Comedy as journalism in Zimbabwe

Abstract

Post-2000, Zimbabwe has witnessed a gradual shrinking of communicative space. In its efforts to control the narrative about the causes of the country’s multi-dimensional crisis, the ruling ZANU-PF government has used a gamut of legal and extra-judicial strategies to stifle press and other related freedoms. In this highly restrictive context, comedy has emerged as a viable source of information about events unfolding in the country as well as an alternative public sphere where counter-hegemonic discourses are ventilated by citizens who were previously excluded from the mainstream public sphere. Building on Mpofu’s (2017) and Mano’s (2007) studies on art and music as variants of journalism, our paper argues that comedy should be viewed as a variant of journalism in post-2000 Zimbabwe. We employ the normative roles of journalism, and Nancy Fraser’s (1990) concept of the alternative public sphere as our framework for examining how comedy, and more specifically Comic Pastor’s Monthly Comic Awards, has filled the void created by mainstream journalism by performing the journalistic function of communicating salient issues during the protracted Zimbabwean crisis. Our findings converge with, and broaden, Mpofu’s (2017) and Mano’s (2007) thesis that alternative sources of expression such as comedy should be viewed as journalism in crisis contexts. These findings also reinforce the need to expand traditional conceptions of journalism that narrowly limit the practice to traditional mass media.