Abstract
This study investigated the state of post-coup journalism in Zimbabwe. In November 2017 President Robert Mugabe was ousted from office by the military after 37 years of untrammelled power. Mugabe was replaced by his long-term deputy, Emmerson Mnangagwa, ushering in a “Second Republic”. In March 2018, Mnangagwa declared that “the past is dead”. So, how did journalists’ experience this political attempt to declare the past to be dead? How did they experience the “new”? The end of the Mugabe era and the beginning of Mnangagwa’s has significance for journalism scholars interested in evaluating what, if anything, has changed in the country regarding severely truncated media freedom, harassment of journalists, censorship, polarisation, and the arbitrariness with which the state frequently dealt with the media. The study thus constitutes one of the first major systematic researches to map how and if the practice of journalism in Zimbabwe changed in the post-Mugabe Second Republic. The double prism through which the state of post-coup journalism in Zimbabwe is analysed and assessed are Section 61 and Section 62 of the Zimbabwean Constitution, specifying the “right” of freedom of expression and freedom of the media, and the “right” of “access to information”, respectively. The qualitative study examined what sixteen journalists had to say about how they are “experiencing” journalism in the “new” political dispensation and what this means for the broader study of the relationship between the state, media, and democracy in transitional contexts. Six indicators were developed to aid in interpretation of layers of data drawn from the literature and in-depth interviews. The analysis was framed by a groundbreaking methodological innovation of “time-lining” whereby a journalist curates and diarises events in a coding frame against which to abstract and interpret if the operating environment has changed for journalists and to evaluate the nature of those changes and shifts. Through time-lining, the study found that, for journalists in Zimbabwe, the more things changed, the more they stayed the same. In fact, in some respects, things may have gotten worse. Patterns of harassment, for instance, fit a typology that reaches back to 1999 and extends as recently as 2023. While some participants in the study see positive signs of improvement and amelioration, suggesting changes for the better that could be the basis for a better future for journalists in Zimbabwe, the continuities predominate. After all, whether or not Mugabe or Mnangagwa is at the helm, ZANU-PF continues in power. The study is proof that media freedom and the practice of journalism are useful barometers for the evaluation of the quality and direction of political transitions in general and, specifically, in Zimbabwe. We can truly tell if a country like Zimbabwe is developing (and developing in the right direction) if, among other things, we study the state of its journalism and how it treats its journalists. The evidence is that Zimbabwe is currently stuck in a Gramscian interregnum, whereby the old is dying too slowly, if at all, while the new is struggling to be born. Journalists, for now, function through negotiating this precarious non-movement. If the 2017 coup was major global breaking news, post-coup journalism in Zimbabwe is more of a developing story, with much still to be said. In as far as the continuities are dominant, the state of post-coup journalism in Zimbabwe is best described as that of change without change.