Patriotic history and anti-corruption activism in Zimbabwe

This paper examines the use of patriotic history to silence anti-corruption activists in Zimbabwe. The paper uses Pastor Evan Mawarire and Hopewell Chin’ono as case studies to achieve this. The paper arose from a lack of literature examining how discourses are used to dismiss, and silence anti-corruption activists. To contribute to the literature on discourses, corruption, and anti-corruption activism, the paper uses the patriotic history discourse to understand how it has been used to silence activists in Zimbabwe. Patriotic history proclaims the Zimbabwe African National Union-Patriotic Front (ZANU-PF) as the alpha and omega of Zimbabwe’s past, present, and future. Zimbabweans are encouraged to be “patriotic”, which means supporting ZANU-PF, and anything short of this is considered “unpatriotic”. Methodologically, the paper draws from qualitative methodology where a discourse analysis of newspapers, politicians’ speeches, grey literature, and academic books and articles was employed. The paper argues that patriotic history especially its elements of separating patriots and sellouts and the anti-Western rhetoric were used to discredit and dismiss Pastor Evan Mawarire and Hopewell Chin’ono’s anti-corruption activism. The paper has also found that while Pastor Evan Mawarire’s activism happenedduring the Mugabe era and Hopewell Chin’ono’s was/is happening in the Mnangagwa regime, patriotic history has been used consistently. The paper concludes that in Zimbabwe those who engage in patriotic acts of fighting corruption are seen as sellouts while those who loot public funds are arguably patriots as long as they support the ruling party.