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Nation and race
In Zimbabwe the state has a monopoly control over the electronic media through such laws as the Broadcasting Services Act and the Access to Information and Protection of Privacy Act. Through such instruments the ruling party has been able to saturate the public sphere with its particularist message and importantly to monopolise the flow of information to the majority rural population. Through this extensive media control the idea of the nation has been conveyed through essentialist and Manichean terms.

Thus, as a report on the ways in which Zimbabwe Broadcasting Corporation
(ZBC) delivered views on the nation in 2002, concluded:ZBC-s conceptualisation on "nation" was simplistic. It was based on race: The White and Black race. Based on those terms, the world was reduced to two nations- the White nation and the black nation and these stood as mortal rivals. The Black nation was called Africa. Whites were presented as Europeans who could only belong to Europe just as Africa was for Africans and Zimbabwe for Zimbabweans. (Gandhi and Jambaya 2002: 4.)

The report further noted that in the national broadcaster-s definition of nation: "Blackness or Africanness was given as the cardinal element to the definition. The exclusion of other races deliberately or otherwise from the -African- nation was an attempt to present Africans as having a separate and completely exclusive humanity to any other race." (Gandhi and Jambaya 2002: 5)

As a constituent part of such essentialist ideas on the nation, ZANU PF ideologues often presented Manichean views on national values. In a programme called National Ethos an intellectual close to the ruling party proclaimed: Since the value system of the Europeans, of the White man, of the Rhodesian in Zimbabwe, is exclusive, it is racist. It does not have any place for us. We should come up with this kind of ethos: Zimbabwe for Zimbabweans, Africa for Africans, Europe for Europeans. This is the starting point because that-s what they do. (Gandhi and Jambaya 2002: 8.)

This view echoed Mugabe-s attack on Blair at the Earth Summit in Joburg in 2002, and was repeated in South Africa in April 2004. In Mugabe-s words: "And that-s why I told him that he can keep his England. Yes we keep our own Zimbabwe close to the bosom, very close." (Herald 27.04.04.)

Thus the repetitive thrust of the national broadcaster-s political programming has been around an essentialist perception of nation and race, linked to Manichean views on national values, and bound up with a narrow and restrictive view of national unity. In the words of one of the party intellectuals: "You must understand that as Zimbabweans and as Africans..that we are trying to come up with one thinking, one vision of survival as a race because we are attacked as a race."(Gandhi and Jambaya 2002: 8.)

For the Mugabe regime the emergence of the opposition MDC in 1999, was a manifestation of foreign British and White influence in Zimbabwean politics. This construction of the opposition thus placed them outside of a legitimate national narrative, and thrust it into the territory of an alien, un-African and treasonous force that -justified- the coercive use of the state in order to contain and destroy such a force.

Mugabe-s description of the MDC aptly captures this characterisation of the opposition: "The MDC should never be judged or characterised by its black trade union face; by its youthful student face; by its salaried black suburban junior professionals; never by its rough and violent high-density lumpen elements. It is much deeper than these human superfices; for it is immovably and implacably moored in the colonial yesteryear and embraces wittingly or unwittingly the repulsive ideology of return to white settler rule. MDC is as old and as strong as the forces that control it; that converges on it and control it; that drive and direct; indeed that support, sponsor and spot it. It is a counter revolutionary Trojan horse contrived and nurtured by the very inimical forces that enslaved and oppressed our people yesterday." (Mugabe 2001: 88.)

Having discursively located the opposition as an alien political force, the full coercive force of the state was brought to bear on those regarded as - unpatriotic- and -puppets of the West-. Deploying elements of the police, intelligence service, army, the war veterans, party supporters and the youth militia, the ruling party has inflicted enormous damage on the personnel and structures of the opposition.

As a result since 2000 90% of MDC MP-s have reported violations against themselves, 60% have reported attacks on their families and staff, while 50% have had their property vandalised or destroyed. Additionally the MDC leadership have spent -months in police cells, in prison and in the courts, facing charges ranging from high treason and murder, to spreading alarm and despondency.- (Zimbabwe Institute 2004: 16.)

This ruling party violence unleashed against the MDC was accompanied by Mugabe-s formal renunciation of the policy of reconciliation towards the white community that his government had adopted in 1980. In 2002, in response to the white support for the opposition, he declared: "We extended a hand of reconciliation to people like Ian Smith and said that, if you want to stay in this country and obey our laws under under Black majority rule with you coming under them, stay. Was that right or wrong?

I think that today at conscience I say on behalf of the party we made a mistake. When you forgive those who do not accept forgiveness, when you show mercy to those who are hard-hearted, when you show non-racialism to die-hard racists; when you show a people with a culture-false culture of superiority based on their skin- and you do nothing to get them to change their personality, their perceptions, their mind, you are acting as a fool."
(Gandhi and Jambaya 2002: 9.)

Commentators on the Zimbabwe Broadcasting Corporation, building on this position, denounced those Zimbabweans who voted for the MDC as badly raised children who had strayed outside of -our world view.-: "The problem is very fundamental, and that is upbringing. Our children, who vote against their own heritage, who vote against their own people, who vote together with whites, who fight on the side of whites, they don-t know the difference between the White man-s world view and our world view, the White man-s agenda and our agenda." (Gandhi and Jambaya 2002: 11.)

Aside from the white population, urban residents have been a major target of the ruling party-s coercive and ideological attacks, because of their dominant support for the opposition. Historically the relations between the liberation movement and urban workers has been characterised by ambiguities and tension. (Raftopoulos and Yoshikuni 2001.)

Thus, the fact that the MDC emerged out of the labour and constitutional movements, both largely urban based, cemented the view within the ruling party that this segment of the population remained a problem for nationalist mobilisation. Since the late 1990-s, when a strong opposition emerged, the workers have been consistently derided as -totemless-, deracinated and at the periphery of the liberation legacy. They have been characterised as -the ones who are leading the nation astray-, unlike the peasants who are always -on the right path, not distracted by issues that are peripheral, knowing the fundamentals.- (Gandhi and Jambaya 2002: 6.)

Yet unlike the -alien- whites, who can be expelled from the body politic, black urban workers are less easily dispensed with. Therefore while ZANU PF have used various state organs against urban residents, the policy has also been to bring these -misguided Africans- back into -our world view.-

Thus Mugabe-s paternal advice to his party: "We have a strong basis for recovering support in urban areas. There is palpable disenchantment with the opposition and people want to be walked back to their party. Let us assist them through vigorous campaigning and strong resilient structures." (Mugabe
2001: 102.)

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