Guns, Truncheons and the Virus: An Analysis of Liberation War Ideology in the Covid-19 Pandemic Response in Zimbabwe

Abstract

ABSTRACT This conceptual article falls within the scope of the politics applied to the Covid-19 pandemic in Zimbabwe. The central argument is that the state authority’s redeployment of liberation war ideology in its efforts to combat the Covid-19 pandemic tends to marginalise what the state authority refers to pejoratively as ‘ordinary Zimbabweans’. Using critical theory as theoretical framework, I argue that the deployment of liberation war ideology as a response to the Covid-19 pandemic concurrently reinforces the dominance of state authority while marginalising ordinary Zimbabweans. Liberation war ideology is premised on the assumption that the state authority has the sole mandate to actively deploy weaponry and personnel to eliminate an enemy on behalf of its citizens. The application of liberation war ideology to the Covid-19 pandemic suggests that the state authority has monopolised and politicised the measures taken against the pandemic.