Othering the other? The Herald and the Newsday’s framing of victims, the Harare city council and land barons in the context of the current housing demolitions by the local authority.

Abstract

The issue of land in Zimbabwe for residential and other purposes has remained a contested terrain between the poor communities and government since the days of the colonial era up to now. The wrangle has seen the subaltern fighting losing battles with the authorities over land. In the 2015/2016 period, government demolished settlements in Harare claiming that they were illegally built on land invaded by land barons and sold to unsuspecting home seekers. Such issues did not escape the eyes of the mass media. Informed by the framing and political economy theories, the study examines how victims of housing demolitions, Harare city council and land barons were constructed by The Herald and Newsday newspapers. The study is largely qualitative and it benefited from qualitative content analysis and interviews with editors and journalists from the two newspapers. The study concludes that victims of the demolitions were „othered‟ in both newspapers as „officialdom‟ prevailed in reporting the demolitions. This means that the media portrayed officials positively while the victims were described as having caused the chaos.