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.
M.A. (Communication Studies)