‘It remains untold’. White women and gender-based violence in colonial Zimbabwe

Abstract

Gender based violence is a socio-historical phenomenon that affected colonial Indigenous and settler societies in Zimbabwe, Tanzania and elsewhere in Africa. Experiences of indigenous societies have been disproportionately studied by scholars. White settlers’ experiences of violence in domestic spaces remain largely silenced. This article fills this lacuna by illuminating one unexplored dimension of white settler women’s history: their lived experiences with gender-based violence in domestic spaces of colonial Zimbabwe. It draws on archival research carried out in court records, in the form of civil, desertion and divorce cases. The paper deploys the concepts of objective and subjective violence as a prism to reconstruct violence. The article argues that despite their privileged status in the colonial state, white women were dually positioned as survivors and perpetrators of violence. It brings up another angle of perceiving colonial society, allowing for greater understanding of intersecting themes of class, gender, and whiteness.