The female body and voice in audiovisual political propaganda jingles: the Mbare Chimurenga Choir women in Zimbabwe's contested political terrain

Abstract

Zimbabwe’s post-2000 political terrain has been highly polarised and contested; a minefield requiring political resourcefulness to negotiate. Political actors in this terrain have employed an array of political and cultural tools, ranging from discourses of black empowerment and democratisation, to written texts and performances of political propaganda to garner support from the electorate and gain political mileage. This article explores the literal and symbolic implications of the entry of the female body into public and political spaces through performance in propaganda jingles in the electronic media, represented here by the Mbare Chimurenga Choir’s album ‘Nyatsoteerera’ [Listen carefully]. Using the Bakhtinian carnivalesque theoretical framework, the article analyses the audiovisual and thematic aspects of the Mbare women’s performance, exploring how the female body is cast in the visuals as both object and metaphor in the articulation of a largely masculinist nationalist project. The authors of this article suggest that the choreography exalts the female body as a metaphor for the authoritarian creed, and the gyrating bodies make tangible the objectification and metaphorisation of women in political discourses, while thematically, the lyrics suggest that the Zimbabwean nation cannot be construed outside ZANU-PF’s terms, thereby foreclosing any alternative discourse on Zimbabwe.