1 - Preamble

Summary

Chapter 1 introduces General Solomon Mujuru/Rex Nhongo, pointing out his military and political significance. It maintains that Mujuru’s life history is important to tell, in and of itself, but also that his life history is particularly useful as a prism for telling a broader story about impervious elite politics in Southern Africa’s transnational liberation struggles, Zimbabwe’s ruling ZANU PF party and the country’s post-independence army. The chapter argues that the biographical approach is a useful but much neglected (by political scientists) way of writing politics and it accentuates the utility of oral history. It concludes by arguing that Mujuru’s memory has been expunged or misrepresented in official memorialisations of the liberation war and key post-independence events. Thus, the biography partly serves as a recovery of Solomon’s memory.