derived from the Bantu Indigenous languages, musha mukadzi is a Shona proverb that means ‘a woman embodies the home or territory.’ 

The editorial illustrations in this exhibit were developed in collaboration by Dr. Ruth Murambadoro (researcher) and Dr. Jimmy Spire Ssentongo (illustrator) from the life histories of fourteen Zimbabwean women whose labours addressed the sociopolitical well-being, status, and agency of women in the republic during its tumultuous journey from settler colonial rule to a militarized black majority government. Yet, each frame holds a story that more than fourteen women have to tell.

In the space between iconographic specificity and narrative relatability, these images animate a heterogenous yet collective experience of African women’s struggles against colonial legacies and entrenched systems of patriarchy, racism, sexism, and classism, on the continent and in the diaspora. They ask us to consider African women, mukadzi, in our conceptualizations and imaginations of home, musha, as a living material and metaphysical place for which our freedom, rugare, to inhabit and steward has been under persistent attack in the modern world.

These feminist representations of Zimbabwean women’s responses to the nationstate’s ongoing colonial violences recenter African women’s political significance and offer a necessary counterpoint to nationalist discourses that often silence gendered histories.

November 24-27, 2026, 4-days of embodied scholarly engagements that include, a book talk, public lecture, workshops,  discussions, cooking, crochet, film, poetry, and performances.

hosted at the Centre for Black Arts, St. John’s Newfoundland

Organised by Dr. Ruth Murambadro (Lead Investigator) and Dr. Chinelo Ezenwa (co-Investigator)