The Sunday News
Richard Runyararo Mahomva
Global hierarchies of national identities informed by “coloniality of knowledge and power” have prejudiced the “being” of the African post-colonial state. The available “means of knowing” have popularised narrow imaginations of Africa. As such, the state is presented as an epitome of ineptitude, despotism, anarchy, tyranny, patronage and malice.
This hallucination of coloniality with its proportion of reality in some instances largely presents Africans as beings who cannot think. Their leaders and national policies are used as indicators of global policy failure. These stereotypes chiefly insinuate the need for Africans to be helped to think by those who present themselves as the inventors of thinking. Africa’s institutions of thought are undermined for channelling propaganda in the space of logic to override public reasoning and consciousness on how the nation/state ought to be. This view is neatly expressed in a book titled; Politics, Patronage and Violence in Zimbabwe (2013) edited by Jocelyn Alexander (University of Oxford) and JoAnn McGregor (University of Sussex). In the prologue, the two scholars argue:
“Zimbabwe’s recent history provides a novel take . . . as the country’s ‘crisis’ provoked scholars to engage in new ways with debates previously deemed almost irrelevant. While clearly the ‘crisis’ is rooted in long-standing tendencies, Zimbabwe’s powerful state bureaucracies, its liberation struggle history, its substantial formal sector and its strong post-independence history of service provision had all seemed to mark it out as different from, if not an ‘exception’ to, the experience of those African countries in West and Central Africa that had often provided the empirical basis for theories of state ‘failure’ and social and political disorder (Alexander and McGregor 2013: 749).”
The above perspective suggests that Zimbabwe has been torn asunder into two particular thought institutions which frame the trajectory of nationhood along establishment and anti-establishment terms. From this viewpoint, knowledge has been produced in a manner that gives life to “patronage politics”. Therefore, the purpose of this article, this constitutes what I will refer to as the politics of mass media in Zimbabwe.
Why mass media?
We are consumers of information brought to our reach by the media. Day in day out we are reading news, watching the television or listening to the radio. With the advent of new technology social media is now one of the swift conveyers of news.
In this digital age we no longer need the television so often to get live updates on issues happening around us and mainly the key national issues affecting us. However, some have a tendency to misuse social media to dispatch falsehoods, political jokes and in some instances communicate business news.
In our fast growing entrepreneur economy, this has made conventional classified sections of the newspaper less of a need as social media is now proving to be an effective avenue for advertising goods and services. However, conventional newspapers continue to play a critical function of information dissemination in Zimbabwe.
It is in this context that this week’s article examines the function of newspapers in daily and weekly dissemination of socio-economic and political issues. I was prompted to interrogate this pertinent matter after reading Ambassador Cain Mathema’s book, Newspapers in Zimbabwe published in 2000.
The writer states that the publication was a product of a manuscript produced in 1986 which was then published after 14 years. Obviously, a lot of issues happened between 1986 and 2000, but the function of the newspaper remained unchallenged. Likewise, the review of this same book comes 16 years after it was published. Some newspapers have shut down, we now have many online newspapers. The transition from conventional laws of press production has also surfaced.
This is a clear indication that mass media has influence on the way particular groups view the world and how polarities are created due to media constructions. As a result, this article will interrogate the role of media in framing national identity. The second objective of the article is to proffer recommendations on how the newspaper can become a viable tool of deconstructing myths of global power hierarchies.
The newspaper and ideological capitalism
Mathema (2000) argues that the demand for economic liberation by the marginalised of the Global-South demands an equal liberation of their thought institutions. In Mathema’s view World Information and Communication Order must be decolonised. Historical decolonisation without revisiting information order decolonisation is less logical.
This is the reason why the land reform programme provoked reactionary scholarship and the media played an important role in the polarised representation of Zimbabwe. In the context of Zimbabwe which is unique in the continent, this is true when one considers how the land reform programme was characterised by emphasis on national ideological reinventions. The country’s body of knowledge was inflated by demonisation trajectories which worked towards the absolute denigration of the country’s sovereignty.
While the Land Reform Programme was a revisitation of the Lancaster terms on the land question (Moyo and Yeros 2005) there was application of selective memory of finding logic in Zimbabwe’s new policy.
This was because the major objective of the guerilla warfare was the land question from the word go (Ranger 1985) and the revival of that old gospel of liberation was quickly viewed with antagonism. Newspaper reports from private media houses decampaigned the Government and the fast-track Land Reform Programme.
There was a clear press war between public and private press. This followed the spirited rise of the MDC which awakened Zanu-PF to the intensity of neo-colonialism. The revolutionary party was then forced to radicalise its position on African nationalism and pan-Africanism. From that point, the war of our liberation struggle in Zimbabwe has served as the party’s essential ideological asset as noted by Ndlovu-Gatsheni (2011):
“. . . shifting articulation of the nation happened concurrently with the process of ratcheting up the political language on the land reform, renewal of the ideology of Chimurenga and intensification of the strategy of Gukurahundi, this time ranged against vocal local civil society organisations and the popular opposition formation known as the Movement for Democratic Change (MDC) that was formed in September 1999.”
Other scholars described this approach of realism as the emergence of a psycho-transition to nationhood in Zimbabwe characterised by; State-Citizen paranoia (Kriger 2005), construction of political demonisation and invention of heroism (Tendi 2014; Ndlovu-Gatsheni 2011). Inventions of national sacredness versus liberal deconstruction of the past. Imposed race consciousness, violence reciprocals between the historical and ahistorical forces of marginality (Ndlovu-Gatsheni and Muzondidya 2011).
The contestations of national belonging by the opposition polarised context through the media and other socio-political platforms are a vivid indication of how much information and communication order are essential components of ideological capitalism. This further suggests that all writing is an embodiment of power struggles and for newspapers to claim to be apolitical is not liberating. In this dispensation of decoloniality, newspapers must take part in promoting matters that enhance the continent’s liberation from the yoke of imperialism. However, press institutions which find logic in demonising African states substantiate the burden of decoloniality of knowledge. While the plurality of the press institutions indicates degrees of democracy and freedom of expression in Africa it is important to note the potential abuse of media. This is because in some instances the notion of democracy is abused to suit trivial opposition interests. This situation justifies the need for the state to tighten abused press freedoms. After all, if the press is a medium for power struggles why should entities seeking consolidation of political domination barter their opportunities to capture power for idealist democratic virtues?
It is only idealistic to expect state press to give glory to its opponents in the same manner private press would not glorify the positives of Zanu-PF. Likewise, it is unexpected of the ruling party to create opportunities for its demise in order to appear democratic before the values of Western hegemony. Sesidlala yini?
n Richard Runyararo Mahomva is an independent academic researcher, Founder of Leaders for Africa Network — LAN. Convener of the Back to Pan-Africanism Conference and the Reading Pan-Africa Symposium (REPS) and can be contacted on [email protected]
