Zenzo Nkobi, ZAPU Photographer: Exile, Visibility and the Anteroom of War in Zambia, 1977–1980

Patricia Hayes

Journal of Southern African Studies, 2020, vol. 46, issue 5, 941-964

Abstract: Zenzo Nkobi acted as official photographer from 1977 for Joshua Nkomo, president of the Zimbabwe African People’s Union (ZAPU). ZAPU was based in Zambia after the banning of the nationalist organisation in Rhodesia in 1963. This article takes up the question of nationalist photography, as it were, and how the modes of documenting presidentialism and pan-African and socialist solidarity in newly independent African states from the 1960s might have shaped Nkobi’s influences. Among the photographs taken by Nkobi are pictures of education camps in Zambia during official visits by Nkomo with accompanying foreign delegations. On such occasions, it appears that the youthful camp recruits prepared ‘cultural performances’ for the visitors. Here, at times, Nkobi’s camera goes beyond ostensible political necessity and offers a sense of the contingent and the incidental. The article directs attention to these aspects of the camp photographs and to the spectral implications of the material damage to and digitisation of Nkobi’s negatives, which now constitute the photographic heritage of a liberation movement marginalised since independence in 1980.

Date: 2020
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
http://hdl.handle.net/10.1080/03057070.2020.1805196 (text/html)
Access to full text is restricted to subscribers.

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:taf:cjssxx:v:46:y:2020:i:5:p:941-964

Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from
http://www.tandfonline.com/pricing/journal/cjss20

DOI: 10.1080/03057070.2020.1805196

Access Statistics for this article

Journal of Southern African Studies is currently edited by Ralph Smith

More articles in Journal of Southern African Studies from Taylor & Francis Journals
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Chris Longhurst ().