Gukurahundi, New Media and the 'Discourses of Silence': The Reproduction of the Hegemonic Narratives of the Matabeleland Post-Colonial Violence on Selected Zimbabwean News Websites

Studies on new media in Zimbabwe tend to highlight the role of news websites in widening the democratic space and countering the government's hegemonic nationalist discourses that are perpetuated in state-controlled media. Scholars such as Mpofu and Mhlanga and Mpofu have argued that new media are emancipatory spaces that are enabling the people of Matabeleland to recollect memories of their painful past events that are repressed in official sites. Although these scholarly works have lauded new media as alternative sites that are subverting the hegemonic narratives propagated in state media, there remains a gap in studies that explore the role of news websites in reinforcing and preserving the official state discourses. This paper complements the works on the remembrance of the violent past events through new media by examining the discourses that seek to silence Gukurahundi memories. Using Critical Discourse Analysis (CDA) as a method of data analysis, I examine news reports, opinion pieces and readers' comments selected from Newzimbabwe.com and Bulawayo24.com news websites to capture the hegemonic discourses that seek to justify the Gukurahundi genocide.