Zimbabwean President Robert Mugabe spawned a meme when he fell at Harare International Airport on Wednesday.
As Zimbabwean author Petinan Gappah noted on Facebook: “It is not Mugabe per se that people are mocking – who would mock a frail 91-year-old? It is the propaganda around him: the narrative of youthful vigour, the portrait with the dyed hair that is blacker than it was in his 50s, the weird chubby-cheeked photoshopping we saw on the 2013 election poster… To me, this is more a joke about the projection of images of the president than it is about the president. In other words, the joke is on the state media. Not on Mugabe.â€
In the spirit of Gappah’s comments, we think Mugabe would make a great celebrity on So You Think You Can Dance. We’d vote for him on any reality show — just as long as he didn’t rig the contest!
