Humour, politics and mnangagwa's presidency: an analysis of readers' comments in online news websites

Unlike his predecessor, the late Robert Mugabe, Emmerson Mnangagwa has never been a prolific orator. However, he is hugely viewed as a behind the scenes strategist, brilliant at outfoxing his political adversaries. But, after his rise to power, following a military coup in November 2017, Mnangagwa moved from behind the scenes to the front seat of the public platform. To compensate for his parochial gift in speech, Mnangagwa has resorted to humour in his public addresses, something that appears to have split opinions on the basis of palatability of his jokes. In this chapter, we, therefore, examine the reception of Mnangagwa's humour laden speeches by politically engaged citizens, in the context of historical, social, political and economic circumstances obtaining in the country. We argue that through humour, people are able to mediate and appreciate their conditions of existence within an expansive context of Zimbabwean history. Through a reception of Mnangagwa's jokes, we argue that people appropriate them to speak to their conditions and also to 'speak truth to power'. We, therefore, offer a nuanced reading of Mnangagwa's jokes in this space that we consider as an agonistic sphere, a space of conflict and contestation, in which his humour is used as a weapon at their disposal. This chapter lays bare the social, political and ethnic contestations and challenges that riddle Mnangagwa's presidency. We argue that when people speak of their daily experiences in relation to Mnangagwa's constructions of his image and the 'second republic', we can begin to formulate strategies for social change in Zimbabwe's postcolonial imaginary.