Political Transition and Anti-democratic Culture in Zimbabwe: Press Discourses on the November 2017 Military Coup

Existing studies on the role of the pressPress in political transitionPolitical transition in AfricaMedia have approached the issue from a functionalist perspective by accentuating normativeNormative assumptions on the role of the pressPress in democratisation (Mukasa, 2003; Traber, 1988). However, little scholarship has been devoted to scrutinising the extent to which the pressPress is imbued with the political cultural values requisite to transform societies from authoritarianism to democracy.Democracy Consequently, there is a lacuna in literature with regards to the definite role played by the pressPress in political transitionPolitical transition in Africa. Combining insights from Michel FoucaultMichel Foucault’s Discourse TheoryDiscourse theory and the concept of political culturePolitical culture (Almond & Verba, 1963), this chapter explores discursive constructions of the 2017 military coupMilitary coup in Zimbabwe in two of the country’s daily newspapersNewspapers, namely, the state-owned, The Herald, and the privately owned, Newsday, to illuminate how mediaMedia discourses can be inimical to democratic consolidationDemocratic consolidation. How the coupCoup was discursively constructed in the pressPress, the extent to which these discourses engendered democratic or undemocraticUndemocratic/anti-democratic cultureAnti-democratic culture are questions germane to this chapter. Data were drawn from purposively selected hard news and editorial pieces published in both newspapersNewspapers between 15 and 24 November 2017, which are the days when the coupCoup was performed and a ‘new’ government was inaugurated. The chapter contributes fresh insights into the relationship between the mediaMedia and political transitionPolitical transition by shifting focus from normativeNormative assumptions about the role of the mediaMedia to foregrounding political socialisationPolitical socialization.