no end,\u201d Ranger observes in his 2011\u00a0instalment\u00a0for \u201cAfrica: The Journal of the International African Institute,\u201d assigning\u00a0\u201cinexplicably popular white Zimbabwe memoirs\u201d to an ephemeral shelf life cluster. We have heard patronising dirges for Zimbabwe by former Rhodesians whose potency, for the most part, inheres in how much they qualify for carbon copies of the conventional characterisation of our country as a trouble spot shorn of its yesteryear allure. While such books are guaranteed an immediate audience, being flavoured to the tastes of the dominant market segment, they are flawed, subjective and negligible in the long term. Then there are, within the Zimbocentric outburst, books which Ranger calls diamonds that need no international license to be traded and consumed. Their claim to durability is historical rigour and occupation with relevant Zimbabwean issues. \u201cWriting Revolt,\u201d a compendium of historical nuggets and autobiographical sketches, can be safely uploaded into the latter domain by virtue of its attention to detail and ideological proximity to the African cause. Native responses to colonialism, including trade unionism, rapid response unit Christian Action Group coordinated by Tolstoyan Guy Clutton-Broke and all-out firebrands such as the African National Congress, National Democratic Party, ZAPU and ZANU are recounted with a firsthand aptitude. Drawn from an extensive dumpsite of Ranger\u2019s correspondence with the principal political activists including prisoners and exiles, family and academic colleagues and his co-conspirator John Reed\u2019s diary, the tome benefits from engaging personal conversations as opposed to a sequence of technical references, that firewall of scholarship. Reed\u2019s diary entries, which recurrently stream into the narrative, capture with Boswellian meticulousness the dons\u2019 exploits in the looming storm. Ranger explains the dual bearing of his book. \u201c\u2018Writing Revolt\u2019 might mean producing a record of the African awakening which I witnessed during those ten years. And it might mean the process which led me to write that first book (Revolt in Sothern Africa 1896-7). This book is therefore intended as both a history and historiography.\u201d Drama and intrigue knock the reader right from the cover where Ranger and his wife Shelagh, decking a Ndebele fur hat and animal print coat respectively in an apparent show of camaraderie, are seen off the Salisbury airport by Maurice Nyagumbo, Joshua Nkomo, James Chikerema, Robert Mugabe and Reed at the Salisbury airport on the day of his deportation from Southern Rhodesia. Ranger was ejected from the country in February 1963 for political subversion, precisely his participation with the outlawed Zimbabwe African People\u2019s Union for which was a district vice-chairperson. He had also fallen foul of the system with his work on \u201cRevolt in Southern Africa\u201d which was in bold variance with settler policy to annihilate authentic African history. Prior to his expulsion, Ranger served a three-month restriction where he was confined within a three-mile radius of his University College of Rhodesia and Nyasaland (UCRN), now University of Zimbabwe, workstation. The restriction was levelled as a death-knell against his political activity and research interests. \u201cThough I am aware that the history of our country will be put in its perspective by one of our lot, who will not be accused of prejudice when certain facts are in question, it is also vitally important that a person like yourself should go the whole hog in pioneering the insights of Zimbabwe\u2019s history,\u201d George Nyandoro wrote Ranger, commiserating with him on the debilitating prospect of the restriction his research. While the memoir is recorded with particular emphasis on the period between 1957 and 1967, Ranger tucks in an autobiographical preamble stranding from 1929, the year he was born, to 1957, when he came to Salisbury as a 28-year old academic only to be entangled in the political dynamics of an epoch in history. Despite being part of a wafer-thin section of unbigoted, progressive Europeans, Ranger confesses embracing \u201cinoperable and ridiculous\u201d ideas about Africa in line with the mainstream characterisation of Africa as the backyard of civilization when he came to Southern Rhodesia. Some of these were imbibed from a teenage literary inventory featuring Rudyard Kipling, Rider Haggard and Joseph Conrad. Ranger denies retaining the odd effects of such an education in his adult responses to Africa, as they got washed away in real-time interactions with the African realities. Racist sterilisation of education to efface pre-colonial African achievements as a ploy to disorient natives was endemic in the colonial system. Ranger elicited a backlash for asserting, against conventional dogma, that Great Zimbabwe was built by the Africans. The monumental site, which still majestically attests the sheer ingenuity of the Hungwe people centuries on, has been erroneously ascribed to foreigners based on white supremacist scruples which rule out blacks\u2019 capability of civilisation on their own. The Khami ruins were also an object of Rhodesian propaganda. \u201cIt was official doctrine that none of them (Zimbabwe and Khami) \u00a0had been built by Africans and the South Rhodesian government used to insert \u2018causeries\u2019 in the African press to prove that Great Zimbabwe had not been built by the Bantu,\u201d recalls Ranger. There has been a sustained effort to salvage black pride by reverting to forgotten accomplishments as a stimulus to perform again. Matthew Ashimolowo\u2019s \u201cWhat\u2019s Wrong with Being Black?\u201d and Mensah Otabil\u2019s \u201cBeyond the Rivers of Ethiopia\u201d feature in the sprawling inventory to this end. With the Black History Month upon us, it is pertinent to draw the incentive for fresh exploits from the yesteryear feats. Ranger initially fell foul with the establishment when, during his tenure as UCRN warden, he embarked on the desegregation of student quarters in the interest of inclusivity. One emotive case involved Sarah Chavunduka, the first African female student. Fellow students and their parents fiercely resisted her acceptance into the girls\u2019 halls of residence and Ranger was branded a<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[18,26],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-525","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-books","category-history"],"yoast_head":"\nTerence Ranger and the Zimbabwean Nationalists | Blockspace<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/blockspaceballads.com\/?p=525\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Terence Ranger and the Zimbabwean Nationalists | Blockspace\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"Writing Revolt Book: Writing Revolt Author: Terence Ranger Publisher: Weaver Press (2013) Terence Ranger\u2019s latest memoir \u201cWriting Revolt: An Engagement with African Nationalism, 1957-67\u201d is a vastly riveting account which tags the historian in the mid-century revolutionary ferment. \u201cOf the making of many books about Zimbabwe there seems to be no end,\u201d Ranger observes in his 2011\u00a0instalment\u00a0for \u201cAfrica: The Journal of the International African Institute,\u201d assigning\u00a0\u201cinexplicably popular white Zimbabwe memoirs\u201d to an ephemeral shelf life cluster. We have heard patronising dirges for Zimbabwe by former Rhodesians whose potency, for the most part, inheres in how much they qualify for carbon copies of the conventional characterisation of our country as a trouble spot shorn of its yesteryear allure. While such books are guaranteed an immediate audience, being flavoured to the tastes of the dominant market segment, they are flawed, subjective and negligible in the long term. Then there are, within the Zimbocentric outburst, books which Ranger calls diamonds that need no international license to be traded and consumed. Their claim to durability is historical rigour and occupation with relevant Zimbabwean issues. \u201cWriting Revolt,\u201d a compendium of historical nuggets and autobiographical sketches, can be safely uploaded into the latter domain by virtue of its attention to detail and ideological proximity to the African cause. Native responses to colonialism, including trade unionism, rapid response unit Christian Action Group coordinated by Tolstoyan Guy Clutton-Broke and all-out firebrands such as the African National Congress, National Democratic Party, ZAPU and ZANU are recounted with a firsthand aptitude. Drawn from an extensive dumpsite of Ranger\u2019s correspondence with the principal political activists including prisoners and exiles, family and academic colleagues and his co-conspirator John Reed\u2019s diary, the tome benefits from engaging personal conversations as opposed to a sequence of technical references, that firewall of scholarship. Reed\u2019s diary entries, which recurrently stream into the narrative, capture with Boswellian meticulousness the dons\u2019 exploits in the looming storm. Ranger explains the dual bearing of his book. \u201c\u2018Writing Revolt\u2019 might mean producing a record of the African awakening which I witnessed during those ten years. And it might mean the process which led me to write that first book (Revolt in Sothern Africa 1896-7). This book is therefore intended as both a history and historiography.\u201d Drama and intrigue knock the reader right from the cover where Ranger and his wife Shelagh, decking a Ndebele fur hat and animal print coat respectively in an apparent show of camaraderie, are seen off the Salisbury airport by Maurice Nyagumbo, Joshua Nkomo, James Chikerema, Robert Mugabe and Reed at the Salisbury airport on the day of his deportation from Southern Rhodesia. Ranger was ejected from the country in February 1963 for political subversion, precisely his participation with the outlawed Zimbabwe African People\u2019s Union for which was a district vice-chairperson. He had also fallen foul of the system with his work on \u201cRevolt in Southern Africa\u201d which was in bold variance with settler policy to annihilate authentic African history. Prior to his expulsion, Ranger served a three-month restriction where he was confined within a three-mile radius of his University College of Rhodesia and Nyasaland (UCRN), now University of Zimbabwe, workstation. The restriction was levelled as a death-knell against his political activity and research interests. \u201cThough I am aware that the history of our country will be put in its perspective by one of our lot, who will not be accused of prejudice when certain facts are in question, it is also vitally important that a person like yourself should go the whole hog in pioneering the insights of Zimbabwe\u2019s history,\u201d George Nyandoro wrote Ranger, commiserating with him on the debilitating prospect of the restriction his research. While the memoir is recorded with particular emphasis on the period between 1957 and 1967, Ranger tucks in an autobiographical preamble stranding from 1929, the year he was born, to 1957, when he came to Salisbury as a 28-year old academic only to be entangled in the political dynamics of an epoch in history. Despite being part of a wafer-thin section of unbigoted, progressive Europeans, Ranger confesses embracing \u201cinoperable and ridiculous\u201d ideas about Africa in line with the mainstream characterisation of Africa as the backyard of civilization when he came to Southern Rhodesia. Some of these were imbibed from a teenage literary inventory featuring Rudyard Kipling, Rider Haggard and Joseph Conrad. Ranger denies retaining the odd effects of such an education in his adult responses to Africa, as they got washed away in real-time interactions with the African realities. Racist sterilisation of education to efface pre-colonial African achievements as a ploy to disorient natives was endemic in the colonial system. Ranger elicited a backlash for asserting, against conventional dogma, that Great Zimbabwe was built by the Africans. The monumental site, which still majestically attests the sheer ingenuity of the Hungwe people centuries on, has been erroneously ascribed to foreigners based on white supremacist scruples which rule out blacks\u2019 capability of civilisation on their own. The Khami ruins were also an object of Rhodesian propaganda. \u201cIt was official doctrine that none of them (Zimbabwe and Khami) \u00a0had been built by Africans and the South Rhodesian government used to insert \u2018causeries\u2019 in the African press to prove that Great Zimbabwe had not been built by the Bantu,\u201d recalls Ranger. There has been a sustained effort to salvage black pride by reverting to forgotten accomplishments as a stimulus to perform again. Matthew Ashimolowo\u2019s \u201cWhat\u2019s Wrong with Being Black?\u201d and Mensah Otabil\u2019s \u201cBeyond the Rivers of Ethiopia\u201d feature in the sprawling inventory to this end. With the Black History Month upon us, it is pertinent to draw the incentive for fresh exploits from the yesteryear feats. Ranger initially fell foul with the establishment when, during his tenure as UCRN warden, he embarked on the desegregation of student quarters in the interest of inclusivity. One emotive case involved Sarah Chavunduka, the first African female student. Fellow students and their parents fiercely resisted her acceptance into the girls\u2019 halls of residence and Ranger was branded a\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:url\" content=\"https:\/\/blockspaceballads.com\/?p=525\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:site_name\" content=\"Blockspace\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:published_time\" content=\"2014-06-07T17:08:00+00:00\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:modified_time\" content=\"2026-10-25T14:34:12+00:00\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:image\" content=\"http:\/\/img.thezimbabwean.co.uk\/640_929_writing_revolt_cover.jpg\" \/>\n<meta name=\"author\" content=\"hardsouth\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:card\" content=\"summary_large_image\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:label1\" content=\"Written by\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:data1\" content=\"hardsouth\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:label2\" content=\"Est. reading time\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:data2\" content=\"6 minutes\" \/>\n<script type=\"application\/ld+json\" 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assigning\u00a0\u201cinexplicably popular white Zimbabwe memoirs\u201d to an ephemeral shelf life cluster. We have heard patronising dirges for Zimbabwe by former Rhodesians whose potency, for the most part, inheres in how much they qualify for carbon copies of the conventional characterisation of our country as a trouble spot shorn of its yesteryear allure. While such books are guaranteed an immediate audience, being flavoured to the tastes of the dominant market segment, they are flawed, subjective and negligible in the long term. Then there are, within the Zimbocentric outburst, books which Ranger calls diamonds that need no international license to be traded and consumed. Their claim to durability is historical rigour and occupation with relevant Zimbabwean issues. \u201cWriting Revolt,\u201d a compendium of historical nuggets and autobiographical sketches, can be safely uploaded into the latter domain by virtue of its attention to detail and ideological proximity to the African cause. Native responses to colonialism, including trade unionism, rapid response unit Christian Action Group coordinated by Tolstoyan Guy Clutton-Broke and all-out firebrands such as the African National Congress, National Democratic Party, ZAPU and ZANU are recounted with a firsthand aptitude. Drawn from an extensive dumpsite of Ranger\u2019s correspondence with the principal political activists including prisoners and exiles, family and academic colleagues and his co-conspirator John Reed\u2019s diary, the tome benefits from engaging personal conversations as opposed to a sequence of technical references, that firewall of scholarship. Reed\u2019s diary entries, which recurrently stream into the narrative, capture with Boswellian meticulousness the dons\u2019 exploits in the looming storm. Ranger explains the dual bearing of his book. \u201c\u2018Writing Revolt\u2019 might mean producing a record of the African awakening which I witnessed during those ten years. And it might mean the process which led me to write that first book (Revolt in Sothern Africa 1896-7). This book is therefore intended as both a history and historiography.\u201d Drama and intrigue knock the reader right from the cover where Ranger and his wife Shelagh, decking a Ndebele fur hat and animal print coat respectively in an apparent show of camaraderie, are seen off the Salisbury airport by Maurice Nyagumbo, Joshua Nkomo, James Chikerema, Robert Mugabe and Reed at the Salisbury airport on the day of his deportation from Southern Rhodesia. Ranger was ejected from the country in February 1963 for political subversion, precisely his participation with the outlawed Zimbabwe African People\u2019s Union for which was a district vice-chairperson. He had also fallen foul of the system with his work on \u201cRevolt in Southern Africa\u201d which was in bold variance with settler policy to annihilate authentic African history. Prior to his expulsion, Ranger served a three-month restriction where he was confined within a three-mile radius of his University College of Rhodesia and Nyasaland (UCRN), now University of Zimbabwe, workstation. The restriction was levelled as a death-knell against his political activity and research interests. \u201cThough I am aware that the history of our country will be put in its perspective by one of our lot, who will not be accused of prejudice when certain facts are in question, it is also vitally important that a person like yourself should go the whole hog in pioneering the insights of Zimbabwe\u2019s history,\u201d George Nyandoro wrote Ranger, commiserating with him on the debilitating prospect of the restriction his research. While the memoir is recorded with particular emphasis on the period between 1957 and 1967, Ranger tucks in an autobiographical preamble stranding from 1929, the year he was born, to 1957, when he came to Salisbury as a 28-year old academic only to be entangled in the political dynamics of an epoch in history. Despite being part of a wafer-thin section of unbigoted, progressive Europeans, Ranger confesses embracing \u201cinoperable and ridiculous\u201d ideas about Africa in line with the mainstream characterisation of Africa as the backyard of civilization when he came to Southern Rhodesia. Some of these were imbibed from a teenage literary inventory featuring Rudyard Kipling, Rider Haggard and Joseph Conrad. Ranger denies retaining the odd effects of such an education in his adult responses to Africa, as they got washed away in real-time interactions with the African realities. Racist sterilisation of education to efface pre-colonial African achievements as a ploy to disorient natives was endemic in the colonial system. Ranger elicited a backlash for asserting, against conventional dogma, that Great Zimbabwe was built by the Africans. The monumental site, which still majestically attests the sheer ingenuity of the Hungwe people centuries on, has been erroneously ascribed to foreigners based on white supremacist scruples which rule out blacks\u2019 capability of civilisation on their own. The Khami ruins were also an object of Rhodesian propaganda. \u201cIt was official doctrine that none of them (Zimbabwe and Khami) \u00a0had been built by Africans and the South Rhodesian government used to insert \u2018causeries\u2019 in the African press to prove that Great Zimbabwe had not been built by the Bantu,\u201d recalls Ranger. There has been a sustained effort to salvage black pride by reverting to forgotten accomplishments as a stimulus to perform again. Matthew Ashimolowo\u2019s \u201cWhat\u2019s Wrong with Being Black?\u201d and Mensah Otabil\u2019s \u201cBeyond the Rivers of Ethiopia\u201d feature in the sprawling inventory to this end. With the Black History Month upon us, it is pertinent to draw the incentive for fresh exploits from the yesteryear feats. Ranger initially fell foul with the establishment when, during his tenure as UCRN warden, he embarked on the desegregation of student quarters in the interest of inclusivity. One emotive case involved Sarah Chavunduka, the first African female student. Fellow students and their parents fiercely resisted her acceptance into the girls\u2019 halls of residence and Ranger was branded a","og_url":"https:\/\/blockspaceballads.com\/?p=525","og_site_name":"Blockspace","article_published_time":"2014-06-07T17:08:00+00:00","article_modified_time":"2026-10-25T14:34:12+00:00","og_image":[{"url":"http:\/\/img.thezimbabwean.co.uk\/640_929_writing_revolt_cover.jpg","type":"","width":"","height":""}],"author":"hardsouth","twitter_card":"summary_large_image","twitter_misc":{"Written by":"hardsouth","Est. reading time":"6 minutes"},"schema":{"@context":"https:\/\/schema.org","@graph":[{"@type":"Article","@id":"https:\/\/blockspaceballads.com\/?p=525#article","isPartOf":{"@id":"https:\/\/blockspaceballads.com\/?p=525"},"author":{"name":"hardsouth","@id":"https:\/\/blockspaceballads.com\/#\/schema\/person\/a336a678f28eacb341ce63c6b84b17d0"},"headline":"Terence Ranger and the Zimbabwean 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