Turmoil in the postcolony : post-independence electoral violence in Zimbabwe and the relevance of peace journalism

Abstract : Between the year 2000 and 2013, Zimbabwe held seven elections and two constitutional plebiscites. Many of these elections have been condemned by local and international observers as unfree and unfair because of election violence. In the post-2000 period, election violence has increased in both qualitative and quantitative terms as electoral contestations increased. Lives have been lost, political trust destroyed and citizens’ belief in the electoral system has, arguably, been shaken. On many occasions, the press has been fingered as failing to speak out against election violence by adopting alternative news reporting models like peace journalism. They have also been accused of failing to provide credible election news, enabling them to be objective, non-partisan conduits of election news in the country, and critics of the country’s election practices. Critics easily point at the ideological divide and subsequent polarisation of the press as the main cause of the press’ failure to be useful spaces of election information, and their subsequent failure to muster a unified voice against rampant election violence. This study is a qualitative research that explores press discourses of election violence in post-2000 Zimbabwe and the relevance of peace journalism. This study utilises qualitative framing analysis and CDA of news texts from The Sunday Mail and The Independent - to ascertain their alignment to peace journalism practices. In addition to textual analysis, the research utilises in-depth interviews with political reporters who covered election violence news for the two weeklies, to establish why news frames and discourses appear the way they are in both newspapers. The study observes that generally, there is no peace journalism practice in the two newspapers. Journalists expressed ignorance of the practice despite its obvious relevance to the Zimbabwean volatile electoral environment. I find that hatespewing, racist, confrontational, polarising and divisive discourses on electoral violence make it difficult to understand the extent of election violence, its subsequent consequences and how, in the long term, it can be arrested. I argue that in some instances, the two newspapers went beyond reporting news on election violence to participating in election violence. I propose a peace journalism news reporting model that can be utilised by the press in case election violence arise again.Ph.D. (Journalism