The Idea of Matabeleland in Digital Spaces: Genealogies, Discourses, and Epistemic Struggles establishes a debate and dialogue between critical and post-/de-colonial approaches in the study of subalternity in online media representations. Editors Khanyile Mlotshwa and Mphathisi Ndlovu curate chapters that deal specifically with the intersectional subalternity of Matabeleland, a political and geographical region in the Southwest part of Zimbabwe comprising of three provinces: Matabeleland South, Matabeleland North, and Bulawayo metropolitan province. The subalternity of this region emerges in politics and popular culture, including media, as intersectional in terms of ethnicity, region, gender, class, and beyond. This book argues that in online spaces the liberatory politics of Matabeleland emerges as trapped in coloniality.

Khanyile Mlotshwa is a Rosa Luxemburg Stiftung Global Scholarly Dialogue Programme research fellow.

Mphathisi Ndlovu is research fellow of journalism at Stellenbosch University.

Acknowledgements

Introduction

Khanyile Mlotshwa and Mphathisi Ndlovu

PART I: Conceptual and Theoretical Issues

1. Marginal Societies Online: A Critical Appreciation of Genocide and its Politics in Cyberspace

Shepherd Mpofu

2. Counter-Memory, Ethno-Nationalism, and the Discursive Constructions of Matabeleland in Digital Spaces

Mphathisi Ndlovu

3: The Pitfalls of Matabeleland as a (Digital) Work of Memory

Khanyile Mlotshwa

4: Digital Storytelling as a Tool for Peacebuilding in Post-Conflict Matabeleland

Ntombizakhe Moyo-Nyoni

PART II: Minorities of Minorities

5: Hidden in Public: The Symbolic Annihilation of the Khoisan People in Zimbabwes Public Sphere

Christina Ncube and Khanyile Mlotshwa

6: The Batonga Representations in Matabeleland Imaginations

Mike Mutale

7: Kalanga Activism and the Imaginations of Matabeleland in Digital Spaces

Nkosini Aubrey Khupe

8: Theorizing Online Female Journalism as Border Practices in the Case of Amakhosikazi Media, Bulawayo, Zimbabwe

Khanyile Mlotshwa and Busi Bhebhe

PART III: Performing Subalternity in Digital Space

9: Performing Subalternity Online: A Critical Study of the Centre for Innovation and Technology (CITE)

Samkeliso Ncube and Mphathisi Ndlovu

10: Interrogating Cyber-Cultures and Critical Consciousness Development in Matabeleland

Pretty Nxumalo

11: The Communicative Construction of Ndebele Identity in Radio Mthwakazi

Bhekinkosi Jakobe Ncube

PART IV: Ndebele Nationalism in Digital Spaces

12: Beyond Provincialising a Nation Without a State: Representations of Matabeleland in Umthwakazi Review Digital Space

Thembelani Moyo

13: The Colonized Mean Little to the Colonizer: The Digital Lives of Colonial Diplomacy

Blondie Beatrice Ndebele

14: The (Digital) Return of the Ndebele Monarchy?

Mbongeni Jonny Msimanga

15: Photographing the Nation in the Digital Age: A Case of Matabeleland Discourses on Social Media Platforms

Lungile Augustine Tshuma and Lorraine Phiri

About the Contributors