The nexus between tertiary students’ ‘side-line’ sports chants and the perpetuation of attitudes towards gender-based violence in Zimbabwe.

Abstract

The study explores the nexus between tertiary students‚ side-line sports chants and the perpetuation of attitudes towards gender-based violence (GBV) in Zimbabwe. Given that GBV occurs in a plethora of forms, and levels, the study submits that attitudes, and their social cultivation, are important in both the perpetration and combating of the social problem. Attitudes are critical in shaping gender relations and power matrices obtaining therein. They benchmark taken-for-granted rules of engagements as well as thresholds beyond which interventions are made from a popular perspective. Whilst there are many spaces on which these attitudes are cultivated, the present study argues that side-line sports chants, an important cultural text in any given society, provide spaces for the negotiation of gendered attitudes in any given social milieu. Thus, they function much more than simply providing support and motivation for both players and coaching staff during tertiary students’ sporting activities. The research uses purposively sampled side-line chants for analysis. Critical discourse analysis (CDA) is used in unpacking the ways in which the chants shape and (re)configure gendered power relations amongst this critical demographic group.