108 BOOK REVIEWSSamuel Chimsoro is more concerned with the betrayal of the popularobjectives of socialism that were enunciated at Independence. DamaRekutanga (The First Promise) is a metaphor for the undertaking made atIndependence to fulfil the wishes and aspirations of the majority of thepeople of Zimbabwe. The poet sees this promise as having been brokenand the resultant bitterness and disillusionment lends the poems a criticaltone. The poems clearly show that the post-Independence struggle is aclass rather than a racial struggle. The poet indicts the privileged few forreneging on their promises and duties, and he encourages people to takepositive action to change their life-style for the better rather than bepassive observers of the growing social malaise.Chimsoro is in a stylistic quandary, vacillating between populist andacademic poetry. Most of the poems begin with the easy-flowing rhythmadopted from popular songs and rhymes in the style of Kumbirai. Butunlike Kumbirai's poetry the borrowed song-beat does not always fuseinto the poet's own composition. The abandonment of the beat results instructural dislocation. The poet also tends to indulge in private imagescoined either from very rustic or very quaint idioms from folklore. Theseesoteric idioms tend to be expressed in very long extended metaphorswhich make the poetry rather obscure and pedantic. The result is anobscurantism that reminds one of the pioneer Shona poems of the 1950sand 1960s by Wilson Chivaura. Such academic poetry is suitable for theprivileged intelligentsia with whom Chimsoro does not seem to identifyhimself. Esoteric metaphors might have been employed to evade literarycensorship, but, whether it is employed for that reason or for its own sake,the result is a loss of mellifluousness and hence a loss of popular appealbecause of its limited accessibility. Such contemplative poetry is not easyto understand unless it is heavily footnoted. The style appears to underminerather than facilitate its subversive role. To that extent Chimsoro'santhology stands in contradistinction to Chirikure's.University of Zimbabwe E. M. CH1WOMEMothers of the Revolution Edited by I. Staunton. Harare, Baobab, 1990, xiv,306 pp., ISBN 0-908311-25-7, Z$30,80.This book comprises thirty testimonies from a variety of women from allover Zimbabwe relating their experiences of the war of liberation inZimbabwe. Their accounts help the reader to appreciate the differentways in which the war was fought and experienced in different parts of thecountry.These testimonies are largely from women who lived in the rural areasof Zimbabwe. This perspective helps readers, particularly non-nationals,to understand the liberation war from the point of view of non-militaryparticipants in the liberation movements. The fact that peasant womenwho are at the bottom of the class hierarchy in Zimbabwe, are wellrepresented in the collection gives the book a strong sense of the viewfrom below. The relationships between the peasants and the soldiers onBOOK REVIEWS 109class and gender lines are well articulated in the testimonies and thevulnerability of women and children in situations of conflict emerges veryclearly.The only jarring note is the title, which is misleading to some extent.The narrow interpretation of amai/madzimai as 'mothers' does not reflectthe different roles women played during the liberation war, that is, aswives, sisters, daughters, chimbwidos (errand girls), party activists andorganizers, teachers, family and religious elders, farmers and so on. Thewomen's testimonies definitely do not describe their participation in andexperience of the war from the perspectives of mothers only.In spite of this flaw, the book is a valuable addition to resources onissues relating to women and their struggles during Zimbabwe's liber-ation war.University of Zimbabwe RUDO GAIDZANWAThird World Seminar Series. Oslo, Univ. of Oslo, Division for North/SouthCo-operation, Centre for Development and the Environment. Various prices.The series began in 1977 and now has over 50 publications to its credit;most of the earlier ones were in Norwegian but from 1983 they are mostlyin English. Three recent papers are directly relevant to Zimbabwe: H.Ronning, The Structure of the Media in Zimbabwe (No. 47, 1989, Kr. 40,00);J. T. Chipika, Race against Hunger or What?: A Pause for Thought onAgriculture and Rural Development in Zimbabwe since 1980 (No. 50. 1990,Kr. 20,00); and W. Ncube, State Security, The Rule of Law and Politics ofRepression in Zimbabwe (No. 15, 1990, Kr. 20,00). As seminar papers theyshould not be taken as the authors' final words on their subjects and thefirst mentioned Š by a Norwegian author Š is clearly directed more to aNorwegian than a specialist audience.R. S. R.