Abstract
Abstract : This study is an examination of identity construction by an online radio station, Radio Mthwakazi. It interrogates the institutional routines of the station and how they facilitate the construction and contestation of Ndebele ethnic identity. This is against the background of a resurgence of Ndebele particularism in Zimbabwe. The study argues that in Zimbabwe the salience of Ndebele ethnic identity has been influenced by events in the pre-colonial, colonial and post-colonial nation building process. Tracing these events from the 1929 Bulawayo fights right through the emotive Gukurahundi up to the current situation of Mthwakazi politics, the study argues that the Ndebele people of Matabeleland, Zimbabwe are appropriating the internet as a platform to coalesce on issues of their nationhood and in the process creating for themselves an alternative public sphere. Conceptualising ethnicity beyond instrumentalism and primordialism, the study takes a constructionist or constructivist approach to the study of ethnicity and identity which seeks to understand ethnicity and Ndebele nationhood within the concept of Anderson’s concept of imagined community. The study argues that indeed nations and identities are imagined and therefore constructed. The argument is that ethnicity and nationhood are socially constructed, that is, they are products of human thought and action and therefore they can be contested. Identities are malleable – they are situational and members of the Ndebele people in the diaspora are attempting to preserve their identity through the station. This is linked to the concept of belonging, that is, how as an emotional attachment, it is articulated and structured in relation to identity construction and contestation. Using textual and discourse analysis of the station’s texts and conversation analysis of interviews and conversations, the study makes the point that precisely because of marginalisation – socially, economically and political – the subaltern such as the Ndebele people of Zimbabwe have opted for alternative ways of expressing their dissent and at the same time forging their identity consciousness. The study found out that the station attempts to construct Ndebele ethnic identity through being an alternative and resistance based medium. Ndebele ethnic identity is also discursively constructed, that is, through talking the nation and performances that enhance their nationhood but this construction is not innocent, it is contested.
D.Litt. et Phil. (Communication Studies)