The Center for African Studies invites you another installment of our Africa at Noon series. In this session, Brooks Marmon will share an overview of his ongoing research on liberation movements in Zimbabwe. His talk is titled, Political Expedience, Violence, and Opposition Disruption in Zimbabwe: Insights from the Public Life of Nelson Samkange, 1960s-2000s.
His presentation recovers the political career of Nelson Samkange, a mid-level elite who played a role in both the colonial and post-colonial politics of Zimbabwe. While he has escaped major scholarly attention, Samkange was a notable UK-based official for several Zimbabwean liberation movements. His complicated political journey from the early 1960s until his death in 2013, peaked in 2003 when he was appointed provincial governor by Robert Mugabe, a distant relative. Samkange’s experience illuminates the historical legacies of the country’s tumultuous politics and the impact of self-serving political choices on Zimbabwe’s wider political culture. The presentation is based on work for an in-progress journal article.
Brooks holds a PhD in African Studies from the University of Edinburgh. Dr. Marmon is currently a post-doctoral scholar with the Mershon Center for International Security Studies. He is the author of Pan-Africanism Versus Partnership: African Decolonisation in Southern Rhodesian Politics, 1950-63 (Springer). His research focuses on southern African liberation struggles.
