Abstract:
european colonialism was a well-thought-out enterprise aimed at exploiting the natural
resources of the colonized. as this paper notes, it was also meant to exploit the human
capital—the colonized themselves as a source of cheap and readily available labor. the
paper further argues that to successfully exploit the colonized, they expropriated land
and other resources under the guise and myth of the terra nullius. they also renamed
the appropriated spaces and the colonized people themselves. such naming, the paper
posits, was meant not just for easy referencing but also as memories of home for the
new settlers. it was also a seal and stamp of archived material, for through naming they
were indicating their presence, indicating that they came, conquered and named. it is
on the basis of renaming, the paper argues, that while in theory, they have left, from
a records and archives perspective, these people’s presence is still very much alive and
kicking because of the names they gave that most Black Zimbabweans still carry and
take pride in. the paper laments that even some of the loudest exponents of what it
means to decolonize, carry these colonial labels. What the paper concludes is that the
names that the formerly colonized carry, and those given by colonialists in some of
their places speak to the success of the colonial enterprise, at least as far as onomastics
are concerned because, through them, archives of colonial memories are kept and
sustained.
