Abstract
This study examined how the “digital” is used to govern in ways that extend the role of the normative repressive state apparatus. Using the case study of the so-called Varakashi in Zimbabwe who operate mostly on Twitter/X to “shut down” the political opponents of the governing ZANU-PF musangano, the study examined the form and content of digital governmentality as a subset of digital political communication. Varakashi is a Shona term meaning “destroyers” or those who assault or cause others grievous bodily harm. Through trolling, name-calling, threats, mocking, mobbing, labelling, ridicule, casting aspersions, delegitimation, disinforming, and other strategies, Varakashi seek to regulate, censure, and “discipline” anti-musangano online discourse. This mesh of strategies is intended to insulate the ruling party’s policies and its leaders from criticism, accountability, and scrutiny. The endgame is to operationalise ZANU-PF indefinite rule. Qualitative digital ethnography, Foucauldian governmentality, and a hybrid multimodal approach of visual, semiotic, thematic, content, and discourse analysis were employed to investigate how the Varakashi phenomenon may constitute a species of ZANU-PF governmentality and an extension of ZANU-PF political discourse in the online world. The study concluded that Varakashi are ZANU-PF’s “other means” of governing. The study makes a novel contribution to the field of digital political communication by showing how social media are no longer exclusively or putatively oppositional, pro-democratic, pro-dissent and dissident-friendly. Instead, states and governments now harness social media for their hegemonic ends, to regulate, control, and manufacture consent.