Zimbabwean History
Butterfly Burning is set in current-day Zimbabwe, then referred to as the British colony Rhodesia. The action takes place in the late 1940s, in the years following World War II. The novel depicts life in Makokoba Township (“a segregated black ghetto in 1940s Rhodesia”) in Bulawayo, a city of flux and change that holds potential and hope for a better future (Chapter 1 opens with “There is a pause. An expectation”) but that ultimately does not deliver. Bulawayo is also one of the most important railway junctions in southern Africa.
Up until 1980, Bulawayo was a colonial city, which observed strict racial segregation, much in the manner of apartheid. The colonial system imposed restrictions on every aspect of the lives of Africans, as seen when Phephelaphi can not attend the nursing program when she gets pregnant. |
The story is set in between the country’s first and second Chimurengas, taking place before the 1948 general strike which all the frustrations of her characters are building up to but can find no public expression.
In 1946, Bulawayo is 50 years old (the same age as Fumbatha and Deliwe): “Bulawayo, only fifty years old, has nothing to offer but surprise; being alive is a consolation. Bulawayo is not a city for idleness” (6).
This township hosts a number of uprooted people trying to live and maintain their humanity.
There were people living in Bulawayo from all over central and southern Africa. Many languages were spoken; many different rituals were practiced. It would have been very difficult for any anthropologist to say what the prevailing marriage or burial customs were. Makokoba was constantly a society in the making.
Sidojiwe E2 is the main street in Makokoba; it constitutes the epicenter of the poverty, oppression, and disillusionment that ravaged the colonized African nation.
Makokoba is a microcosm of southern Africa.
Racism is prevalent. Even though Rhodesian’s Africans fought with their colonizers during WWII, black veterans, like all black Africans, are forbidden to walk on sidewalks (they can sweep and construct them, however), and no blacks are allowed to drive trains. Bulawayo’s bars have “NO BLACKS signs, WHITES ONLY signs” (9). They live in shacks with walls “thin like lace” (49). The codes of exclusion are bold and legible.
The novel mentions that there were measures to promote black business, but once the Africans were conscripted for war service, they returned to find they are just as dispossessed as when they left in 1942—the ironically named Success Store now stands as a forlorn and incomplete monument to failed reform: “Zandile walked past…the half built structure which was going to be called Success Store after it was completed but had been abandoned after only the foundation had been laid down. The store would have been an opportunity for some of the first black businessmen in Makokoba. The structure had been stopped in the middle of 1942 when these same able black men were asked to enlist and fight in a war they knew nothing about, fighting Germans and Italians” (90).
1948 is the year the Nationalists came to power in neighboring South Africa and set about institutionalizing apartheid. It is also the year, Vera writes in Butterfly Burning, “when hope opened like a bright sky and an educated black woman could do more” (106-107). Vera questions this progress in her novel.
“Flowers blossomed in the sky. The year was 1948. A young woman was seen walking slowly down Sidojiwe2. She wore a starched and pure white dress and a white cap on her head […] She ascended the flight of stairs with her shoulders held high. The hospital had accepted its first black nurse. There would be more” (98-99).
Phephelaphi, however, never gets to wear the uniform; she dies by suicide.
White Rhodesian urban life relied heavily on black male servants and workers from the beginning. The colonists intended for just African bachelors to live in the cities temporarily: they would work as wage laborers in the European economy. At this time, women were not expected to live in the cities—by both colonial authorities AND rural patriarchs. The women who did defy the system, as we see in this novel, worked as shebeen owners or as prostitutes. (Prostitution could be viewed as an act of resistance against the lineage system that saw good sex strictly in terms of heterosexual marriage and the reproduction of the clan.)
Vera shows us the colonists’ attempts to limit the lives of the Africans and also African men’s attempts to restrict the movement of women. Gender constructions become stronger than racial ones. Black men oppress the women alongside whom they are oppressed.
In 1946, Bulawayo is 50 years old (the same age as Fumbatha and Deliwe): “Bulawayo, only fifty years old, has nothing to offer but surprise; being alive is a consolation. Bulawayo is not a city for idleness” (6).
This township hosts a number of uprooted people trying to live and maintain their humanity.
There were people living in Bulawayo from all over central and southern Africa. Many languages were spoken; many different rituals were practiced. It would have been very difficult for any anthropologist to say what the prevailing marriage or burial customs were. Makokoba was constantly a society in the making.
Sidojiwe E2 is the main street in Makokoba; it constitutes the epicenter of the poverty, oppression, and disillusionment that ravaged the colonized African nation.
Makokoba is a microcosm of southern Africa.
Racism is prevalent. Even though Rhodesian’s Africans fought with their colonizers during WWII, black veterans, like all black Africans, are forbidden to walk on sidewalks (they can sweep and construct them, however), and no blacks are allowed to drive trains. Bulawayo’s bars have “NO BLACKS signs, WHITES ONLY signs” (9). They live in shacks with walls “thin like lace” (49). The codes of exclusion are bold and legible.
The novel mentions that there were measures to promote black business, but once the Africans were conscripted for war service, they returned to find they are just as dispossessed as when they left in 1942—the ironically named Success Store now stands as a forlorn and incomplete monument to failed reform: “Zandile walked past…the half built structure which was going to be called Success Store after it was completed but had been abandoned after only the foundation had been laid down. The store would have been an opportunity for some of the first black businessmen in Makokoba. The structure had been stopped in the middle of 1942 when these same able black men were asked to enlist and fight in a war they knew nothing about, fighting Germans and Italians” (90).
1948 is the year the Nationalists came to power in neighboring South Africa and set about institutionalizing apartheid. It is also the year, Vera writes in Butterfly Burning, “when hope opened like a bright sky and an educated black woman could do more” (106-107). Vera questions this progress in her novel.
“Flowers blossomed in the sky. The year was 1948. A young woman was seen walking slowly down Sidojiwe2. She wore a starched and pure white dress and a white cap on her head […] She ascended the flight of stairs with her shoulders held high. The hospital had accepted its first black nurse. There would be more” (98-99).
Phephelaphi, however, never gets to wear the uniform; she dies by suicide.
White Rhodesian urban life relied heavily on black male servants and workers from the beginning. The colonists intended for just African bachelors to live in the cities temporarily: they would work as wage laborers in the European economy. At this time, women were not expected to live in the cities—by both colonial authorities AND rural patriarchs. The women who did defy the system, as we see in this novel, worked as shebeen owners or as prostitutes. (Prostitution could be viewed as an act of resistance against the lineage system that saw good sex strictly in terms of heterosexual marriage and the reproduction of the clan.)
Vera shows us the colonists’ attempts to limit the lives of the Africans and also African men’s attempts to restrict the movement of women. Gender constructions become stronger than racial ones. Black men oppress the women alongside whom they are oppressed.
1896
1942 1946 1948 1966 1980 1998 |
First Chimurenga, first African uprising against white settler rule. (Fumbatha’s father is part of the African uprising and hanged with 16 others; Fumbatha is born.)
Many black male Rhodesians leave the country to fight alongside the British in WWII Bulawayo turns 50 years old Nationalists come to power in South Africa, instituting apartheid ZAPU and ZANU begin to wage guerrilla warfare, a campaign most often referred to as the Second Chimurenga to suggest its connections with the First Chimurenga Zimbabwe gains its independence Butterfly Burning is published |