Comedy and Satire in Zimbabwe

The book is about comedy, the nation, and resistance in Zimbabwe, following the fall of Robert Mugabe in 2017. It explores how satiric comedies and comic texts in post-Mugabe Zimbabwe contest hegemonic narratives of the nation and authorise alternative narratives from the margins. Drawing on postcolonial theories of the nation, it analyses subversive comedies and social media texts that contest official political narratives in Zimbabwe, including the comedies of four Zimbabwean comedians—Kapfupi and Marabha, Doc Vikela, and Sabhuku Vharazipi—as well as social media texts on President Mnangagwa’s Facebook Page and cartoons published by the Zimbabwean newspaper ZimDaily. Primarily found via social media platforms (Facebook and Youtube), these texts centre alternative views and narratives of ordinary citizens, contesting established truths and providing a counter-narration to official hegemonic discourses of the nation.

Where existing scholarship on post-Mugabe politics in Zimbabwe focuses on issues such as the coup, militarisation, and discourses of "newness", little attention has been paid to the forms of resistance used in everyday discourse by Zimbabweans, and particularly via satire and comedy. These comic texts, shared by comedians and normal citizens on social media, can provide a useful alternative perspective to make sense of the politics and political performances that characterize the new political dispensation after Mugabe.

Rodwell Makombe is Professor in the Department of English at the North-West University, South Africa. He is a previous fellow of the African Humanities Program (AHP), the University of Michigan Presidential Scholars Fellowship (UMAPS), and the British Academy; he has also been awarded the Humboldt Fellowship for Experienced Researchers (2024-2026) with the University of Bonn in Germany. His research focuses on postcolonial/decolonial literary studies, social media, and crisis literature. He is the author of Cultural Texts of Resistance in Zimbabwe: Music, Memes, Media (2021) and co-author of Coloniality of Migrancy in African Diasporic Literatures (2023).