The national leadership question in post-2000 Zimbabwe can be examined using the rhetoric of the politicians involved and the song texts of their supporters. This article focuses on selected ZANU-PF and MDC song texts with a view to demonstrating that both ZANU-PF and MDC rely on the logic of mutual exclusion in policing inter- and intra-party national leadership contestations. Through an analysis of images and viewpoints deployed in the selected songs to depict the qualities of political leaders in ZANU-PF and MDC as antithetical, the article argues that the musicians’ reluctance and/or failure to rise above the myth of the leaders of their respective political parties as the best ever to emerge in Zimbabwean politics serves to oversimplify a highly intricate national political question. Inter alia, the article addresses the volition in scholarship on contemporary Zimbabwe to exclusively associate patriotic narratives with ZANU-PF, in addition to challenging Zimbabweans to think beyond identities that limit them as members of specific political parties.

中文翻译：

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关于津巴布韦国家领导的爱国叙事：津巴布韦非洲民族联盟爱国阵线（ZANU-PF）和民主变革运动（MDC）歌曲文本，大约2000–2017年

可以使用相关政客的言论和其支持者的歌声来探讨2000年后津巴布韦的国家领导问题。本文重点介绍选定的ZANU-PF和MDC歌曲文本，以证明ZANU-PF和MDC都依靠相互排斥的逻辑来监督党内和党内国家领导权竞赛。通过分析所选歌曲中的图像和观点来描述ZANU-PF和MDC中政治领导人的素质，这是对立的，文章认为，音乐家们不愿意和/或未能超越其领导人的神话各个政党是津巴布韦政治界有史以来最好的政党，这过分简化了高度复杂的民族政治问题。除其他外，