Post-2000 Zimbabwe Research Articles

Comedy as journalism in Zimbabwe

Post-2000, Zimbabwe has witnessed a gradual shrinking of communicative space. In its efforts to control the narrative about the causes of the country’s multi-dimensional crisis, the ruling ZANU-PF government has used a gamut of legal and extra-judicial strategies to stifle press and other related freedoms. In this highly restrictive context, comedy has emerged as a viable source of information about events unfolding in the country as well as an alternative public sphere where counter-hegemonic discourses are ventilated by citizens who were previously excluded from the mainstream public sphere. Building on Mpofu’s (2017) and Mano’s (2007) studies on art and music as variants of journalism, our paper argues that comedy should be viewed as a variant of journalism in post-2000 Zimbabwe. We employ the normative roles of journalism, and Nancy Fraser’s (1990) concept of the alternative public sphere as our framework for examining how comedy, and more specifically Comic Pastor’s Monthly Comic Awards, has filled the void created by mainstream journalism by performing the journalistic function of communicating salient issues during the protracted Zimbabwean crisis. Our findings converge with, and broaden, Mpofu’s (2017) and Mano’s (2007) thesis that alternative sources of expression such as comedy should be viewed as journalism in crisis contexts. These findings also reinforce the need to expand traditional conceptions of journalism that narrowly limit the practice to traditional mass media.

Renarrating China-Africa relations: perspectives from new Chinese immigrants in Zimbabwe

ABSTRACT Drawing on China’s rising population outflows and the theory of everyday geopolitics, this study discusses how the daily international encounters of emerging Chinese immigrants (re-)write international relations. The study was conducted through fieldwork with new Chinese immigrants in Zimbabwe and reveals two findings. First, Zimbabwean political elites have been knitting a geopolitical discourse through the well-known nationalism and patriotic histories between China and Zimbabwe constructing ‘successful and mutually beneficial’ Zimbabwe-China relations. However, this elite geopolitical discourse has been facing great challenges among ordinary people in post-2000 Zimbabwe due to the influx of Chinese immigrants. Second,the new Chinese immigrant have been becoming key players in (re-)narrating Zimbabwe-China relations for their unbalanced trade relations with locals, inappropriate behaviours, their precarities, and investment in local public services. This migrant group not only incurs a Sino-phobia sentiment in post-2000 Zimbabwe, but also contributes to the maintaining of the public opinion on the Chinese presence here, articulating a complex and diverse set of geopolitical discourse. This study provides persuasive evidence that everyday practice has a stronger role in knitting together geopolitical discourse than traditional narratives and provides insights for transnational geopolitics to examine heterogeneity, complexity, and diversity of the geopolitical players in more details.

Dilemmas of International Nongovernmental Organisations Operating in Post-2000 Zimbabwe

The operation of international nongovernmental organisations (INGOs) in authoritarian regimes has received scholarly attention lately. These organisations were repressed and, in most cases, experienced several dilemmas. The dilemmas case experienced by INGOs operating in post-2000 Zimbabwe has not received any attention. This paper describes the nature of the dilemmas INGOs have experienced in their humanitarian and developmental call of duty in post-2000 Zimbabwe. The aim is to contribute to a body of knowledge on the INGO dilemmas in an authoritarian polity environment. The paper uses a qualitative case study of INGOs operating in post-2000 Zimbabwe to explore and describe the nature of dilemmas they experience. In-depth interviews were conducted on a sample of ten INGO officials selected from the array of INGOs operating in Zimbabwe. The study identified that INGO dilemmas revolved around speaking out versus not speaking out on state brutality, weaponisation and politicisation of food aid and bad governance. They also experienced dilemmas such as whether to uphold political neutrality or not, to violate or not to violate the INGO-State terms of engagement, and to perform other tasks legally or illegally. For as long as people have felt the urge to help others, they have seen risks and faced dilemmas in doing so. - Hugo Slim (18/3/1996).

Indigeneity, belonging, ‘madness’ and ‘corruption’: Brett Muvet and the white man’s identity crisis in post-2000 Zimbabwe

ABSTRACT The article examines instances of white-talk in indigenous Shona language in post-2000 Zimbabwe. Grounded in concepts of whiteness, identity, citizenship and belonging, it interrogates discourses in videos produced and circulated by a white man – Brett Muvet – in Shona via YouTube. Through interrogating the ‘I’- ‘You’ and ‘Us’ – ‘Them’ dichotomies in his political commentary, the article interrogates how the white man seeks to re-insert himself in the national project. The findings demonstrate that for Brett whiteness is the point from which the world unfolds. His ‘talk’ demonstrates, regardless of claims to indigeneity, the white man’s problem of belonging in the post-colony.

Irony, Names and Linguistic Resistance: NoViolet Bulawayo’s We Need New Names as a World-Making Narrative

Contemporary works of African literature often engage in the depiction of a geographical and cultural dislocation inscribed in today’s pattern of global migration. NoViolet Bulawayo’s We Need New Names (2013) fits within this framework as a female coming-of-age novel that follows the story of Darling, from the character’s childhood in post-2000 Zimbabwe to the alienating experience of life as a migrant in the United States of America. The peculiarity of the novel lays in Bulawayo’s linguistic choices, in particular the use of irony and the practice of (re)naming, which come to represent the feelings of un-belonging and political disillusionment that define the characters’ geo-cultural displacement. Using the normative theory of literature (Cheah 2016) as a theoretical framework, this paper further analyses the use of such literary devices as tools through which the narrative opens up to alternative worlds of representation. In this sense, this paper argues that Bulawayo’s We Need New Names can be considered as a world-making narrative of cultural and linguistic resistance against the disruption of Zimbabwe’s socio-political situation.

Appropriated and Commodified Dance in the Post-2000 Zimbabwe Crisis Period as Represented in Petina Gappah’s “The Mupandawana Dancing Champion”

In this article I undertake a literary analysis of Petina Gappah’s short story entitled “The Mupandawana Dancing Champion” (2009) focusing on the author’s portrayal of the intersection between the dancing body and political power in post-2000 Zimbabwe’s crisis period. I draw from Michel Foucault’s notion of the docile body to discuss how the politically dominant appropriate and commodify the dancing body of the subordinate for political survival and financial benefit. I argue that Gappah ironically depicts the hypnotic place of kongonya dance among the populace, especially as performed by the pupils from Mupandawana growth point. I further contend that Gappah cynically depicts the transformation of M’dhara Vitalis’s dances from a social entertainment performance into a strictly business transaction. A reading of “The Mupandawana Dancing Champion” is, therefore, useful to appreciate how the ruling political elite appropriate enfeebled ordinary people’s dance and use its influence to maintain their grip on power and their monopoly on business opportunities.

Intersections of nativism and football fandom in Zimbabwean online spaces

Post-2000 Zimbabwe is characterised by the ZANU PF government’s nativist nationalism. Within literature on sports in Zimbabwe, studies exploring connections between nativist nationalism and sports are scarce. This article uses the case of a ‘white’ Portuguese football coach, Paulo Jorge Silva, to explore intersections of nativism and football fandom in Zimbabwe’s online spaces. Silva was appointed as coach of Zimbabwe’s most popular Premier Soccer League team Dynamos FC in 2016. Guided by the nativism concept, selected online fandom comments targeting Silva as Dynamos FC coach, were subjected to critical discourse analysis. Comments expressed that the relationship between Dynamos and a ‘white’ coach was likely to end in failure since it was akin to reversing gains of the liberation struggle at a time when the government had crafted indigenous black empowerment policies.

Crisis and “Hustler” Identities in Zimbabwe: A Critical Analysis of the Complexities of Survival in Panashe Chigumadzi’s Sweet Medicine (2015)

This article critically interrogates the complexities of modes of survival embraced by ordinary Zimbabweans in response to the post-2000 economic crisis as portrayed in Panashe Chigumadzi’s Sweet Medicine. The political-economic crisis that rocked Zimbabwe in the post-2000 period affected citizens in all spheres of life. The protagonist in Chigumadzi’s novel, Tsitsi, is a young woman who grows up in a deeply religious family that teaches her to trust in God and work hard in order to be successful. She embraces these teachings and successfully completes her economics degree at the University of Zimbabwe. However, when she graduates, she realises through experience in the marketplace that nothing she has learnt formally and informally has prepared her sufficiently for the new realities of the economic crisis. Contrary to the teachings of her mother and the Catholic Church, Tsitsi ends up in an illicit affair with a married man in order to access financial resources that she desperately needs for survival. She is confronted with a moral/faith crisis in which she must reconcile the realities of her present life of “living in sin” and the beliefs and values of her Catholic upbringing. In view of this, the article draws on Mbembe’s theorisation of the postcolony and Bhabha’s notion of the “third space” to investigate how ordinary citizens navigate the economic crisis of post-2000 Zimbabwe, and interrogate the complexities (and contradictions) of survival in a crisis as portrayed in Chigumadzi’s Sweet Medicine.

The nexus of journalism and political activism in post-2000 Zimbabwe: A field theory critique

The post-2000 political-economic crisis in Zimbabwe saw the migration of journalists as political and economic refugees. Many, if not all, of these claimed persecution at home and some amongst them established online publications with an interest on Zimbabwe. But some of the journalists that remained in Zimbabwe became activists in support of either the ruling Zimbabwe African National Union – Patriotic Front (ZANU-PF) regime or the opposition Movement for Democratic Change (MDC). Another group joined civil society whilst others joined either the ruling ZANU-PF party or the opposition political parties, mainly MDC. In the same context, some activists joined newsrooms. In this context, the distinction between journalism and political activism became increasingly blurred. The article, deploying Pierre Bourdieu’s field theory, explores how and why this morphing of journalists into activists and vice versa unfolded and its impact on the journalistic field. The findings demonstrate that on one hand journalists morphed into activists through: switching into civil society; active involvement in party politics either as members or election candidates; openly campaigning for or against certain political parties and candidates; and writing political campaign material disguised as news. On the other hand, activists entered the journalistic field as columnists, correspondents or stringers, editors and, in one high profile case, a Ministry of Information official. The metamorphosis happened openly and underground, and it was caused by poverty, greed, the desire to migrate, disenchantment with economic challenges, state-sponsored repression of the media and the desire to secure one’s privileged position in the journalistic social field.

Interpreting Zimbabwe's Third Chimurenga Through Kongonya: Representations of Post-2000 Zimbabwean Dance in Buckle's Beyond Tears: Zimbabwe's Tragedy and Mtizira's Chimurenga Protocol

The Zimbabwean writers Catherine Buckle and Nyaradzo Mtizira reimagine kongonya dance in their works Beyond Tears: Zimbabwe's Tragedy (2002) and The Chimurenga Protocol (2008), respectively. Both the European-born Buckle and the black Zimbabwean Mtizira harness the dance to evoke the post-2000 jambanja experiences associated with Zimbabwe's controversial “Third Chimurenga,” or the fast-track land reform program, beginning in 2000. Their contrasting depictions of dance epitomize the differing views on Zimbabwe's land reform program. Largely, whereas Buckle's novel is a memoir which personalizes a farmer's encounters with dancing African/Zimbabwean “land invaders,” Mtizira's is a panegyric that collectively reimagines a nation's defiant revolution against purported forces of Western imperialism. Both writers’ representations of the post-2000 Zimbabwe's dance performances are therefore colored and compromised by racial subjectivity.

Multilingual broadcasting in post-2000 Zimbabwe: Design, implementation and language parity

Zimbabwe’s Broadcasting Services Amendment Act (BSAA; 2007) unveils a commitment towards multilingual broadcasting for public broadcasting. This study cross-examines the design of the multilingual broadcasting policy in the Act, and its subsequent implementation at the Zimbabwe Broadcasting Corporation (ZBC), with particular attention to the treatment of indigenous languages. Empirical data for this study is drawn from purposively selected broadcasting personnel, academics and radio/television audiences. The study is grounded in the concepts of linguistic hegemony, political economy of communication and media economics. The study shows that the implementation of the multilingual broadcasting policy apparent in the BSAA (2007) is restricted by the sociolinguistic, political, economic and global factors which determine language choices and practices in broadcast media. This study is a significant contribution to the meagre scholarship on the nexus between language and media policy, particularly language policy of broadcast media in Zimbabwe, and Africa in general.

Names, labels, the Zimbabwean Liberation War veteran and the third Chimurenga: the language and politics of entitlement in post-2000 Zimbabwe

ABSTRACTThis article investigates the Zimbabwean Liberation War veterans’ naming and labelling of individuals and groups opposed to the Fast Track Land Reform Program (FTLRP) in post-2000 Zimbabwe. As instruments of political coercion, the two processes participated in the production of images of individuals and groups opposed to land expropriation, particularly white farmers and political opponents in the Movement for Democratic Change (MDC), that were at once grotesque and indicative of the polarized nature of political discourse in post-2000 Zimbabwe. The article evinces that naming and labelling participated in the articulation of the Zimbabwean Liberation War veterans’ sense of entitlement to land, resources and preferential treatment by the post-2000 Zimbabwe African National Union-Patriotic Front (ZANU-PF) government of Robert Mugabe. Using the Zimbabwean Liberation War context in which post-2000 Zimbabwean political culture of framing reality in exclusionary terms finds its roots and inspiration, the article explores how veterans of the Zimbabwean Liberation War used names and labels to categorize people and phenomena, separating so-called patriots from exploiters and sell-outs. The discussion also explicates how the Zimbabwean Liberation War veterans held themselves up as yardsticks of commitment to patriotic citizenship in the context of a perceived ZANU-PF war against neo-colonialism.

Women and the national agenda in Mashingaidze Gomo’s A fine madness (2010)

ABSTRACTThis article interrogates the representation of women in Mashingaidze Gomo’s A fine madness through the prism of feminist postcolonial theory. Feminist postcolonial theorists such as Gayatri Chakrobarty Spivak have identified points of intersection between imperialism, patriarchy and nationalism in what has come to be known as ‘the double/triple oppression of women’. Mashingaidze Gomo’s A fine madness appropriates the anti-imperialist ideology of the Robert Mugabe regime to engage economic/political challenges facing Zimbabwe/Africa in the context of the neoliberal global order. In wrestling with these issues, Gomo adopts an Afro-radical approach that subsumes the concerns of women in the broader rhetoric of national and continental decolonisation. The role of women in discourses of nationhood remains a topical subject not only in Zimbabwe but also in Africa as a whole. In view of this, I argue that discourses of nationhood and sovereignty often tend to be couched in patriarchal terms that ignore the concerns of women. In post-2000 Zimbabwe, discourses of national sovereignty which have been promoted by the Mugabe regime, constructed women, not as active participants and contributors to the national project, but as symbolic figures whose primary role is to support men in their heroic ‘national’ endeavours.

Navigating between Protest Theatre and Journalism in Post-2000 Zimbabwe: A Study of All Systems Out of Order

ABSTRACTThis study assesses how the existence of repressive media laws in Zimbabwe led to the rise of journalistic production of theatre performances. The censorship of media by the state resulted in the use of creative arts as subversive spaces to convey intractable messages for majority consumption—a role similar to that of citizen journalism. Similarly, responding to the suppressive hand of the state on media, online spaces have rampantly enabled the (re) distribution of information to the citizenry. We posit that the spaces created by online platforms are similar to those created by protest theatre in the extension of the role of journalism. While there are considerable difficulties in defining journalism since it has been defined from a varied perspective, ranging from the traditional through to the derivative meanings from context and method of use, this study employs the progressive definition of journalism being inclusive of art forms. To understand protest theatre as journalism in Zimbabwe, we deploy Schechner's performance theory in analysing All Systems Out of Order.

Patriotic narratives on national leadership in Zimbabwe: Zimbabwe African National Union-Patriotic Front (ZANU-PF) and Movement for Democratic Change (MDC) song texts, ca 2000–2017

The national leadership question in post-2000 Zimbabwe can be examined using the rhetoric of the politicians involved and the song texts of their supporters. This article focuses on selected ZANU-PF and MDC song texts with a view to demonstrating that both ZANU-PF and MDC rely on the logic of mutual exclusion in policing inter- and intra-party national leadership contestations. Through an analysis of images and viewpoints deployed in the selected songs to depict the qualities of political leaders in ZANU-PF and MDC as antithetical, the article argues that the musicians’ reluctance and/or failure to rise above the myth of the leaders of their respective political parties as the best ever to emerge in Zimbabwean politics serves to oversimplify a highly intricate national political question. Inter alia, the article addresses the volition in scholarship on contemporary Zimbabwe to exclusively associate patriotic narratives with ZANU-PF, in addition to challenging Zimbabweans to think beyond identities that limit them as members of specific political parties.

Money, football and politics: Asiagate and the scourge of match-fixing in Zimbabwe

Abstract Football is the most popular game in Zimbabwe. Events and activities in this sport in many ways mirror the state of wider society in the country. This paper provides a grounded critique of how money, football and politics intersect through the lens of the Asiagate match-fixing scandal which engulfed post-2000 Zimbabwe. It utilizes reports and transcripts from the investigation to highlight the role of various actors in the match-fixing scandal including administrators, politicians, coaches, players, referees, and journalists. The paper argues that Asiagate needs to be understood in the context of the globalization of match-fixing and the socio-economic crises engulfing post-2000 Zimbabwe. The socio-economic crises characterized by widespread poverty and suffering left players vulnerable to match-fixers. The paper concludes that the politically connected and powerful players in the scandal were not held accountable and this has created precedence for the continued existence of match-fixing in Zimbabwean football.

‘Totemless Aliens’: The Historical Antecedents of the Anti-Malawian Discourse in Zimbabwe, 1920s–1979

Due to their state of unbelonging, many immigrants across Africa have, in times of turmoil, been stereotyped or constructed as unpatriotic outsiders, with adverse consequences on their welfare in foreign spaces. Such has been the case of migrant descendants (aliens) in Zimbabwe, who were victimised during the country’s agrarian reform and electoral processes in the new millennium. While literature on the discrimination of immigrants in post-2000 Zimbabwe is rich, there is little work on its historical roots. Therefore, using life histories, archival data and secondary literature, this article seeks to provide historical insights into the emergence and evolution of hostility in Zimbabwe towards African immigrants from the north from the 1920s to 1979. It historicises the antecedents of the anti-migrant sentiments, focusing mainly on people of Malawian ancestry in Zimbabwe who, because of various historical configurations and dynamics, became associated with the unpatriotic tag. Central to this characterisation was the immigrants’ alleged collusion with settler ‘domestic’ regimes, capital and power; their hegemonic influence over urban space, trade unionism and proto-nationalism during a period when they demographically dominated the Rhodesian African labour force; and their alleged disruption of local gender dynamics. All this became part of an anti-Malawian discourse that could be drawn upon in independent Zimbabwe to legitimise their economic and political exclusion.

A divided nation? Ethnicity, name-calling and nicknames in cyber Ndebele soccer discourse in Zimbabwe

ABSTRACTIn Zimbabwe, ethnicity has long informed the ways people make sense of their membership to the nation. Sport has since the turn of the century emerged as one of the major sites for the performance of ‘patriotic’ and subversive notions of ‘unity in diversity’. This article explores the significance of nicknaming and name-calling by Highlanders Football Club fans on virtual spaces, in illuminating the ethnic threat to dominant conceptions of nation in post-2000 Zimbabwe. The study argues that as psycho-social and cultural constructs, football team nicknames reveal deeper states of ethnic attitudes which indicate the politics of complex ethnic sentiments that destabilise popular notions of belonging to a nation.

Unsettled spirits, performance and aesthetics of power: the public life of liberation heritage in zimbabwe

ABSTRACTThis paper investigates how meanings of liberation heritage have been constructed and institutionalised in Zimbabwe, and how this has elicited responses from local communities. While most treatises on liberation heritage have focussed on the politics of election of heroes and heroines or the contested meanings and symbolism of sites, archives or objects associated with liberation heritage, this analysis, drawing from the Zimbabwean context, examines the strategies used to frame ideas and practices around liberation heritage. The article brings together different practices centred around the Zimbabwean liberation war, where practices around burials became a way of renewing the legitimacy of the state in a period of increasing economic and political turmoil in post 2000 Zimbabwe. The selected curatorial projects and state sponsored commemorations or rituals, show that the conferment of official heritage status to spaces, sites, routes or personalities associated with liberation wars provides space for public performance of the state’s narrative of the past, conferring it with an accentuated visibility in the public sphere. The paper highlights the strategies deployed and the language used to entrench the liberation war narrative as part of official heritage, all choreographed and performed at burials, visitations, rituals and other commemorative practices. While the configuration of the war past as official heritage confers visibility to the state, it also produces a fractured and highly contested heritage complex, stimulated by emerging counter practices that resist state-sponsored forms of memorialisation. The production of heritage in post-2000 Zimbabwe points to the intensifying politicisation of heritage in times of increasing economic and political tensions. The developments foreground the fluid and ever-changing nature of the uses of heritage and are a demonstration of how tropes of heritage continue to take a central role in contemporary politics in Southern Africa.

Imaginations and Narrations of the Nation: The Music of Raymond Majongwe and Brian Muteki in the Identity Construction of Post-2000 Zimbabwe

ABSTRACTThis paper analyses Raymond Majongwe’s and Brian Muteki’s music to investigate the different ways in which these two musicians narrate and imagine the post-2000 Zimbabwean nation. A narrative analysis is carried out of specific songs that address issues related to the nation. Since the late 1990s and through the 2000s Zimbabwe has experienced socio-economic and political challenges that have greatly affected its citizens, leading to a mass exodus to neighbouring countries and those further afield in America, Europe, and Australia, a phenomenon that has attracted international attention. This has also engendered various imaginations and contestations of the nation. The arts have played a critical intervening and mediatory role in this regard, and artworks such as sculptures, music, drama, and films have been produced that speak to contested narratives, visions, and versions of the nation. They imagine, reflect, and speak to different issues in society with regard to political, economic, and social questions affecting the everyday lives of ordinary citizens. Musicians sometimes celebrate, praise, narrate, critique, and proffer their “visions” and “versions” of the nation, in the process becoming fundamental in its construction, reflection, and depiction.