Inaugural Lecture of Prof Rodwell Makombe: Making Sense of the Second Republic in Zimbabwe Through Laughter

The Executive Dean of the Faculty of Humanities, Prof Dumi Moyo cordially invites you to the Inaugural Lecture of Prof Rodwell Makombe.

Theme: Making sense of the Second Republic in Zimbabwe through laughter: the poetics and politics of resistance after Mugabe.

Abstract:

The fall of Robert Mugabe, Zimbabwe’s long-time strongman, through a military-assisted coup in November 2017, was a landmark event, which attracted a lot of media attention both locally and internationally. What has happened in Zimbabwe after the fall of Robert Mugabe? How do we make sense of the new political configuration, also known as the Second Republic, that has emerged in Zimbabwe? When Robert Mugabe fell, the architects of the coup framed his demise as a watershed moment that marked the end of tyranny and the beginning of a new dispensation of political liberalisation and economic prosperity. However, 7 years after Mugabe’s fall, little to nothing has changed in the country’s fortunes. If anything, the situation seems to be getting worse. This lecture is an attempt to make sense of the politics of the Second Republic through a critical “reading” of social media comedy, a genre which has become ubiquitous in post-Mugabe Zimbabwe. Could it be a coincidence that the Mnangagwa presidency has come to be defined by a comic cultural aesthetic, which has effectively eclipsed the book culture and intellectual dogmatism of the Mugabe era? The overarching question that this lecture seeks to tease out is: How can comedy, a genre which is often associated with fun and entertainment, help us to make sense of (and/or theorise) the politics of the new political order in Zimbabwe. This lecture draws on postcolonial theories of the nation and theories of comedy and satire, to explore how satiric comedies and comic texts theorise the Mnangagwa presidency, contest its official narratives and participate in the (re)narration of the nation. Although there has been a lot of scholarly interest in the politics of the Mnangagwa presidency, most of it has focused on issues such as the politics of the coup, the military factor, and the regime’s discourses of "newness". This lecture explores how comedy (and comic texts) has been involved in theorizing the politics and the political performances of the Mnangagwa regime.