Welcome to the InfoSci Platform
Of Drag and Push Democracies: The Construction of Zimbabwe as a Failed-Partially Resuscitated State in Popular Songs

Of Drag and Push Democracies: The Construction of Zimbabwe as a Failed-Partially Resuscitated State in Popular Songs

Mickias Musiyiwa, Marianna W. Visser
Copyright: © 2016 |Pages: 27
ISBN13: 9781522500810|ISBN10: 1522500812|EISBN13: 9781522500827
DOI: 10.4018/978-1-5225-0081-0.ch003
Cite Chapter Cite Chapter

MLA

Musiyiwa, Mickias, and Marianna W. Visser. "Of Drag and Push Democracies: The Construction of Zimbabwe as a Failed-Partially Resuscitated State in Popular Songs." Political Discourse in Emergent, Fragile, and Failed Democracies, edited by Daniel Ochieng Orwenjo, et al., IGI Global, 2016, pp. 34-60. https://doi.org/10.4018/978-1-5225-0081-0.ch003

APA

Musiyiwa, M. & Visser, M. W. (2016). Of Drag and Push Democracies: The Construction of Zimbabwe as a Failed-Partially Resuscitated State in Popular Songs. In D. Orwenjo, O. Oketch, & A. Tunde (Eds.), Political Discourse in Emergent, Fragile, and Failed Democracies (pp. 34-60). IGI Global. https://doi.org/10.4018/978-1-5225-0081-0.ch003

Chicago

Musiyiwa, Mickias, and Marianna W. Visser. "Of Drag and Push Democracies: The Construction of Zimbabwe as a Failed-Partially Resuscitated State in Popular Songs." In Political Discourse in Emergent, Fragile, and Failed Democracies, edited by Daniel Ochieng Orwenjo, Omondi Oketch, and Asiru Hameed Tunde, 34-60. Hershey, PA: IGI Global, 2016. https://doi.org/10.4018/978-1-5225-0081-0.ch003

Export Reference

Mendeley
Favorite

Abstract

This chapter interrogates political discourse in popular songs of Shona expression with a view to establish the nature of their evaluation of state performance in Zimbabwe in the period, 2000-2015. By analysing the themes and the language of the songs (verbal, nominal and other constructions and figurative language), we aim to demonstrate the extent to which the songs, composed and performed by pro-opposition artists, objectively assess the performance of the Zimbabwean state. We exclude songs of pro-state musicians for the reason that, their assessment of state functionality is pro-state and therefore explicitly biased. They largely function as a vehicle for state propaganda, employed for the political discursive domination of the citizenry. In doing so they ignore or even glorify state repression, political violence, electoral fraud, insecurity of citizens, lawlessness and human rights violations, as well as the general degradation of the state system. Our observation is that, anti-state songs' depiction of the Zimbabwean nation-state as a case of death-resurrection is a more or less objective evaluation of the state's functionality. In addition to that, we argue that a much more objective assessment of Zimbabwe's performance should have been ‘a collapsed-and-partially-resuscitated state.'

Request Access

You do not own this content. Please login to recommend this title to your institution's librarian or purchase it from the IGI Global bookstore.