Struggling with Memories of the Zimbabwean Liberation War

The Feature Film Flame and Some of its Controversies

Hilde Arntsen

University of Bergen

Norway

Flame

• Zimbabwe 1996• Director: Ingrid Sinclair• Produced by Zimmedia

• Two young women join the liberation struggle

• Their fate during the struggle and after Independence in April 1980

• Comrade Flame: Joins the struggle after her father is abducted by the Rhodesian soilders

• Been to pungwes, and is the girlfriend of a freedom fighter, Comrade Danger

• Comrade Liberty: Joins because of her friend Flame

Comrade Flame

• Is raped by her senior Commander, becomes his girl friend

• Argues for rights of women freedom fighers in the struggle

• Looses her child in a bomb raid on the training camp

• Becomes legendary freedom fighter

• After Independence, marries and goes to to husband’s homestead, rears children

• War skills no longer in demand

Comrade Liberty

• Resists sexual offers of senior combatants

• Trains in typing while in camp• Is not shown in combat• After Independence, continues

school, and gets a career as a secretary

• Tries to hide her status as a war veteran

• Succeeds in independent Zimbabwe, but is single and without children

• Long history of war films from Rhodesian pespective, to deter ”Africans” from joining the struggle

• Objective of broadcast media after 1980: to ”explain the objectives of the revolution, its history and the suffering the people went through”

• No previous feature film about the liberation struggle

• Flame banned while still in production• Box office hit when released• Caused heavy public debate

Flame’s agument

• The prespective of two women and their contributions to the struggle

• Questions the fate of the ex-combatants after Independence has been won

• Questions who gets benefits and recognition

• Questions the gender roles in Zimbabwean society in 1990s

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Police in Harare seize negatives of film based on Zimbabwe’s liberation war, after allegations that it contained subversive information and some of its parts were pornographic. Police said they would seek the assistance of the Censorship Board, who are expected to view the film and determine whether it contains any undesirable scenes.

13 January 1996, Herald

Police have cleared the makers of feature film Flame of obscenity allegations, and returned rough prints seized last week saying there was no basis for laying a charge of obscenity.

20 January 1996 Herald

The Zimbabwe feature film Flame has been approved for general release in the country by the Board of Censors with a No under 16 age restriction.

23 May 1996 Financial Gazette

“The film Flame will do enourmous injustice to the stature and reputation of the war … [It is] and insidious attempt to cast the struggle as an aimless adventure”

The Herald

The ”wrong” Flame

• One of the biggest historical processes in Africa which some forces in our society and elsewhere would rather have undone and forgotten is the epic struggle waged by the people of this region for their emancipation. Yet we must keep telling the story as it was, because if we do not, activists other than ourselves will tell it in line with their own value judgments, prejudices, and psychological outlook, hostile to the interest of the majority. There are those who have already begun this re-writing of history in the name of "freedom of expression," in the name of "art" and "free flow of information". They are in this connection embarking on a campaign of distortion. The Sunday Mail, February 4 1996. Emphasis added

• Gender• Ethnicity• Politcal history vs. public

knowledge• Perceived role of film• The (re)writing of history• Challenging the official version

of the struggle based on politics and ethnicities, and competing organisations of the liberation movements

• The Flame controversy illustrates:

– who belongs to the nation,

– whose version of the past is lifted up to become History,

– whose version of the war will not (yet) be told?