4. The Second Chimurenga: Early Literature and Nationalists-Guerrillas

This is the first of two chapters on the second chimurenga. The purpose of these chapters is to provide an overview of the historical development of the nationalist and guerrilla movements, and to identify key themes in the second chimurenga literature. This chapter examines the early scholarly literature on the second chimurenga and highlights themes embodied in this literature, but also silences and gaps which are addressed in the later literature. It then turns to a consideration of one particular theme, namely the overall character of the nationalist movements and guerrilla armies and, more importantly, the relationship between them. The chapter considers some of the temporal dynamics of the war of liberation during the 1970s, and it captures many of the complexities of the spatial diversity of the second chimurenga across the breadth of the Rhodesian countryside. Ultimately, in considering the second chimurenga, the chapter is concerned primarily with pinpointing and discussing themes which are particularly crucial in developing a comparative analysis of the three zvimurenga and in understanding the specificities of the third chimurenga.