European and African works have found it difficult to move past the image of Africa as a place of exotica and relentless brutality. This book explores the status and critical relationship between politics, culture, literary creativity, criticism, education and publishing in the context of promoting Africa's indigenous knowledge, and seeks to recover some of the sites where Africans continue to elaborate conflicting politics of self-affirmations. It both acknowledges and steps outside the protocols of analysis informed by nationalism, differentiating the forms that postcolonial theories have taken, and arguing for a selective appropriation of theory that emerges from Africa's lived experiences.

In May 2005 the Government of Zimbabwe began 'Operation Murambatsvina'. Officially translated as 'Operation Clean-Up', the more literal meaning is 'getting rid of the filth'. The operation continued throughout the month of June, and affected virtually every town and rural business centre in the country. From Mount Darwin in the north to Beitbridge in the south, Mutare in the east and Bulawayo in the west, no part of the nation was spared; every day more buildings fell and families were displaced. In his introduction to The Hidden Dimensions Maurice Vambe argues that the treatment of people as 'human dirt' demands the notion of citizenship in Zimbabwe be rethought. The volume goes on to consider the historical antecedents to the operation, its hidden and unspoken consequences, its representations in the media and the social responses that were made to it.