ln Victory, the hungry crowd made up of beggars and unemployed youths surges forward towards shops breaking to loot goods while singing "...war songs of hope and crushed hopes (p 117). What is being underlined as significant here is the lively spirit of a fight-back culture in the ranks of the dispossessed masses in postcolonial Zimbabwe. In a way, the beggar's strike suggests the birth of something new, and whose potential to shift the base from below is yet to unravel with time. The upheaval in social relations which characterize the ending of Victory is a thematic experience common in African fiction of the seventies. For example, Ngugi wa Thiongo's masses in Petals of Blood (1977) pelt the local Kenyan bourgeoisie with stones for failing to rescue the peasants of Ilmorog from a devastating drought. In other words, in Africa, the process of re-creating newly hatched class identities is one typified by resistance to domination from local ruling elites. The fundamental question is how these new social forces will not only consolidate themselves as alternative centres of power around which popular alliances against oppression are forming, but also whether they will be able to sustain the discourse of oppositional politics in the face of increasing repression from those in power.
