Music, performance and ZANU-PF’s hegemony in Mugabe’s newly independent Zimbabwe

Abstract

The premise of this article is that popular music was a critical space for enforcing hegemonic dominance of ZANU-PF during the first decade of its rule, as perhaps in other eras. When it assumed power in 1980, ZANU-PF did not hide its intention to establish single-party rule, which was then popular across Africa. Top among competing priorities for the new regime was removing all centres of political opposition or resistance. But PF-ZAPU, ZANU-PF’s erstwhile liberation war rival, threatened this vision in south-western Zimbabwe, where it enjoyed significant support. We analyse music that promoted ZANU-PF hegemony in the context of the Gukurahundi ‘genocide’ in the early 1980s, a campaign that was part of the desire for complete dominance of Zimbabwe. The music contained a celebratory discourse spreading fear and emotional violence, thus censoring and suffocating competing narratives about the new state.