Abstract
Zimbabwe has been entangled in a protracted political and economic crisis since the turn of the millennium. This crisis has seen the ruling ZANU-PF party’s legitimacy being increasingly questioned by various stakeholders that include opposition parties, trade unions, civic society and student unions. In response, the ruling ZANU-PF party has instituted a raft of measures that have shrunk democratic space and curtailed basic freedoms in the country. With shrinking of democratic space in the country, music and other forms of art have provided relatively ‘safer’ arenas for protesting excesses of power. Premised on Matsilele’s (2019) concept of dissidence and Nancy Fraser’s notion of the alternative public sphere (1990) our chapter examines how Thomas Mapfumo, Hosiah Chipanga, Winky D and Hopewell Chin’ono’s music that has been ‘banned’ from national radio can be viewed both as a dissident archetype and an alternative public sphere in Zimbabwe’s post-2000 period. We contend that the purposively selected music from the four musicians constitutes a dissident archetype where the ruling ZANU-PF party’s patriotic discourse is disrupted and contested in favour of neoliberal discourses of freedom and good governance that resonate with the tenets of the liberation struggle against white settler colonial rule. Our findings cohere with previous studies that have shown that music can provide a counter public sphere for subversive discourses in authoritarian regimes.
Original language | English |
---|---|
Title of host publication | Guerrilla Music |
Subtitle of host publication | Musicking as Resistance, Defiance, and Subversion |
Editors | Leon de Bruin, Jane Southcott |
Place of Publication | London |
Publisher | Lexington Books |
Chapter | 9 |
Pages | 131-146 |
Number of pages | 15 |
ISBN (Electronic) | 9781666944044 |
ISBN (Print) | 9781666944037 |
Publication status | Published (VoR) - 15 Jun 2024 |