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This article examines how photographs displayed online preserve, mediate, and circulate memories of the Gukurahundi "genocide." The Gukurahundi denotes mass killings of more than 20,000 predominantly Ndebele-speaking people in Matabeleland and Midlands provinces orchestrated by the Zimbabwean government between 1983 and 1987. Many of the victims consider this to be a genocide, but their memories are subject to repression under the current regime. In this context, online news sites serve as alternative spaces in which knowledge of this traumatic past is transmitted through photographs. Anchored in an understanding that photographs constitute a "mirror with a memory," this article uses critical discourse analysis to analyse selected images from Bulawayo24.com news website. It finds that Bulawayo24.com serves as an arena for preserving and circulating Gukurahundi memories by enabling audiences to bear witness to their experience-as-genocide. The images reinforce human rights discourses, contributing to the growing calls for justice, commemoration, and memorialization of Gukurahundi victims. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The Zimbabwe's 2018 harmonised elections will go down in history as the first to be held without the name of the country's long serving dictator and founding president, Robert Mugabe on the ballot paper. Mugabe resigned following a military coup in November 2017. This study examines how his party, ZANU-PF, used billboards to sell and rebrand itself in the much touted watershed elections on July 30. The major objectives of the paper are to find out how the party framed itself ahead of its rivals and what their key messages were. A multi-theoretical approach gleaned from political advertising, de-colonial theory, and sign theory was used as a conceptual framework. In answering given objectives, the study used social semiotics and critical discourse analysis to unearth different narratives and messages the party was selling to the electorate. The study finds that ZANU-PF framed their presidential candidate as visionary while the party was promising the electorate an improved economic environment which was hinged on re-engaging the country's former colonisers and erstwhile enemies, the West. The party also promised a socio-political environment where Zimbabweans regardless of race, ethnicity, and tribe can co-exist peacefully, a phenomenon which was foreign during Mugabe's reign. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In March 2018, the Bulawayo High Court ruled against the installation of an Ndebele King in Zimbabwe. The Ndebele throne was left vacant when the second and last king, Lobengula Khumalo, disappeared in 1893 during the armed struggle against the British imperial forces. Prince Bulelani Lobengula Khumalo, the heir apparent to the throne, was supposed to be crowned as the Ndebele King on 3 March 2018 at Barboufields Stadium in Bulawayo. However, the Court declared the installation unconstitutional, and the police blocked the coronation ceremony. Drawing upon decoloniality and Mamdani's citizen and subject as theoretical lens, and on critical discourse analysis, this article examines the online discourses that emerged on the Chronicle and Bulawayo24.com news websites. It is concluded that these Ndebele kingship debates are contributing to various understandings on ethnicity, nationhood and citizenship. Moreover, decolonial sentiments are evoked as online discussants justify the installation of an Ndebele king. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]