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Biography

Baldwin Hove is a Postdoctoral Research Fellow at the Centre for Diversity in Higher Education Research at Central University of Technology, Free State, South Africa. He holds a Ph.D. in History from the University of the Free State. He has published several journal articles and book chapters on Student politics, Peace Studies, History Education, and contemporary issues in education.

Chitja Twala is a Professor of History at the University of South Africa (UNISA). Before joining UNISA he was a History Professor in the Department of Cultural and Political Studies at the University of Limpopo (UL). He is a former Associate Professor; Head of Department and Vice-Dean at the University of the Free State (UFS). He is the author of 12 book chapters (co-authored three); and a co-edited book titled Migration, Borders, and Borderlands: Making national identity in Southern African Communities. He is the recipient of Andrew Mellon Foundation and the NIHSS grants. He has been awarded several visiting/research fellowships: Harvard University (USA); University of Ghana (Ghana); and the University of California, Los Angeles (USA) 

Bekithemba Dube is a full Professor in Curriculum Studies and is currently the Director for the Centre for Diversity in Higher Education at Central University of Technology. He holds PhD in Curriculum Studies from the University of the Free State (UFS). He has written extensively on the area of Curriculum, Politics and Religion in Post colonial African countries. He has published more than 180 articles and book chapters in accredited journals in the past 7 years. He has successfully edited five books on curriculum, politics and religion and edited 8 special issues on education.

Abstract

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.

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Creative Commons License
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 4.0 License.

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