The Nature and Significance of a Muslim Woman’s Contest for Mayor of Lusaka, Zambia

Abstract

Demonstrating the use of the media as a conduit for communicating religious messages within the political domain, this article interrogates the religion, gender, and media interface through an analysis of the nature and signifi-cance of Sirre Muntanga, the only Muslim woman candidate for mayor of Lusaka during the 2016 Zambian general elections. Scholarly engagement on the 2016 elections has focused on the Christianisation of the elections to the neglect of other religions such as Islam and its related gender discourses. Theoretical and empirical studies on religion as well as the media are still lagging in the Zambian context. Since selected members of the Muslim community used the opportunity provided by Muntanga’s campaign to promote religious literacy on Islam, this article proposes that the mediatisation of Muntanga’s participation in the elections provides a platform for exploring the interaction between religion and the media. The article argues that, while the interface between religion and the media is often ascribed to the growth of media technologies and a religious agenda to convey religious messages, Muntanga’s contest for mayor of Lusaka signified how religion, gender, and the media could be linked through the religionisation of politics as shaped by public curiosity and the declaration of Zambia as a Christian nation.