Sitting on the fence or walking a tightrope? : a political history of the coloured community in Zimbabwe, 1945-1980

Includes bibliographies.This thesis examines the political history of the Coloured community of Zimbabwe, a group that has not only been marginalised in most general political and academic discourses but whose history has also been subject to popular misconceptions. The specific focus of the thesis is on the evolution of political ideologies and strategies among members of the Coloured community. The thesis opens by looking at the construction of Coloured identity from the early 1890s. In this section, through a detailed analysis of the various processes involved in the construction of Coloured identity, the study first challenges the notion that Coloured identity was imposed exclusively from above, by the colonial state