Reading the Political Metaphor: Oliver Mtukudzi’s ‘Wasakara’ and ‘Ngoromera’: Calling for Cultures of Peace in Africa

Abstract

The chapter conceptualizes Oliver ‘Tuku’ Mtukudzi as a musician who has been harshly misjudged as lacking political consciousness. It argues that Tuku has consistently employed hidden scripts to engage political issues and speaking back to power through his music. Tuku uses the metaphors of kusakara (‘wearing out’) and ngoromera (‘magic charm for fighting’) to advocate for truly democratic and peaceful cultures of peace in African politics. The two songs under study were purposively selected from the album Bvuma-Tolerance, which was released in arguably one of Zimbabwe’s significant turning points in its political developments. Analysis of the songs is done using the metaphor metafunction of Cognitive Grammar whereby existing concrete concepts (the source domain) are used to represent more abstract concepts (the target domain), such as governance. The chapter reveals that, through the two songs, Mtukudzi attributes Zimbabwe’s socio-economic and political downfall to Mugabe’s old age and perpetual violent tendencies. These are two topics that have been deemed ‘politically sensitive’ in the country’s hegemonic discourses. It emerges that Tuku could have been harshly misjudged as a musician with a little to no political consciousness or commitmen