Dr. Edmore Chitukutuku is currently a sessional lecturer in the Anthropology department at University of Witwatersrand (Wits) in South Africa. He holds a PhD in Anthropology from University of Witwatersrand (2017), MA in Anthropology from University of Witwatersrand (2013), BA Honors from University of Witwatersrand (2011), and a BSc degree in Social Sciences from Great Zimbabwe University (2007), where he also taught Social Anthropology and Sociology as an Assistant Lecturer (2010). His PhD thesis was titled Rebuilding Liberation War Militia Bases: Reproducing memories of political violence in the post-2000 crisis in Zimbabwe. He also held teaching positions as a sessional lecturer and tutor in the Department of Anthropology at Wits where he taught a course on the Anthropology of Violence (2017), and the International Human Rights Exchange Programme (IHRE) at University of Witwatersrand (2012). His awards and honors include the Next Generation Social Sciences in Africa Proposal Development Fellowship (2013-2014) and Dissertation Fellowship (2015-16) from the Social Science Research Council; the Wadsworth International Fellowship from the Wenner-Gren Foundation (2013-17); the Wits Postgraduate Merit Award 2011 and 2012; the Justice Lucas Award for the best Honors research report in Anthropology at Wits (2011); and the Vice Chancellor’s Book Prizes for academic excellence at the Great Zimbabwe University (2008). He is a life member of the Golden Key International Honor Society. His research interests are on peace and conflict, focusing on military and state-sponsored violence, youth, and economic anthropology.
Dr. Chitukutuku recently published “Rebuilding the Liberation War Base: Materiality and landscapes of violence in Northern Zimbabwe” in Journal of East African Studies (2017).
Award Information
This research seeks to understand the relationship between the bases of the 1970s and the bases of 2008 as a way of interrogating the way in which political legitimacy and patriotic history are negotiated in contemporary Zimbabwe, through studying the militia base, across the history of ZANU-PF mobilization. This repetition in form is used as a way of understanding the way in which ZANU-PF's attempt to create political continuity between the liberation struggle and their contemporary forms of violence function within the lives of ordinary Zimbabweans. I also seek to consider if the re-establishment of militia bases is a deliberate political and ideological geography and landscape work by ZANU PF through understanding how people actually remember and continue to engage with landscapes of past violence, outside of ZANU PF politicking. Qualitative ethnographic research methodology, which involves participant observation alongside qualitative interviews, will be used, to understand the social forms that cohere around the base. Focus will be on the Youth militia who were in these bases in the 2008 violence and the War Veterans and ordinary people who participated in the liberation struggle in the 1970s who were also part of the 2008 militia bases, because they are figured as political subjects because of their association with the base as a form.
