This article explores the identity-construction capacity of place names. Since place names are icons of identity, and symbolic representations of a people's memory and belonging, the article analyses the use of place names in the creation of distinct racial identities for places in Salisbury (the presentday Harare) during the colonial era in Zimbabwe. This article views a place as a concept which goes beyond the physical dimension, since it is discursively constructed. The article gives special attention to Salisbury because it was the capital city of Rhodesia. As such the place-naming trends in Salisbury were repeated throughout the country. Place naming is part of the wider process of attaching an identity on the landscape partly because place names carry aspects of the lived experiences of a particular people. In addition, a name is a cultural symbol which projects fears, hopes, aspirations and the general belief system of a people. It is a critical component of the intangible heritage of a people. Rhodesia had a rigid system of racial segregation. The article examines the nature of the relationship between place naming and the colonial separate development policy given that the same colonial administrative system also superintended over the official place-naming system through approving and standardising all official geographical names. The article analyses three components of the built environment, namely street names in residential areas, names of residential areas and school names.
This article explores the post-colonial national identity formation using place names that commemorate the nation’s past in Zimbabwe. Place name alterations that the new political elites implemented at independence in 1980 were aimed at disassembling relics of the deposed regime and craft a new national identity. The commemorative landscapes of Harare, as a national capital, constitute a strategic medium in the constitution of national identity. Ethnicity dominated the political landscape in Zimbabwe. The two main political parties, the Zimbabwe African National Union (ZANU) and Zimbabwe African People’s Union (ZAPU), have been aligned with the two supertribes, Shona and Ndebele, respectively. The article explores how the ruling ZANU (PF) government whose leadership was largely Shona used a meta-narrative modelled around discourses of exclusionary autochthony and a partial presentation of the liberation war history that projected ZAPU as having made an insignificant contribution to the liberation war to construct a national identity. It concludes that the use of exclusionary definitions of belonging and a one-sided presentation of the war past that projected ZANU as having contributed more to the liberation war entrenched Shona ethnic chauvinistic tendencies and propagated ZANU (PF) political hegemony. Using the theoretical lens of critical toponymy, the article argues that politically motivated place renaming efforts usually select from the past aspects that serve present political purposes.
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