Youth and the temporalities of non-violent struggles in Zimbabwe: #ThisFlag Movement

Abstract

ABSTRACT Youth in fragile and conflict-ridden spaces are often constructed as violent and restless subjects who dismember the social fabric of society. Yet, many young people are using non-violent tactics and strategies to articulate their grievances and frustrations with the state of their economies. Young people in such decaying economies live under precarious and uncertain existential conditions. Drawing on the #ThisFlag movement in Zimbabwe, this article sheds light on the complex temporalities of non-violent resistance in post-colonial Africa and the place of social media in creating new and alternative forms of protest. The article examines the ways in which young people mobilising under the #ThisFlag movement deployed cyberspaces to launch concerted non-violent resistance against the Mugabe and Mnangagwa regimes. It also discusses various non-violent tactics the #ThisFlag movement deployed to tactically navigate the precarious terrain of political activism. I argue that young people instrumentalised their techno-savviness to mass-mobilise and enact novel and defiant forms of non-violent political action which posed a serious threat to ZANU-PF’s durable political hegemony. I also argue that #ThisFlag’s use of non-violent resistance should be understood as an exercise of agency and social navigation in a context of protracted violence against government critics and opposition political activists.