His brother, called to identify the body, smuggled and posted images of SaeedвЂ™s unrecognizable face, which became emblematic for the resistance. His face, painted in yellow, is obscured by a contorted contour drawing, capturing his brutalized face after he was fatally beaten by police in Alexandria. On the lintel above the doorway is a portrait of a young Egyptian man, Khaled Saeed. GanzeerвЂ™s site-specific mural Macabre By Design juxtaposes a toddlerвЂ™s skull containing both juvenile and adult sets of teeth with the angelic face of his toddler. His work in design, street art, fine art, and graphic novels has since scrutinized governmental corruption that oozes into other streams of control such as the media, human rights violations, climate change, and displacement. Bread-Biker on the 6th October Bridge during Mad Graffiti Weekend in 2011.

As a highly visual and democratic form, the work of street artists, especially images of protest, gained notoriety during the revolution for capturing the national mood Ganzeer became one of the most prominent among them, gaining international recognition after he painted the mural Tank vs. In less than three weeks the protests in Egypt sparked MubarakвЂ™s resignation and arrest. The Arab Spring, described in the previous chapter, began just one month prior in Tunisia and spread across the Maghreb, stirring an uprising centralized in Tahrir Square in Cairo. 3Д«y early 2011, after nearly thirty years and a record of governance that included corruption, media censorship, human rights violations, and displacement, the veneer MubarakвЂ™s control constructed through propaganda cracked. Mubarak linked himself visually to the thirteenth-century BCE king Ramses II on billboards throughout the country, and he engaged a rhetoric that conceptually paralleled that of the ancient Egyptian leaders, who promoted themselves as вЂњstrong enough to lead the people into battle and smart enough to govern them.вЂќ 2 This appropriation demonstrates a robust understanding of ancient Egyptian propaganda: for millennia the kings of Egypt directly referenced the visual vernacular of their predecessors to subdue chaos in order to legitimize their own reigns, constructing an illusion of 3,000 years of continuous pharaonic power. Disenfranchised in both examples are the people who call Zimbabwe home.ДЄ similar visual and ideological propaganda was used by Egyptian presidents beginning with Gamal Abdel Nasser in the 1950s, and notoriously by Hosni Mubarak to ensure his hold on power for three decades beginning in 1981. Both nationalists and colonialists, who stood on opposite sides of government, used the same image to construct unique narratives about why they should be in power. MugabeвЂ™s goal was to develop a shared mythology using a visual language that could be crafted into an idealized narrative to support the legitimacy of Shona rule, and his own leadership. Emblazoned on the flag and currency in 2021 is the image of the Great Zimbabwe bird, one of eight soapstone finials of abstracted birds that were discovered at the site. Alternatively, Robert Mugabe, the revolutionary turned first prime minister and president turned dictator of the Republic of Zimbabwe, capitalized on Great Zimbabwe to assert Shona authority and instill a sense of national pride in its people. Five centuries later, Cecil RhodesвЂ™s British South Africa Company invested heavily in the excavation of Great Zimbabwe with the intention of using a narrative constructed by geologist and explorer Karl Mauch in 1871, which suggested the Phoenicians had built the zimbabwes, giving the region Biblical origins that justified RhodesвЂ™s expansion throughout the northern part of Mashonaland. Great Zimbabwe, a city of the Bantu/Shona civilization, flourished in the fourteenth century as a trading post connecting inland Africa with the Swahili Coast to the east, making gold accessible to the entire Indian Ocean trade network. вЂњZimbabwe,вЂќ derived from the Bantu for вЂњhouses of stone,вЂќ was adopted by both nationalists and colonialists to make a case for their form of rule. In 1980, following Independence, Zimbabwe Rhodesia fully renounced their colonial moniker to become the Republic of Zimbabwe. Paradoxically, then, part of what makes such dehumanized people so loathsome and menacing is their seeming humanity.

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