Summary The article discusses the Shona war novel published in the early 1980s as an avatar of human-factor content for the fledgling nation. It particularly draws corroborative evidence from selected Shona war narratives published between 1980 and 1985, a time when Zimbabwe attained political independence. While this novel has largely received negative criticism, the article advances the contention that it was/is legitimating discourse of the new nationalist government at independence in 1980. The nationalist government needed state-centred narratives that would sanctify its rulership, and obviously the liberation war provided an undisputed source for such narratives, and this trend remains unchanged up to this day. In this regard, the Shona war novel manipulates history for nation building and national identity formation purposes as well as the fortification of a heroic tradition. It achieves this by creatively blending history, myth and legend in a manner that defines the past, present and future trajectory of nation in terms that negate withdrawal and resignation. This makes it inseparable from the painstaking search for and enunciation of ennobling human-factor content and values. Without appropriate human-factor orientation, both the integrity of the nation as well as efforts aimed at nation building would be a far-fetched possibility. The article also points out that the Shona war novel played such a role because its production was controlled by the state-funded Literature Bureau.
