The hearts
of many Zimbabweans skipped a beat on February 4th, as their
president fell down the stairs, taking his iron reputation of invincibility
down with him. The ninety-one year old Robert Mugabe has been ruling the country
since 1980 and his rule is perceived as invincible and eternal. The president’s
paranoid response to his fall and the subsequent proliferation of images of
ridicule provide us with an interesting case of failed censorship, political
paranoia and resistance through representation.
The moment
Robert Mugabe fell, his body rushed towards the surrounding photographers and forced
them to delete all records of the event. Mugabe wanted to deny his fall through
censorship. However, some pictures nevertheless leaked and proliferated over
the internet. Many Zimbabweans relished the images of vulnerability and
creatively turned these photographs into images of ridicule. In this way, they
resisted Mugabe through a strategy of comic representation that fed on the
political paranoia and the weakness and instability this paranoia exposed.1
As
discussed in J.M. Coetzee’s essay on The
Work of The Censor, censorship is a manifestation of paranoia. The “inability
to imagine a future” after apartheid gave rise to political despair and an “end-of-the-world
fantasy of a ‘total onslaught’ of hostile powers against the South African
state and against Western Christian civilization in Africa” (Coetzee 198 – 199).
Despite the difference of both situations, there are some parallels between
Zimbabwe and South Africa.
In
Zimbabwe, more than half of the population has never seen another ruler than Mugabe,
whose rule is perceived as eternal. However, people are wondering what will
happen after Mugabe’s inevitably approaching death and they can simply not
imagine. Amongst the political elites, the ‘total onslaught’ of Western powers
against Zimbabwe’s autocratic rule is feared intensely. The end-of-the-world
fantasy has manifested itself in Mugabe’s political circle, whose paranoia
became explicitly evident in the failed reaction to Mugabe’s fall. The attempt at
censorship and the failure expose Mugabe’s paranoia and the ridiculing
representations fed on this paranoia in their resistance to Mugabe’s rule.
COETZEE, J.M. “The
Work of the Censor: Censorship in South Africa.” Giving Offense: Essays on Censorship. Univ. of Chicago Press, 1996,
185-203.
Picture: http://knowyourmeme.com/photos/909466-robert-mugabe-fall?ref=prev-arrow#media-title
1 Link to some ridiculing images: http://www.buzzfeed.com/hayesbrown/mugabe-got-me-straight-tripping#.dr0PLvQpl
Hi Ruth First of all I enjoyed post, really interesting.
ReplyDeleteIn your blog post you write a line that I really like, you say ”Mugabe wanted to deny his fall through censorship” I really like that line because it shows us how censorship is an integral part of any dictatorship or authoritarian rule. The fact that censorship provides dictators with the power to manipulate information even to the point of trying to erase evidence of a fall is one that is fascinating.
To think of it I have never seen any form of dictatorship without censorship but I have seen democracies with censorships.
President Robert Mugabe, the undisputed leader of Zimbabwe unfortunately for him could not exercise that power censorship provides him. But in reality, does this fall really harm him? Would this fall remove him from power? I really Doubt it. I really doubt this fall will have any impact on his iron rule. So then why is Mugabe so quick to want delete and censor information about his fall. Is it because he is paranoid? Is it because his paranoia that he might be removed out of office so big that even this small trip is threat? Or maybe he is afraid his image the undisputed leader will be tarnished. It could be any of the two or even other factors but we as we read in Coetzee book, the work of censor, paranoia plays a major role in censorship.
Ruth-Marie, thanks for your interesting blog, nice topic!
ReplyDeleteJust as Linford, the sentence that was the most striking to me is ‘Mugabe wanted to deny his fall through censorship”. The first question that pops into my mind is why would you want to censor a fall? Falling can happen to anyone. Of course, as Ruth Marie already said censorship in this case is trying to uphold an image of an invincible ruler, namely Mugabe. However the irony in this failed case of censorship is that it seems to damage his position and shows his vulnerability even more than if he would not have censored at all. His attempt to keep things behind closed doors has revealed his political paranoia and could be an indication how fragile he perceives his own regime as apparently he feels the need to censor something as trivial as a fall.