“Invisibility and hypervisibility” of ‘Ndebele women’ in Zimbabwe’s media

abstract

In this article, I argue that Ndebele women, as the subject position of those who pay the gender price of the marginalisation of Matabeleland within Zimbabwean nationalism, are an impossible category in representation. In what can be characterised as the twin challenges of the “crisis of voice” (Couldry, 2010) and “crisis of representation” (Alcoff, 1991), they cannot represent themselves and efforts to speak about them and for them further silences this group. In this article, I mobilise postcolonial and decolonial feminist theories in considering ways in which the double play of invisibility and hypervisibility silences women in the marginalised Matabeleland region (Ndhlovu, 2007; Mhlanga, 2013; Ncube and Siziba, 2017). I trace this invisibility and hypervisibility through a cartoon published in the state-owned daily newspaper, The Chronicle, on 4 February 2016, illustrating how the silencing of Ndebele women works discursively. From the lenses of Zimbabwe’s regional politics, the cartoon was interpreted as sexist, regionalist and bordering on ethnocentrism. However, this dominant reading of the cartoon was challenged for its patriarchal representation of Ndebele women. I use Fairclough’s (1995) discourse analysis method to locate the struggle over meaning in the broader context of the politics of representation in Zimbabwe in terms of popular culture production in the Southern region, and the ethnicised and regionalised politics of the country. I seek to problematise “location, voice and agency” in the representation of Ndebele women in popular culture, in general, and in an editorial cartoon published in a government-owned newspaper, in particular, considering how their subjectivity is “constructed within structures of domination” (Shome and Hedge, 2002:266). Following from Spivak’s (1988) work, I argue that Ndebele women are a subaltern class existing outside mainstream institutional recognition and validation.

keywords:

• ethnicity
• gender
• representation
• subalternity
• subjectivity

Notes

1 Due to the contestations around Ndebele identity, Ndebele women as a collective is a subject position that I arrive at through “strategic essentialism”. The multiplicity of ethnic groups such as the Kalanga, Venda, Tonga and Xhosa, among others, means that it is impossible to have an essential Ndebele identity. In this article the subject position of “Ndebele women” is only possible as long as women from the Matabeleland region are constructed by Zimbabwean nationalism as the marginalised Ndebele and by Ndebele patriarchy as the “marginalised of the marginalised” women.

2 There is always a contention on the question of who “the people” are. However, it has come to be agreed that each politics through interpellation and hailing constructs its own people into being (Hall, 2009). I see “Ndebele women” as emerging out of the processes of resisting both Zimbabwean nationalism and Matabeleland patriarchy, especially in popular culture.

3 See: http://www.sundaynews.co.zw/matland-midlands-post-worst-school-results/ (accessed 3 December 2017).

4 Reproduced courtesy of The Chronicle.

5 See: https://www.news24.com/Africa/zim-schoolgirl-prostitutes-cartoon-sparks-fury-20160208 (accessed 21 March 2018).

6 See: http://www.newzimbabwe.com/showbiz-27537-Chronicle + axes + cartoonist + after + outrage/showbiz.aspx (accessed 3 December 2017).

7 ‘Tough day. Horrible cartoon […]’, Facebook post, 4 February 2016, viewed 23 June 2017: https://www.facebook.com/mduduzi.mathuthu

8 ‘I get where [ … ]’, Facebook comment, 4 February 2016, viewed 23 June 2017: https://www.facebook.com/mduduzi.mathuthu.

9 See: http://nehandaradio.com/2014/02/13/type-zimbabwean-stereotype/ (accessed 3 December 2017).

10 See: https://www.newsday.co.zw/2015/05/mugabe-kalanga-jibe-sparks-anger/ (accessed 10 May 2018).

11 I am the writer of this story published in News Day. It is in retrospect that I realise that for any woman in Matabeleland dealing with the cartoon and the debates around it, placed one between the marginalisation of Zimbabwean nationalism and silencing of Ndebele patriarchy. As a Matabeleland subject who responds to the identification of male gender, at the time of writing the story this dilemma could have been a “negligible” issue as a result of being blinded by nationalism and patriarchy.

12 See: http://bulawayo24.com/index-id-opinion-sc-columnist-byo-82499.html (accessed 3 December 2017).

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Khanyile Mlotshwa

KHANYILE MLOTSHWA is a PhD (Media and Cultural Studies) student at the University of KwaZulu-Natal (UKZN), Pietermaritzburg campus. His research interests are in experimenting with postcolonial/decolonial and other critical theories in studying empirical situations where media, cultural, communication, and journalism studies intersect with popular, subaltern, resistant, radical and critical forms of politics. For his PhD thesis, he is working on the constructions of black citizenship(s) in the articulations of South African post-apartheid media practices, border practices and urban cultures. Email: [email protected]