The response of the Zimbabwean government to recent social media activism has been frantic. It betrays a sense of panic in the corridors of power. Everyone in the ruling establishment, from the petty foot-soldiers in the Youth League to the Generals in the military has been issuing threats and warnings to social media users. The rhetoric has been laced with the language of exclusion, terms like dissidents, abusers, malcontents, regime change agents, and more, all of which are deliberately designed to malign, exclude and dehumanise. Experience in Zimbabwe and elsewhere shows that such language of exclusion and dehumanisation often precedes acts of repression, violence and sometimes, genocide.
While the relevance of social media in Zimbabwean politics may have been the subject of doubt and conjecture in recent years, 2016 has brought the matter to the centre of political discourse. This is largely due to the significant impact resulting from citizens’ movements, such as #ThisFlag and #Tajamuka, which draw their origins from social media activism. A convergence of factors, including the dire economic conditions, government’s failure to meet its wage obligations to public servants, the rise in unbridled acts of corruption, and more have conspired to raise the level of public discontent and give impetus to the citizens’ movement.
The successful demonstration, dubbed #ZimShutDown, led by the citizens’ movement in early July prompted the state and its security institutions to take serious notice. The government has reacted with a sense of panic and aggression, realising that social media presents a new challenge for which it was not prepared. With traditional opposition parties in the doldrums and organised civil society going through a quiet period after the 2013 elections, the ZANU PF government had been complacent enough to throw caution to the wind and start grappling with its own very divisive succession challenges. It was thoroughly unprepared for the citizens’ movement, not least one deriving its roots in social media.
It is important to take stock of developments since the rise in political temperatures induced by the citizens’ movement in recent months. This #BigSaturdayRead critically analyses the rapid rise of social media as a new frontier of political and civil activism and a zone of serious political contestation between citizens and the state. What role has social media played in the rapid rise of the citizens’ movement? How relevant is social media within contemporary Zimbabwean society? What are the strengths and limitations of the citizens’ movement given the demographics in Zimbabwe? How has the state responded to social media activism and why? These are important questions which demand attention.
The “Baba Jukwa” phenomenon
It is important to take note of the pre-existing footprint of social media in Zimbabwean politics before the recent phase of protests. Four years ago, in the run up to the 2013 harmonised elections, the nation was caught up in the craze of the Baba Jukwa phenomenon. Baba Jukwa was the name of a Facebook character who posted intimate and detailed gossip of political developments within ZANU PF. Baba Jukwa’s posts were regular, detailed and captivating. The detail suggested that the person or persons behind the Baba Jukwa brand were ZANU PF insiders or were closely connected to ZANU PF insiders. It must have been a person or a network of persons who were privy to inside dealings within the party. Although a number of people have been suspected, there has never been conclusive proof as to who Baba Jukwa was. No-one has claimed credit, either for what was truly a phenomenon in the period before the seminal elections. In 2014, Edmund Kudzayi, then a recently-appointed editor of The Sunday Mail and his brother were arrested and detained on suspicion that they were running the Baba Jukwa account. Kudzayi had worked for ZANU PF during its election campaign. In the end, it came to nothing as the Zimbabwe Republic Police proved woefully inadequate in their efforts to investigate the matter. The inept handling of the Baba Jukwa matter exposed how ill-equipped Zimbabwe’s security services are for the complexities of cyberspace and social media, despite their current grandstanding that they are prepared for what they call cyber warfare.
During his time, Baba Jukwa built an impressive number of followers and showed glimpses of the potential of social media as a mobilising force. The account did a lot to raise the hopes of followers that ZANU PF was reaching its nadir. There are some uncanny parallels between the Baba Jukwa phenomeon and the manner in which it garnered a huge following and how the citizens movement in 2016 have also managed to harvest a huge following within a short space of time. Both instances demonstrate how easy it can be to build a social media following if one has the message and information that excites and resonates with the people. In both cases, people have been united and mobilised around a stridently anti-ZANU PF message. In both cases too, there has been no real structure that people were following – in the case of Baba Jukwa, it was an anonymous character and in the case of #ThisFlag it was a known individual, the pastor Evan Mawarire. They could not be more different characters, but one commonality is that both were able to mobilise a popular and faithful social media following in a very short space of time because they raised issues which the people wanted to hear.
However, Baba Jukwa’s star eventually dimmed. It remains to be seen whether the departure of Mawarire to the US will result in a similar fate to #ThisFlag movement. However, the latter may be more enduring since various chapters have cropped up around the world since its rise in April. Besides, there are other movements like #Tajamuka, which have been under-appreciated but have been very significant in their practical activism. Nevertheless, the departure of #ThisFlag’s leading figure will probably dampen some spirits in the short term. While some people are sympathetic with Mawarire’s decision to relocate to a safe zone, there are a number of his followers who feel broken and disheartened by the turn of events. This reaction in understandable too, as many people had invested hopes, perhaps too much hope, in Mawarire’s leadership, reminiscent of the way in which many had placed too much faith in Baba Jukwa’s revelations and predictions of the so-called grim end of ZANU PF. If anything, it is yet another reminder that people should build and invest faith in institutions, rather than individuals. Institutions are more enduring, while individuals come and go.
Social media and political parties
Political parties in Zimbabwe have been very slow to embrace social media. They have prioritised what they call “the ground” and invested very little in social media. In fact, parties have generally been suspicious of social media, believing it to be divisive and also irrelevant to their strongholds in the physical spaces. For example, two years ago, the MDC-T, the official opposition party, was reported to have banned its officials from using social media. This was at the height of its internal troubles. The party’s presence and visibility on social media is limited and insignificant at best.
Similarly, the ZANU PF is averse to social media. Its President and the Politburo have on various occasions issued warnings against use of social media. Both ZANU PF and the MDC-T run official social media accounts but they are not active enough to be of serious relevance.
Nevertheless, the reluctance of these major political institutions has not deterred individual politicians within them from active participation on social media. Indeed, it is the active participation of senior politicians, such as Professor Jonathan Moyo and other leading figures which has spurred the growth of the so-called “Zimbabwean political twitter”. Other politicians maintain social media accounts but they are not as active. The debates are often heated and sometimes acrimonious, but people like the opportunity to engage with political leaders and government officials. Those who are on social media get attention, but many are social media-shy. In a sign perhaps of the growing relevance of social media, Tendai Biti, a leading opposition figure who built an impressive following three years ago with his Wananchi newsletters has recently joined Twitter and is one of the more active users among politicians. The new party, ZimPF, led by former Vice President Joice Mujuru, has probably been the most active political party on social media in recent months. While “the ground” remains the most important terrain on the political landscape, politicians who are social media-shy are missing out on a generation that invests a lot of time and resources on social media. That is where they get information, where their political views and perceptions are shaped. In the case of the MDC, it is ironic that a party which rides on the claim of being modern, forward-looking and progressive shows so much aversion to social media.
Civil society and social media
Traditional civil society organisations have followed the trend set by political parties and have, with a few exceptions, been averse to social media. Many of them do have accounts on social media platforms, but they are not very active. The information they generate could easily be disseminated through social media, but they have been slow to appreciate the utility and relevance of these platforms. The pattern is similar in respect to commercial businesses in Zimbabwe, which, with a few exceptions have been slow to establish active citizenship on social media. Those that do, like EcoCash, have opened a new frontier to customer relations, realising that most of their customers are social media citizens and that is the space where they can more easily be engaged.
Nevertheless, although civil society organisations and business are less active, individual leaders in those spaces are regular participants on social media. Some citizens have built up large followings on social media through their active presence and engagement with other citizens on matters of interest, especially politics. Indeed, the rapid rise of the citizens’ movement can be explained partly by their presence on social media, where they have attracted attention and built huge followings. The ease with which information filters through social media, how people engage despite geographical barriers have all conspired to make social media a hotbed of ideas and activism. In these spaces, citizens critique the government and business, they challenge politicians and call them to account, they share ideas and thoughts on political developments, they express their views and disappointments. They cry and celebrate together. Solidarity campaigns are initiated from social media platforms. They critique government policies and laws, court judgments and political statements. These critiques are important parts of the discourse on political accountability.
All in all, social media has helped in the process of breaking geographic, gender, class, racial, ethnic, age and other barriers which would otherwise prevent people from engaging and discussing issues of political significance. The young and old engage and speak together more easily, sharing their concerns and lessons learnt. Social media has constricted space differences between Zimbabweans who are now scattered across the globe. Those at home and in the Diaspora are able to engage, communicate and share ideas and thoughts at less cost and inconvenience through social media. For many in the Diaspora, while they may be physically dislocated from home social media has enabled them to find space on home soil. Indeed, many engage more in relation to issues taking place in Zimbabwe than they do in regard to issues in their host countries.
Social media by numbers
In order to appreciate government’s sudden interest in regulating social media, one has to understand the upsurge in the use of social media among Zimbabweans and its growing significance as a space of political ideation, debate, and mobilisation. One useful way to do this is to look at the statistical data relating to mobile telephone and internet penetration and data usage in Zimbabwe.
According to the Fourth Quarterly Report of the Posts and Telecommunications Regulatory Authority of Zimbabwe (POTRAZ) (2015), the state telecommunications regulator, the mobile penetration rate by December 2015 was 95,4% up from 90,3% the previous year. Active subscriptions across the three networks stood at $12,757,410 a 2.9% rise from the previous quarter. The regulator attributes this to a growth in the number of subscribers and existing subscribers buying multiple SIM cards in order to access cheap deals from other networks. SIM cards, which used to be very scarce, expensive and highly sought after less than a decade ago have become more widely and cheaply available in recent years.
According to the same report, the internet penetration rate increased by 1,5% to 48,1% from 46,6% in the previous quarter. The report shows that mobile internet accounted for 95,6% of total internet subscriptions, which means most people have access to the internet through their mobile phones. Further, mobile data utilisation increased by 27,4% and the regulator points out that much of this is due to the increase in the use of social media platforms such as WhatsApp and Facebook. Indeed, of the mobile internet and data usage, 34% is attributed to WhatsApp data bundles, while 3% is consumed by Facebook data bundles. With 37% of mobile internet and data usage going to social media data bundles, it is clear that social media enjoys a disproportionately high volume of usage compared to other data usage. By far the leading provider of mobile internet and data usage is Econet, with 79,5% of the market share compared to NetOne and Telecel which have 13,4% and 7,1% respectively.
The POTRAZ report also shows that demand for internet services has continued to grow as demonstrated by the increase in demand for subscriptions which has promoted the leading Internet Access Providers (IAPs) like Liquid Telecom and TelOne to invest more in infrastructure. For example, according to POTRAZ, investment by IAPs between October and December 2015 rose by 142,6% – from $11,7 million to $28,5 million. The growth can also be seen in revenues where internet access providers made 15,5% more revenues between the third and fourth quarter in 2015. POTRAZ attributes the increase in revenue to the increase in internet and data usage.
The growth in the usage of social media platforms such as WhatsApp is also evident in the impact to traditional revenue streams for mobile telephone companies. Top ICT magazine, TechZim reported on 5th August 2016 that revenues in the mobile telecommunications sector had dropped by 12,3% in the first quarter of 2016 from the fourth quarter of 2015 and this was attributed to a 15,5% drop in voice traffic. The rise in the use of Over the Top services such as WhatsApp is because they provide subscribers with cheaper and more affordable forms of communication compared to traditional voice services. The fact that these services are promoted through bundles provided by operators made the OTT services even more popular. This decline in voice traffic is obviously not unique to Zimbabwe but is a worldwide trend which mobile telephone companies have had to deal with. One of the ways in which they have done this is to bundle the services to ensure they get value out of usage of their platforms.
What this data demonstrates is that social media usage continues to increase among Zimbabweans. More people are accessing mobile internet and data services. Further, while mobile telephone companies face declining revenues in traditional voice traffic, they have had to innovate by creating bundled services for customers. These bundled services have become popular with customers hence a large proportion of mobile internet and data usage is through social media. This demonstrates that more and more Zimbabweans have a presence in social media. However, while the state has created machinery to monitor and regulate conduct in physical spaces, it feels vulnerable, weak and without control in social media where such machinery does not exist. In physical spaces, the state can always deploy anti-riot police and use physical force to drive away demonstrators expressing their view. However, on social media, the state is not well-equipped to handle users. It is against this background that the state has started to deploy various mechanisms to respond to the new challenges presented by social media.
Information and power: theory behind the state’s interest to control social media
Before I get into a discussion of how the state has responded to new challenges in social media, it is important to analyse the theory behind the state’s reaction. I use a theory which I have previously adapted to understand the nature of power in Zimbabwean politics: Susan Strange’s theory of structural power in international relations. I have used it in the past to analyse ZNU PF’s sources of power and what the opposition needs to do to dilute this power. The state (and by extension, the ruling party) derives power from various structures: security, finance, production and knowledge. For example, the state has power over those to whom it can provide or withdraw security. Similarly, it can use its power to control who gets finance or state support and who doesn’t. Power from the knowledge structure includes the power over information. It is power from the knowledge structure that we are interested in here.
Those who control knowledge, how it is defined, validated, packaged and distributed have immense power over those who use and receive it. The old adage is true, that knowledge is power, and those who control knowledge derive power from it. This is why authoritarian states invest a lot in retaining exclusive control over information and its sources and how it is distributed. Typically, the broadcasting and printing press are in the hands of the state. Radio and television channels are strictly controlled. If licences are given, the recipients are pliant allies of the state. There will be an appearance of private participation in the broadcasting industry when in fact the private actors instruments of the state. Furthermore, state-owned newspapers are in fact mouthpieces of the ruling party. The state is paranoid about information dissemination; regulation of the media is strictly exclusionary. The net effect is that control over the knowledge/information structure gives immense power to those in charge.
This explains why Zimbabwean media space is severely restricted. The biggest newspaper company, Zimpapers Pvt Ltd is owned by the state and virtually all its newspapers are mouthpieces of the ruling party. There is a vibrant private sector in the print media, but the market remains dominated by the better-resourced state newspapers groups. All the broadcasters at the national level have some connection with the ruling party, even though StarFM and ZiFM are touted as private broadcasters. StarFM is owned by Zimpapers Pvt Ltd, which is owned by the state, while the beneficial owner of ZiFM is a government Minister and a member of the ruling party. Other private broadcasters operating in the provinces are limited in their reach. There is only one television broadcaster, the ZBC and people have to pay a premium to access the satellite broadcaster, DSTV. This means the majority of the nation relies on state radio and television for news and information. As much of the news and information from the state broadcaster is politically-biased towards the ruling party, this gives ZANU PF unparalleled control over the information that people consume and consequently, how their mind-set is shaped.
Over the course of time, ZANU PF has had little cause to worry about the media. When it felt threatened by the rise of the private newspapers, the response was aggressive. In 2001, the printing press of The Daily News was bombed and although the culprits were never identified, observers suspected state involvement. Later, the state enacted the Access to Information and Protection of Privacy Act, a draconian piece of legislation which contrary to its title, actually restricted access to information. The Daily News was banned in 2003 after it challenged AIPPA but the Supreme Court refused to hear its constitutional application on the grounds that it did not have ‘clean hands’. The state has also used draconian legislation such as the now defunct provisions on criminal defamation to arrest and prosecute journalists. By establishing a system of controls on the media, the state has generally managed to maintain a strong grip on the king of information that it disseminated to the public and has therefore derived a great amount of power from the knowledge structure.
However, social media presents a new terrain over which the state has no control. This worries the ruling party, which is traditionally paranoid about allowing free speech. Social media permits citizens to express themselves in a manner that wasn’t possible in the era dominated by traditional media. There are no editors to control the kind of information that is published to the world. Public authorities and editors are openly challenged. If they write propaganda, citizens on social media are quick to point it out. There is a wide variety of critics on social media, all ready to give their point of view to public authorities.
All in all, the state has found social media a more difficult space to control the flow and distribution of information than it has hitherto done in traditional media. It is against this background that the state has been frantic in its efforts to control and regulate social media in recent weeks, spurred into action by protests arising from social media activism. The state is trying to regain control over the knowledge/information structure – to control information, how it is packaged and distributed.
State response
It is now important to assess how the Zimbabwean state has responded to the rapid rise in social media activism.
Raising the cost of free speech
One of the reactions of the state has been to raise the cost of free speech in financial terms. This has been executed through an increase in the price of accessing social media. As already noted in this article, POTRAZ pointed out in its Fourth Quarterly Report for 2015 that the rise in subscriptions was partly due to subscribers buying multiple SIM cards to enable users to benefit from the promotional offers from the different networks. The POTRAZ report also indicated that mobile internet and data usage is dominated by WhatsApp and Facebook bundles, the major promotional deals which the mobile networks have been offering. It is clear that the majority of social media users were relying on these promotional deals.
However, in July 2016, mobile networks companies announced that most of the promotions would not be running beyond the end of the month. While the networks stated that this followed a directive of POTRAZ, the regulator denied responsibility. In a response to TechZim, the technology magazine, the regulator’s acting CEO, Ceicilia Nyamutswa said, “There was no directive to suspend promotions. Each promotion runs for a specific period with an expiry date. There was no instruction to operators to stop any promotion in the middle of its life. If any promotions have stopped running, it is because the period for which it was approved has expired. Operators do not run unapproved promotions” She further stated that any promotion which is approved by POTRAZ would run for the approved period.
Under ordinary circumstances, this explanation sounds fair and reasonable. However, there is a real risk that deliberate delays or complete refusals to approve a promotion can be tool for the state to control access to social media. It is reasonable to expect the networks to have applied for renewals of promotions or for alternatives well before the expiry of existing promotions. If the regulator deliberately delays the approval process, that can amount to frustrating access to social media. Meanwhile, without the cheap and affordable promotions, the cost of accessing social media rises and fewer citizens are about to make use of it. POTRAZ may be denying the charge that it is banning social media, but the manner in which it handles the promotions process may amount effectively to banning it for those users who are excluded by virtue of cost. It will be interesting to observe the impact of the non-renewal of promotions on mobile internet and data usage and also the revenues of the mobile networks. If there is a reduction, it would suggest that the state would have been successful in its bid to restrict access to and use of social media.
Public warnings and threats
The initial response by the state was to issue a flurry of public warnings and threats regarding the so-called abuse of social media. These threats have come from POTRAZ, the information ministry, the police and more recently the army. The ZANU PF Youth League has also issued ominous warnings and threats to social media activists.
On 6 July 2016, the day that Zimbabwe experienced a large-scale shutdown following calls by the citizens’ movement under #ThisFlag umbrella, POTRAZ issued a warning to citizens that it was concerned with “the gross irresponsible use of social media and telecommunication services made through our infrastructure and communication platforms over the past few days … We would like all Zimbabweans to know that we are completely against this behaviour and therefore advise that anyone generating, passing on or sharing such abusive and subversive materials which are tantamount to criminal behaviour, will be disconnected and the law will take its course.”
POTRAZ went on to warn users that it had the capacity to identify them and that they could be tracked down, clearly aimed at intimidating users by suggesting that they were being watched. “All sim cards in Zimbabwe are registered in the name of the user. Perpetrators can easily be identified”.
“We are therefore warning members of the public that from the date of this notice, any person caught in possession of, generating, sharing or passing on abusive, threatening, subversive or offensive telecommunication messages, including WhatsApp or any other social media messages that may be deemed to cause despondency, incite violence, threaten citizens and cause unrest, will be arrested and dealt with accordingly in the national interest.”
The aggressive and intemperate tone of the public notice made it sound more like a message from the security agencies of the state than the telecommunications regulator which is supposed to protect the public rather than threaten them. This was the state using the agency of the industry regulator to intimidate and cow citizens into submission.
This message was complemented by the ICT Minister Supa Mandiwanzira who denied that the government intended to ban social media but insisted that “we want to penalise the abuse of social media” without however specifying details on how that would be done. Mandiwanzira is quoted by The Chronicle on 6th July 2016 as having warned: “It is important for everybody to understand that everything you post on social media … can be traced back to who started them. Therefore we warn people to be responsible and to ensure that the messages they send out do not find them foul of the law. We expect that people must be responsible when using social media. It must not be used to threaten other people or to send subversive messages”.
The Minister of Information and Publicity, Chris Mushohwe was reported by The Sunday Mail to have issued similar warnings: “These people thought they were clever in the sense that they believed that they were faceless individuals, but we now know them. We know that they received large sums of money from embassies to instigate this unrest in a move to use social media to effect some sort of regime change agenda.”
He claimed that he had consulted the Chinese, who had advised him that it was easy to identify social media users.
“They actually said none of those 700 million [Chinese] users could post something on social media without the [Chinese] Government knowing. They actually laughed at me when I told them that in Zimbabwe, we have just 1,5 million users; yet someone then thinks we are that dull such that we cannot monitor how they use the social media. I should warn all those who are abusing the social media to cause unrest in the country that we are coming for them.”
The police also issued warnings and threats of arrest for alleged social media abuse, with the national spokesperson Senior Assistant Commissioner Charity Charamba warning that the police had the means to identify social media users.
What is evident in all these warnings by the state is the language of exclusion. Labels like “social media dissidents”, “social media abusers”, “regime change agents”, “malcontents” and similar are deliberately designed to exclude those considered undesirable within social media space. The criteria is undefined and is within the discretion of the state and the ruling party or its allies who draw the demarcations.
In all these threats and warnings however, the general impression was that the state was reacting to criticism from citizens over its failure to deliver on its programs. What the government calls ‘social media abuse’ is, at the core, no more than these forms of criticism. The threats and warnings were seen by critics as forms of intimidation aimed at silencing members of the public. These threats have gained profile in recent weeks as the military has waded into the arena, making reference to cyber-warfare. Both the commander of the Zimbabwe Defence Forces, General Constantino Chiwenga and the Army Commander Valerio Sibanda have in recent days issued warnings against the same so-called social media abuse. This is a demonstration of the seriousness with which the state is now viewing social media.
Another inherent element of the warnings and threats is that they are designed to perpetuate the “Panopticon Effect” whereby social media users are given the impression that they are constantly being watched. This is why Mandiwanzira, Charamba, Mushohwe and other within the state have consistently sent the message that social media users are being watched and they can easily be identified. This is meant to create fear among social media users by inculcating the belief that they are always under surveillance and that the state is watching them. However, armed with technical knowledge, users have responded by debunking the effect of these warnings, pointing out that with end-to-end encryption, communications on WhatsApp are protected from remote surveillance.
Social media regulation by law
The major intervention is through law. Presented as a measure to protect, the effect of law is often to control and exclude and the legal interventions in respect of social media are a clear illustration of this phenomenon. There are a number of laws which the state has deployed in efforts to control social media activity but in addition, a new law to control use of social media is presently being crafted.
First, the state has used provisions of the Criminal Law (Codification) Act (the Criminal Code) to arrest and charge activists on social media. When Pastor Evan Mawarire was arrested in 12 July 2016, he was initially charged with inciting public violence and later with subverting constitutional government and insulting the President – all offences under the Criminal Code. The magistrate ruled that the arrest was unlawful after the prosecution unprocedurally amended the charges just before the hearing. Sections 162-168 of the Criminal Code also deal with computer-related crime.
Second, on 11 August 2016, Jealousy Mawarire who is the spokesperson of former Vice President Joice Mujuru’s Zimbabwe People First party, was called by police and charged under a provision of the Posts and Telecommunications Authority Act which criminalises the sending “by telephone any message that he knows to be false for the purpose of causing annoyance, inconvenience or needless anxiety”. The charge is based on a tweet which Mawarire sent to Jonathan Moyo, who is the complainant in the matter. It should be interesting whether the court rules that a tweet is a “telephone message” covered by the provision of the PTA Act. Should the court decide that tweets are covered by that provision, it could open the floodgates of arrests of social media users.
Third, there is already a law that permits the state to intercept communications. The Interception of Communications Act, which was passed in 2007, gives extensive powers to law enforcement authorities to snoop in to private communications between users of telephone services.
Fourth, the government is currently crafting the Computer Crime and Cybercrime Bill, which seeks to permit extensive controls on use of social media. Further detailed analysis of the Bill, which is still in draft, will be done in due course, but a quick perusal shows that if passed into law, it will create very wide, vague and indeterminate offences in respect of social media activity. It will also give police extensive search and seizure powers. Measured against the Constitution, which protects freedoms of communication and the right to privacy, the Bill falls woefully short and a number of its provisions in the present form are likely to be struck down by the Constitutional Court if challenged.
The frantic measures to introduce the Bill to regulate use of social media reflect a government that has panicked in the wake of the citizens’ movement based on and mobilised through social media. While some of the purported reasons for introducing the Bill, such as protecting children, preventing racial and ethnic hatred sound noble, most critics believe that the real motive which has prompted the rapid response is political. This is the cause of citizens’ mistrust, suspicion and resistance in respect of the Bill.
Disabling social media and deploying cyber-troops
On 6 July 2016, the day of the national #ZimShutDown, Zimbabweans woke up to realise that their WhatsApp service was down. Service providers like Econet sent public notices advising that the service was unavailable. However, crucially, they did not cite technical reasons for the problem, as they would normally do if it were a technical breakdown. This left many observers speculating that the government was behind the unavailability of the service. It also happened on the same day that the regulator and other state authorities were issuing strongly-worded warnings to social media users. The mass mobilisation for the #ZimShutDown had been carried out largely via social media, with WhatsApp the predominant medium. As already noted, the reach of WhatsApp has increased in recent years and one way to cripple the protests would have been to disable the service. Without effective communication via the WhatsApp platform, it would have affected effective communication between the citizens in the movement.
Nevertheless, something remarkable happened as users both at home and in the Diaspora responded by providing information on VPN – a technology that allows users to still access data services in the absence of the local service providers. Within hours, there was a flurry of messages from the Diaspora and within Zimbabwe advising fellow citizens how they could get around the unavailability of data services in Zimbabwe. This was yet another show of citizens’ resistance to the state’s attempts to restrict the use of social media on a day when it was most needed. In the end, the #ZimShutDown on 6 July 2016 was the most successful mass stay-away in recent years.
Another practical response is the deployment of cyber-troops to counter anti-government views on social media. They are deployed in the discussion forums of popular news websites. They also populate social media platforms like Twitter and Facebook, following popular opposition and civil society figures. Their main purpose is to divert and dilute discussion, sometimes to threaten and insult or generally just be a nuisance. The name given to these characters in social media is “trolls”. The usual response is either to ignore or block them. But they are like multi-headed creatures – the moment you cut one head, another appears! The deployment of cyber-troops was confirmed by the Commander of the Zimbabwe National Army, Lieutenant General Valerio Sibanda who told The Herald on 5 August 2016: “We are already dealing with these threats. As an army, at our institutions of training, we are training our officers to be able to deal with this new threat we call cyber warfare where weapons — not necessarily guns but basically information and communication technology — are being used to mobilise people to do the wrong things”.
These are indications that the state is taking social media more seriously than they have admitted in the past.
Social media and rural areas
While social media has been successful in the urban areas, its impact in rural areas is still relatively limited. This is partly due to technological imbalances but also the vast differences in income and affordability. Rural areas have traditionally been neglected in respect of communication infrastructure. For example, according to POTRAZ, urban areas have 97% of the total fixed lines, leaving rural areas with just 3%. As for mobile network providers, only 27,7% of base stations are in the rural areas, compared to 72,3% in the urban areas. The disproportionate imbalance is clear when considered against the population figures where 67% live in the rural areas with just 33% in the urban areas.
The combination of low income levels and technological limitations mean the pace of social media penetration in the rural areas has been slower than in the urban communities. However, the promotional deals offered by mobile networks, such as the WhatsApp bundles have been important in broadening access to poor rural communities. Indeed, for most people communication is now through WhatsApp, which has seen a drop in voice traffic as reported by POTRAZ. However, it follows that the suspension or non-renewal of these promotions is bound to affect rural communities the most.
It is not surprising therefore that the social media-based protests over the last few months have not reached some of the rural areas. “Deep in Zimbabwe’s drought-stricken rural district of Chiredzi, news of the biggest protests against President Robert Mugabe in a decade reached Peter Mufaro after a week,” wrote Chris Chinaka for Reuters on 12 August 2016, in an analysis which is appropriately entitled “Zimbabwe’s social media revolution by-passes rural areas”. “When you catch up with the news, it feels like you are not part of the country … I rely on the radio for news but they don’t report everything” Mufaro is quoted as having lamented. He lives in a place which is 300 miles from Harare, the capital where the major demonstrations have taken place.
While Chinaka correctly observes that “use of WhatsApp mobile phone messaging system is also spreading, despite the low internet penetration in the countryside” there remain many barriers which prevent the uptake of the social media protests in rural areas. There is a vast system of patronage, where the state rewards traditional leaders, who in turn play the role of watchdogs and enforcement officers to ensure that rural people stay in line. The rural population is consumed by fear of the state – the history of violence from the days of the liberation struggle to election periods after independence is well-documented. As observed in a
