Bekithemba Dube

The year 2008 witnessed one of the most violent electoral processes in Zimbabwean history. While extensive research has examined the 2008 election violence, limited scholarly attention has been paid to its effects on children. Using the structural violence framework, this study examines how the 2008 electoral violence affected children in Zimbabwe. The study analysed media reports and secondary texts, complemented by retrospective observations, to explore children's experiences during the electoral crisis. It seeks to expose the less examined consequences of political violence on children. The findings reveal that children witnessed assaults, murder, rape, forced displacement, the destruction of homes and the targeting of their caregivers. Some were involuntarily drawn into partisan activities, experiences that shaped their early political socialisation. Children were also subjected to coercive political structures, community-level intimidation and the militarisation of everyday life, despite being neither active participants nor direct beneficiaries of the electoral process. The study argues that children were not mere bystanders to the 2008 election violence but direct and indirect victims of political violence. Hence, this study is among the first to discuss the effects of the 2008 electoral violence on children, thereby bringing to light the living realities of children during violence and crises.

This inaugural issue juxtaposes a very critical question as it introduces the Interdisciplinary Journal of Diversity Research to the academic community. The question at hand is why is the world so hateful after many centuries of living and working together? While the intention of this editorial article is not answering the question, it opens platform for engagement from multi, intra and interdisciplinary to problematise a hateful world marked with xenophobia, racism, rightwing political orientation, religious extremism, infanticide, holocaust, endless wars. This inaugural issue draws papers from various field within the ambit of enhancing diversity from interdisciplinary focal point. This argument which this inaugural issue present is that a conceited effort is indispensable to call for diversity among humanity as the only strategy for human survival. Without appreciation of difference from those do not look like us, it is the fertile breeding grounds for hate which does not benefit anyone including the perpetrators. Therefore, this journal calls for theorization and empirical engagement around the notion of diversity in every paper is a positive move towards reworlding the world along the lines of sustainable love, care, and peace.

Three decades after the formal lowering of the colonial flag, Zimbabwe remains entangled in structures, epistemologies, and hierarchies inherited from settler colonialism. The vocabulary of decolonisation is now ubiquitous in Zimbabwian policy, curriculum reform and public debate, yet its meaning is frequently unsettled, contested or reduced to symbolic gestures such as renaming and Africanisation. This conceptual review interrogates what decolonisation and decoloniality mean within Zimbabwe's historical, political, educational, cultural and socioeconomic contexts, and asks how decolonial ideas can move beyond rhetoric toward substantive transformation. Drawing on the modernity/coloniality school and Af­rican decolonial scholarship, the review employs conceptual analysis and synthesis to distinguish coloniality (an enduring matrix of power, knowledge and being) from decolonisation (the historical event of juridical independence) and decolonial­ity (an ongoing project of epistemic and structural liberation). It advances an integrated conceptual model that maps the persistent coloniality matrix onto five sites of contestation (knowledge and curriculum, language, identity, institutions and public policy, and land and economy) and theorises two divergent pathways: a symbolic pathway that reproduces coloniality and a substantive pathway that regenerates epistemic freedom. The review concludes that genuine decoloniality in Zimbabwe requires the alignment of ep­istemic, institutional and socioeconomic transformation, mediated by political will, epistemic communities, and a relational Ubuntu ethic.

This paper is a comparative analysis of colonial and postcolonial labour practices in Zimbabwe, focusing on the experiences of African workers in European- and Chinese-owned industries. The study answers questions on the perceived mimicking of colonial labour practices by Chinese firms in postcolonial Zimbabwe, with forced labour ( chibharo ) being a common characteristic. It argues that chibharo labour has been continued and reinvented in questionable labour practices by Chinese industries in postcolonial Zimbabwe, as was the case in Rhodesia. This reinvention of chibharo labour in postcolonial Zimbabwe can be used to support the view that political independence brought little freedom and justice to African workers. Thus, the novelty of this study is in using the labour history of Zimbabwe to demonstrate a continuity of colonialism in the postcolonial era. In so doing, the study evaluates the effects of foreign capital in postcolonial Zimbabwe.

This study investigates how monitoring and support practices are enacted and strengthened to improve matric (National Senior Certificate) performance in the Vhembe East District, Limpopo Province, South Africa. Persistent underperformance in rural schools reflects structural challenges related to instructional leadership, limited resources, and weak institutional support systems. While alternative frameworks such as instructional leadership and school effectiveness emphasise formal structures and standardised practices, this study adopts bricolage theory to better capture the adaptive, improvised, and context-responsive ways in which school leaders operate under resource constraints. Bricolage is particularly appropriate in this context as it foregrounds how actors mobilise available resources, relationships, and local knowledge to address immediate challenges where formal systems are insufficient. A qualitative case study design, informed by participatory and reflective principles, was employed and data were generated through semi-structured interviews, focus group discussions, and document analysis, and analysed using a hybrid inductive–deductive thematic approach. Findings reveal that monitoring and support practices—such as teacher supervision, learner support programmes, and parental engagement—are unevenly enacted due to limited resources, weak monitoring capacity, and inconsistent implementation. Based on the participants’ reflections, the study proposes that strengthening monitoring and support in resource-constrained contexts requires integrating locally adaptive practices with structured capacity-building and institutional support. It contributes to a contextually grounded understanding of educational improvement and demonstrates the analytical value of bricolage theory in explaining how school leaders navigate constraints through adaptive practice.

1. Matric learners in South Africa’s Limpopo province face multiple challenges that lead to poor performance. Over the past five years, Limpopo has persistently achieved a low pass rate compared to...

Using the 1977 Manama students’ abduction by ZIPRA guerrillas as a case study, this article discusses the politics of memory in Zimbabwean war historiography. Through analysis of oral testimonies, newspaper articles and secondary texts, the paper analysed how the incident has been remembered, manipulated, and portrayed in Zimbabwean nationalist and patriotic historiography. The study discovered that the Manama episode has fallen prey to the politics of memory as nationalist fervour collides with political agendas. While the nationalist and patriotic historiography frames the abduction incident in heroic and consensual terms, colonial and revisionist narratives, on the other hand, amplify aspects of coercion and deception. These conflicting versions expose tensions between collective memory, individual agency, and political expediency amidst an environment where political power largely shapes the liberation war historiography. The article argues that the presentation of the Manama incident in today’s history reveals the broader abuse of war history by the ruling elite to mould heroes amongst the political elites and justify the regime’s perpetual clinging to power. In this case, certain sacrifices are glorified, whilst others are obscured. Therefore, by focusing on the war experiences of the Manama abducted students, this study contributes to debates on memory politics, youths in armed struggles, and the contested meanings of heroism in postcolonial Zimbabwe. The article sheds more light on the intricate interplay between political power, war memories and the construction of historical truth.

This theoretical paper examines the role of artificial intelligence as a tool for supporting the lifelong learning of students in Internet Technologies. With the advancement of artificial intelligence technology, education can be transformed through customized and flexible active learning. However, integrating artificial intelligence into Internet Technologies is a challenge, including coping with rapid technological change, lack of proper infrastructure, addressing the issues of varied learning, securing data privacy, and integrating artificial intelligence with existing educational frameworks. To do these things, the paper employed Activity Theory as a lens to explore the possibilities of AI as a learning mediator in social, cultural and historical settings, where communities and societies have a relation and attachment to learning. As a framework, Activity Theory was used to understand the relationship among students, artificial intelligence applications and their learning contexts, and how they affect students’ participation and level of learning. This study is based on secondary data to investigate the role of artificial intelligence in lifelong learning for Information Technology students. Literature was sought from different databases, including Google Scholar, Web of Science, and Scopus. The study stresses the importance of adapting artificial intelligence applications to different educational settings to maximize their effectiveness. It highlights that, when thoughtfully integrated, artificial intelligence can significantly enhance lifelong learning for Internet Technologies students, who must continually adapt to rapidly changing technological advancements. The argument premised in this paper is that artificial intelligence used in internet technologies has the potential to promote lifelong learning among university students. Keywords: Artificial Intelligence, Internet Technologies, Activity Theory, Lifelong Learning, Information Technology

This paper offers a gendered analysis of the experiences of secondary school students in the fight against oppression in Rhodesia. Using case studies from mission boarding secondary schools in southwest Rhodesia, the article discusses the daily realities of secondary school girls during Zimbabwe’s liberation struggle (circa 1966–1979). This analysis is framed through the lenses of Critical Pedagogy and gender analysis. Guided by Paulo Freire’s concepts of critical consciousness, the study examines various forms of oppression at the school level and analyses the effects of racialised colonial educational policies and guerrilla war teachings in awakening activism among girl students. Archival records, oral histories, and secondary texts were the sources interrogated. It was discovered that while the major struggle was against colonial rule, forms of oppression also existed at the school level. Girls in secondary schools fought against such oppression through strikes, rumourmongering, and repurposing domestic skills for the war effort. The study concludes that these everyday acts of resistance, often overlooked, were central to the war's logistical and moral fabric, challenging the dominant masculinist historiography. Thus, the girls’ dual identity as learners and activists tested the masculinist framing of the liberation war. Therefore, there is a need for narratives of girls to be elevated in liberation discourses, as they were not only collaborators but also active participants in the birth of a post-colonial Zimbabwe. Consequently, this study subscribes to decolonial feminist historiography, repositioning schooling as a site of the girl child’s struggle for empowerment and social transformation.

This Special Issue presents scholarly contributions from the 48th Annual SASE Conference, which focused on the integration of new technologies and innovative research to promote sustainable development in Southern Africa. The selected articles examine themes including artificial intelligence, virtual reality, indigenous knowledge systems, and context-driven methodologies. Collectively, these contributions demonstrate a commitment to educational transformation, equity, and the attainment of Sustainable Development Goals through technology-integrated and socially responsive research practices.