CHALLENGES OF CRAFTING AND IMPLEMENTING A COMPREHENSIVE CULTURAL POLICY FOR MANAGEMENT OF CULTURAL DIVERSITY IN ZIMBABWE

Abstract

Management and governance of people from different cultural backgrounds can be made possible through a cultural policy. As a multicultural nation, Zimbabwe is expected to have legislation to govern people from culturally diverse areas. It is against this background that the Zimbabwe draft cultural policies of 2007 and 2016 were put in place, although they seem to be deficient, resulting in the failure of their implementation. Guided by the theory of hegemony and ideology, this article seeks to unravel the challenges hampering the generation of an appropriate cultural policy for governing cultural diversity in Zimbabwe. Using a qualitative research approach through document analysis of the draft policies and interviews with policymakers and cultural practitioners to gather data, the study established that Zimbabwe’s draft cultural policies of 2007 and 2016 are not accommodative of various cultural groups and, hence, pose many challenges to governance.