Innovative and challenging study that provides fresh insights on the anthropology of death and postcolonial politics.

Introduction
Changing death and human corporeality across Africa and beyond
The politics of the dead in Zimbabwe
The power of uncertainty
Sources and structure of the book

1 Liberation Heritage: Bones and the politics of commemoration
The burial of Gift Tandare
Heritage and commemoration
Heritage and commemoration in Zimbabwe
Liberation heritage
Unsettling Bones

2 Bones & Tortured Bodies: Corporealities of violence and post-violence
Resurfacing bones
Emotive materiality, affective presence and transforming materials
Tortured bodies
Towards 'healing' and 'reconciliation' during the GNU 2009-2013
Conclusions

3 Chibondo: Exhumations, uncertainty and the excessivity of human materials
The Chibondo exhumations
Too 'fresh', 'intact', fleshy, leaky and stinky?
The torque of materiality and the excessive potentiality of human remains
The politics of uncertainty
Conclusions

4 Political Accidents: Rumours, death and the politics of uncertainty
The death of Solomon Mujuru
Factionalism, rivalries and murky business dealings
The inquest
A particular kind of death
Conclusions

5 Precarious Possession: Rotina Mavhunga, politics and the uncertainties of mediumship
Rotina Mavhunga - the diesel n'anga
Precarious occupation

6 Mai Melissa: Towards the alterity of spirit and the incompleteness of death
Towards the alterity of spirit
Conclusions

7 After Mugabe
Burying Bob

Conclusions
Bodies and spirits, change and continuity
AIDS, cholera, Congo, prisons, Chiadzwa, diaspora, FTLR, and charismatic Pentecostalisms
New directions for liberation heritage
Ambuya Nehanda returns?
Exhuming Bob?

Joost Fontein is Professor of Anthropology, University of Johannesburg. He was previously Director of the British Institute in Eastern Africa and Lecturer in Social Anthropology at the University of Edinburgh. His books include Remaking Mutirikwi: Landscape, Water and Belonging (James Currey, 2015), shortlisted for the African Studies Association 2016 Herskovits Prize.