Gukurahundism, Constitutionality and Ethnonationalist Language Policy Contestations: An Ideological Critique of Mediated Discourses About Mother Tongue Instruction in Zimbabwe

ABSTRACT This paper examines mediated discourses on the state of implementation of language in education policy using a critical incident as a reference. Employing Thompson's modes of ideology, we perform an ideological critique of purposively sampled cross‐media discourses spawned by the failed attempt of a Zimbabwean government deputy minister to enforce L1 instruction in early childhood classes in his predominantly Ndebele‐speaking Bubi constituency. We conceptualize this incident as a microcosm of the persistence of a Gukurahundi ethnonationalist ideology, whose attempt to instal Shona hegemony precludes the implementation of constitutionally decreed multilingualism and the associated language in education policy. The analysis reveals that the discourse on tribalism was deployed as a diversionary and dissimulative narrative that eschewed an interrogation of structural failures and politically expedient neglect of constitutional and policy imperatives. Additionally, the reification of ethno‐nationalist ideology renders it impossible to realize equitable multilingualism in postcolonial Zimbabwe. Importantly, the ideological critique demonstrates that cultural engineering, in addition to constitutional and policy guarantees, is needed for the successful realization of mother tongue instruction in Zimbabwe.