Does President Mugabe's Shit Stink Too? an Exploration of Selected
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COPYRIGHT AND CITATION CONSIDERATIONS FOR THIS THESIS/ DISSERTATION o Attribution — You must give appropriate credit, provide a link to the license, and indicate if changes were made. You may do so in any reasonable manner, but not in any way that suggests the licensor endorses you or your use. o NonCommercial — You may not use the material for commercial purposes. o ShareAlike — If you remix, transform, or build upon the material, you must distribute your contributions under the same license as the original. How to cite this thesis Surname, Initial(s). (2012). Title of the thesis or dissertation (Doctoral Thesis / Master’s Dissertation). Johannesburg: University of Johannesburg. Available from: http://hdl.handle.net/102000/0002 (Accessed: 22 August 2017). Does President Mugabe’s shit stink too? An exploration of selected Mugabe memes on Facebook, Twitter and WhatsApp (2015-2017) By Constance Kasiyamhuru 201316002 Supervisor: Prof. Nyasha Mboti A thesis submitted in fulfilment of the requirements of the degree of Masters in Communication Studies in the Faculty of Humanities, University of Johannesburg. June 2019 i Declaration I, Constance Kasiyamhuru (Student #201316002), hereby declare that I am the sole author of this study entitled Does President Mugabe’s shit stink too? An exploration of selected Mugabe memes on Facebook, Twitter and WhatsApp. This dissertation is a presentation of my original work unless otherwise indicated in the text. All referenced materials, citations and contributions of others have been duly acknowledged. The work was done under the guidance and supervision of Prof. Nyasha Mboti in the Department of Communication Studies at the University of Johannesburg. This research has not been previously submitted for any degree and is not being currently considered for any degree and/or examination at any other university. ii Dedication To my late mother, Lena, you gave me the courage to aspire for the best in life. I have spent most of my life working hard to make you proud. You shall forever remain in my heart and I will never disappoint you. To my grandmother, Susan, you taught me that education was the key to success, and you prayed for me every step of the way. You raised me to be an ambitious woman, and I owe part of my success to you. iii Acknowledgements Working on this thesis was not an easy journey. I worked tirelessly and managed to finish in good time. But this would not have been possible without my supervisor, who not only inspired me to work hard on this project, but also put a lot of effort and hard work to ensure that we produce good results. So firstly, I wish to thank Professor Nyasha Mboti, the best supervisor I have yet come across. Thank you, Prof, for your exceptional guidance and words of encouragement which helped me to cope with my work and nervousness. I always doubted my abilities but working with Prof. Mboti made me realise that I was being too hard on myself, and so I became a better person. Secondly, I would like to thank my MA colleagues, and lecturers in the CMS department, for making my MA experience worthwhile. Special thanks to Prof. Pier Paolo Frassinelli, whose words of reassurance pushed me to continue working hard. Many thanks to my mentor, Dr Lyton Ncube, for believing in me and inspiring me. I am grateful for your words of wisdom and encouragement which made me more eager to pursue my MA. Finally, I am grateful to my family for their constant moral support and prayers, which made this journey more bearable. I wish to express my gratitude to one of the most amazing people in my life, my grandmother, who happens to be my pillar of strength, for her endless love and support. iv Acronyms #RMF #RhodesMustFall AIPPA Access To Information And Protection Of Privacy Act BSA Broadcasting Services Act CECA Censorship And Entertainment Control Act CHOGM Commonwealth Heads of Government meeting CIO Central Intelligence Organisation CODE Criminal Law (Codification And Reform) Act EFF Economic Freedom Fighters ESAP Economic Structural Adjustment Programme FG Focus Group FTLRP Fast Track Land Reform Programme GNU Government Of National Unity ICA Interception Of Communication Act ICT Information And Communication Technologies IMF International Monetary Fund LGBTQ Lesbian Gay Bisexual Transgender And Queer MDC Movement For Democratic Change MISA Media Institute Of Southern Africa MSU Midlands State University OWS Occupy Wall Street POSA Public Order And Security Act UN United Nations ZANU-PF Zimbabwe African National Union- Patriotic Front v ZAPU Zimbabwe African People’s Union ZBC Zimbabwe Broadcasting Corporation ZRP Zimbabwe Republic Police vi Abstract This study is about the interaction of Zimbabweans with subversive internet memes in a time of generalised political repression. Grounded in Bakhtin’s concept of carnival, and using a qualitative research paradigm, the study set out to examine Mugabe memes on social media with the aim to investigate a simultaneously conceptual and empirical puzzle: whether President Mugabe’s shit stank (symbolically or otherwise) too just like every other Zimbabwean’s. For a long time, the larger than life political figure of Mugabe seemed indestructible. He was often represented in pro-Mugabe discourse as an infallible being whose honour and image could not be sullied by mere mortals. State-controlled media in Zimbabwe constantly promoted pro-Mugabe and pro-ZANU-PF ideologies whilst delegitimising counter-hegemonic discourses. Crucially, ridiculing the president had become an actual crime, with various pieces of draconian legislation being used to protect his image whilst restricting freedom of expression and prompting censorship. In response, Zimbabweans resorted to a “carnivalesque” platform that was barely regulated nor monitored, at least not until recently, to poke fun at President Mugabe and to demonstrate that, perhaps, his shit did actually stink. That platform was social media, in the form of WhatsApp, Twitter and Facebook. The instrument was memes, incorporating visuals and text. In carnival, marginalised voices deconstruct and ridicule power in playful satirical ways. The application of Bakhtinian carnivalesque elements to anti-Mugabe memes demonstrated that Zimbabweans shared and “consumed” a range of subversive internet memes in various ways for a variety of reasons. The main reason was to express the formerly inexpressible, to speak the publicly unspeakable, and to think the publicly unthinkable. These netizens did so under the shelter of the relative anonymity of social media. They could also hide behind the virality of the memes, since it was difficult for the authorities to punish individual sharers of posts already shared thousands, hundreds of thousands, or even millions, of times. Virality encouraged more and more daring experiments in memefying Mugabe. The result were unstructured and unsupervised practices of sharing political content that was largely unflattering about Mugabe. The study suggests that this political content challenged Mugabe’s previously unchallengeable authority in multiple ways. The study speculates that the coup that caused Mugabe to fall in November 2017 actually started, and was rehearsed, on social media. Laughter also helped many Zimbabwean social media users to lighten the existential burden of their suffering in the post-2000 era that was characterised by economic meltdown and deepening social malaise. Yet even this escapist humour retained and carried a serious political undertone. The study however cautions that the power of memetic humour as a form of protest should not be exaggerated, considering, on the one hand, the ambivalence of carnival and, on the other hand, the fact that it is still early days in the study of the full dynamics of social media. Much remains to be uncovered and known. vii Contents Declaration .................................................................................................................. ii Dedication .................................................................................................................. iii Acknowledgements .................................................................................................... iv Acronyms ................................................................................................................... v Abstract ...................................................................................................................... vi Contents .................................................................................................................... vii CHAPTER ONE: INTRODUCTION ............................................................................ 1 Background ................................................................................................................ 1 Justification of Study ................................................................................................ 10 Research Objectives ................................................................................................ 13 Research Questions ................................................................................................. 14 Structure of the Study ............................................................................................... 14 Conclusion ............................................................................................................... 14 CHAPTER TWO: LITERATURE REVIEW ............................................................... 16 Introduction