Academic literature on the topic 'Electronic newspapers – Zimbabwe'

Abstract Recent surges and advances in the popular use of electronic technology such as Internet, email, iPad, iPhone, and touch-screens in Africa have opened up great communicative possibilities among ordinary people whose voices were previously marginalized in traditional elitist media. People far apart geographically and living in different times can communicate rapidly and with great ease. This technological revolution has challenged and broken down boundaries of dependence on television, newspapers, and novels, the traditional forms of communication. It is now possible to upload a novel onto an iPad and read it as one moves from place to place. The burden of carrying hard copies is relieved but not eradicated; in most African countries, including Zimbabwe (the centre of focus in the present article), the creative work of art or hard copy of a novel is still relied upon as source of information. There are creative, experimental innovations in the novel form in Zimbabwe which to some extent can justify one’s speaking of a hypertextual novel. This new type of novel incorporates multiple narratives, and sometimes deliberately uses genres such as the email form as a constitutive narrative style that confirms as well as destabilizes previous assumptions of single coherent stories told from one point of view. Using the concepts of hypertextuality, intertextuality, and Bakhtin’s notions of carnivalesque and heteroglossia in speech and written utterances, this article reconsiders the implications of the presence of ideologies of hypertextuality in one novel from Zimbabwe, Nyaradzo Mtizira’s The Chimurenga Protocol (2008). The article argues that the multiplicity of narratives constitutes the hypertextual dimension of the novelistic form.

Purpose – This paper aims to discuss how the originality, authenticity, reliability and genuineness of legal records found at the National Archives of Zimbabwe (NAZ) are maintained. Provenance issues and their implications in diplomatics are also discussed. It notes that the status quo at the NAZ favours the diplomatic archiving of paper records, while electronic records are neglected. Design/methodology/approach – The paper uses a qualitative research approach. The data will mainly be collected using document analysis augmented by observations from the NAZ. Literature in regard to the Court Legal system of Zimbabwe will be reviewed and this even includes newspaper articles. Academic research papers on the archiving of electronic records in the less developed nations and developed nations will be reviewed also. Findings – The qualitative research approach revealed that the electronic national heritage of Zimbabwe is being lost mainly due to the archaic legislation which is silent on the management of electronic records. The results show again the violation of the sanctity of provenance principles in some selected cases. It was also found that the government is now producing both paper and electronic records, but the National Archives is only archiving paper records, the result of this being the incompleteness of records, thereby negatively affecting their diplomatics. Originality/value – Whereas a lot has been published about the management of electronic records in the developing world, this paper does not try to duplicate that but tries to bring a new dimension into this by showing how the diplomatics of these records is affected.