Abstract
This paper examines and interrogates the role of the state-controlled media during the Gukurahundi genocide in Zimbabwe. Gukurahundi is a genocide that took place in Zimbabwe between 1983 and 1987 resulting in the death of thousands of innocent civilians, mostly Zimbabwe African People’s Union Patriotic Front (PF-ZAPU) opposition supporters to the then Prime Minister Robert Mugabe’s Zimbabwe African National Union (ZANU-PF)’s ruling party. This paper is against the realisation that there is an intrinsic relationship between the media, in the form of hate speech, propaganda, violence and ethnicity. Hate speech has been the soundtrack of the genocide in Zimbabwe in particular and in Africa in general. Research on the role of the media in state-sponsored violence in Zimbabwe has tended to focus more on the post-2000 land invasions and political violence. Similarly, most of the writings on the role of media during genocides in Africa have justifiably tended to focus on the role of the RTLM radio in the Rwandan genocide where close to a million Tutsis and moderate Hutus were killed in 100 days. This paper deploys textual analysis to analyse articles by a state-controlled Chronicle newspaper. Using the propaganda model and political economy theoretical frameworks, and the Chronicle newspaper as a case study, this paper therefore seeks to show that as opposed to Rwanda where the media openly urged the killers on, in Zimbabwe, the media was used to mask and justify the genocide of over 20000 innocent civilians.