Elitism, Ethnolinguistic Nationalism and the Politics of Differentiation: Dispositions Towards Sociolinguistic Diversity for Transformative Communication and Governance in Contemporary Zimbabwe

Current research on postcolonial African linguistic practices and prevailing sociolinguistic ecologies primarily traces othering ideologies to the colonialism which undeniably fractured African humanity. However, language is also entangled in postcolonial configurations of ethno-nationalism, elitism and power struggles, and the embedding of language in the politics of differentiation and hierarchization complicates calls for decolonization of the postcolonial world. In most African countries the shift of political power from colonial white rulers to a black African elite did not mark ‘the end of history’, to borrow Francis Fukuyama’s terminology. The constructs of postcolonial African ‘nation’ and nationalism are rooted in linguistic, cultural and socio-political domains and ideological practices which, together with ethnic and linguistic cleavages as well as the fear of difference, combine to impose hegemonic and elitist logics. Postcolonial Zimbabwean society provides an important site to debate the nationalist project and sociolinguistic ecology, although there is no consensus on whose delineations of nationalism currently define the nation of Zimbabwe. The dialectics of Zimbabwean nationalism provide deep insights into the ambivalence of the post/colonial state in Africa today. This indicates the importance of dismantling hierarchies and binary narratives or other forms of domination that interfere with the process of becoming a pluralistic society hinged on diversity. What are the implications of these challenges in culturally and linguistically diversified national spaces? Whose voices are in/audible in the current national project? Whose archives are utilized to define nationhood? Drawing from decoloniality, Benedict Anderson’s concept of imagined nations and Antonio Gramsci’s theorization of linguistic hegemony, this study interrogates how postcolonial Zimbabwe (de)constructs the nation and nationhood against the sociolinguistic diversity immanent in the same nation.