Abstract
W hite lust and Black shame among blacks across all classes is a phenomenon that has not been fully explored and accounted for particularly as part of a residual inter-generational colonial psychosis expressed in everyday talk among black folk in postcolonial Africa. This leads to the questions: What aspects of whiteness or coloniser/colonised transactional relationships do the former colonised blacks manifest in conversations? How does whiteness refracted by class, gender, and ethnicity, remap itself onto new psycho-social relationships among blacks in former British settler colonies like Zimbabwe and South Africa? How are contemporary class differences expressed in terms of distance from or closeness to imagined whiteness in everyday ghetto language and communication? This research analyses meanings that attach to terms murungu (white person), and its plural form varungu (white persons) as used by Shona speaking black Zimbabweans in address or with reference to phenotypical non-white individuals as people engage in naturally occurring and undirected conversational talk in three