‘Is Mugabe also among the national deities and kings?’: place renaming and the appropriation of African chieftainship ideals and spirituality in Mugabe’s Zimbabwe
This article examines the elite construction of cultural landscapes in Harare. Since assuming the reins of power in the Zimbabwe African Nation Union (ZANU) in 1977, Robert Mugabe invented a political culture that conflated him with spirit mediums whom the nationalist movement had elevated to nation...
| Main Author: | |
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| Format: | Electronic Article |
| Language: | English |
| Check availability: | HBZ Gateway |
| Journals Online & Print: | Drawer...
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| Fernleihe: | Fernleihe für die Fachinformationsdienste |
| Published: |
Sage Publ.
December 2021
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| In: |
Journal of Asian and African studies
Year: 2021, Volume: 56, Issue: 8, Pages: 1861-1878 |
| Further subjects: | B
Head of state
B Political culture B critical toponymy B place renaming B Cultural landscape B Ideology B Zimbabwe B Politics B divine ordination B Name B the Gramscian approach to place naming |
| Online Access: |
Volltext (kostenfrei) |
| Summary: | This article examines the elite construction of cultural landscapes in Harare. Since assuming the reins of power in the Zimbabwe African Nation Union (ZANU) in 1977, Robert Mugabe invented a political culture that conflated him with spirit mediums whom the nationalist movement had elevated to national deities and dead kings. Mugabe continued to cultivate this political culture in the post-colonial era using different discourses of self-presentation. The place-renaming exercise that the Mugabe regime implemented immediately after independence was part of Mugabe’s self-legitimating efforts. This article establishes that the place-renaming system in Harare projected Mugabe as a divine king. |
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| Item Description: | Literaturverzeichnis: Seite 1875-1878, Literaturhinweise |
| ISSN: | 1745-2538 |
| Contains: | Enthalten in: Journal of Asian and African studies
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| Persistent identifiers: | DOI: 10.1177/0021909621992794 |