HARARE, Zimbabwe: He was an unknown pastor, upset about the hardships of daily life in Zimbabwe.
But when he posted a protest video on Facebook, wrapping himself in the national flag, the Rev. Evan Mawarire became one of Zimbabwe’s first social media stars, the embodiment of widespread grievances against President Robert Mugabe. His subsequent posts on Twitter helped set the stage for the biggest protest against the government in a decade in the capital, Harare, in early July.
The Zimbabwean government, which had initially dismissed Mawarire, grasped the danger that the pastor — and social media — posed, potentially more dangerous than anything Mugabe had faced during his 36 years in power.
Responding with the same ruthlessness with which it had dispatched critics over the years, the government jailed the pastor, took him to court and told him to leave Zimbabwe.
The pastor, who fled with his family to South Africa and then to the United States, now says he is “definitely not going back to Zimbabwe anytime soon.”
“The government first treated social media with disdain and mockery,” Mawarire said by phone from the airport in Charlotte, North Carolina, where he was waiting to catch a flight. “But then, after people started getting galvanised and mobilised, they thought, ‘Wait a minute. This is real.’”
Rid of the pastor, the government soon began a wider crackdown on social media.
It raised prices on cell phone data, immediately curtailing the ability of opposition parties and activists to organise via social media applications like WhatsApp.
And it is pressing ahead with comprehensive legislation that would allow police to intercept data, seize electronic equipment and arrest people on loosely defined charges of “insurgency” and “terrorism.”
Supa Mandiwanzira, Zimbabwe’s information technology minister, said the government’s proposed legislation, the Computer Crime and Cyber Crime Bill, was not meant to control people’s use of social media.
“The problem comes when you use social media to promote anarchy and civil disorder,” Mandiwanzira said in an interview. “That’s illegal, and legal consequences will naturally follow.”
But Nelson Chamisa, who served as the information technology minister during a coalition government between 2009 and 2013, said Mugabe’s government had shown little interest in the bill until the recent protests. Now, he said, the government is rushing ahead with a “reactionary, panic bill.”
“It’s a bill meant to try to curtail social media, which is a new flank, a new war zone,” said Chamisa, now a vice president of the main opposition party, the Movement for Democratic Change.
It was during Chamisa’s tenure, when his party oversaw the telecom industry, that the use of mobile access to the internet skyrocketed in Zimbabwe.
Chris Musonza, an independent technology expert, said SIM cards had sold for up to $180 before the changes carried out during the coalition government. Under Chamisa, the price of SIM cards dropped to 50 cents, and the use of cell phones spread quickly thanks to the removal of import duties and other policy changes.
In 2010, fewer than 5 per cent of Zimbabweans had access to the internet, according to the government. In early 2016, nearly 50 per cent did, with most people connecting to the internet through their cell phones.
That increase has profoundly altered the political dynamics. Social media made possible rapid and very cheap dissemination of information in Zimbabwe, where there is only one television network, the state-owned ZBC. More important, it allowed many Zimbabweans to freely express political opinions in a state where Mugabe’s ZANU-PF party has a long history of violently crushing any critics.
Zimbabweans first began using Facebook for those purposes around 2012. But it was the increasing popularity of WhatsApp in 2015, and its explosive growth this year, that brought social media’s power to the government’s attention. According to government figures, in late 2015, WhatsApp data bundles accounted for 34 per cent of all mobile data used, with Facebook coming in second, with 3 per cent.
Zimbabwean activists attribute the popularity of WhatsApp to the anonymity it gives its users.
Lovemore Chinoputsa, secretary-general for the Movement for Democratic Change’s youth wing, said Facebook remained popular in the cities where support for the opposition was strongest. But because WhatsApp requires less bandwidth, it is also used by people in rural areas — Mugabe’s traditional strongholds.
“Thanks to WhatsApp, we’ve been able to reach more and more people in rural areas,” Chinoputsa said. “It started last year, but the dividends are beginning to be realised now.”
In March, in an interview with ZBC on his 92nd birthday, Mugabe appeared to dismiss the online world.
“It’s an internet of dirty and filthy language,” he said. “I just hear these things as I am told by others. I have no perception nor any interest of wanting to have direct links with the internet.”
But in the following months — as Mawarire exploded onto the political scene and opposition parties organised protests through social media — the Zimbabwean government responded. On July 6, as the capital became a ghost town in the biggest day of protest in a decade, access to social media was interrupted for several hours.
The government, which denied cutting service, warned that people using social media to spread “subversive” messages would be arrested. A month later, without any explanation, the government suspended data bundles, making it more expensive for people to use WhatsApp and other social media on their phones.
“We noticed the change immediately,” Chinoputsa, the opposition official, said. He estimated that communication with supporters has gone down about 20 per cent.
The crackdown on Mawarire and social media has had a chilling effect, activists said. Ordinary Zimbabweans, who participated in the protest on July 6, have stopped joining protests since then, lessening the pressure on the government. Recent protests have been led by a few hundred activists and opposition party supporters.
“What we can do on social media is vent our anger and displeasure,” said Patson Dzamara, 30, a prominent activist whose brother, Itai, also an activist, has been missing for the last year. “But that’s not enough. We have to take the fight into the streets and tell the government, ‘Bring it on.’”
Mugabe, ever the survivor, has awakened to social media’s political promise.
“Our youths,” Mugabe told a ZANU-PF youth group in September, “should use social media to defend the party and promote the party.”
— New York Times News Service
