Southern Eye
6th October 2014
By Shepherd Mpofu
Mobile Phone and Internet penetration in Zimbabwe is encouraging to those cyber-optimists like me who see these as democratising tools.
Yet one of the most challenging issues to think about in the current Zimbabwe is the way many people use social media in their daily lives.
By social media I refer to Twitter, Facebook, WhatsApp and the like. My main point of departure is a question: Have we used social media to rob ourselves of the endless possibilities of a democratically-functional country and accountable institutions at all levels?
Have we used these media to show ourselves and the world how silly we are; exposing the farcical cleavages of our predicament?
Social media have a potential social, economic and political power imbedded in them in our day to day existence depending on how we employ them as tools to achieve certain set goals.
The Baba Jukwa character and his use of social media, even though mischevious and unpolished on some fronts, remains ingrained in our minds.
In 2011 London riots, the 2010 Mozambican food riots and the 2010 Arab spring chaos leads us to pause and rethink the potential of social media as a tool for organisation and ultimately democratisation.
In London we saw mostly teenagers using the Blackberry Messanger (BBM) service to organise their criminal activities. Some social media outlets like Facebook and Twitter were used too to circulate pictures of their loot or trail of destruction.
Interestingly BBM was used to share location of fellow looters Blackberry Messanger remains unavailable in Zimbabwe. BBM as it popularly known provides free/cheap Internet communication service. You connect through exchanging pins or joining a group just like you do with the WhatsApp service.
In Arab Africa YouTube, Twitter, BBM and Facebook were used to co-ordinate the uprising while the Mozambican food riots were co-ordinated through text messages leading to the government blocking this service for days.
What is clear from the foregoing is the use of social media not as instruments that fuel violence, lootings, or uprisings, but as enabling tools or accelerants to popular actions: Be they peaceful or violent.
Not that this article advocates violence as a solution to Zimbabwe’s many problems: Some minor while others major. For example a friend wrote on Facebook recently clearly agitated by the police roadblocks – a major nuisance for most travellers. Everyone agrees that some police roadblocks are not necessary.
However, the way authorities are engaged with on these issues might be a problem. On Thursday night I saw an engagement on Twitter among Zimbabweans suggesting that police roadblocks give the country a negative image especially to potential tourists.
Tourists will never trust what the government says about safety, but they are willing to trust fellow travellers or ordinary Zimbabweans for advice. Imagine you drive into Zimbabwe from one of the neighbouring countries and visit the Victoria Falls and the like.
On your way into the country you are met with all manner of roadblocks where you pay all kinds of fines from not having the proper reflectors or being accused of putting on your seatbelts because you have seen the roadblock or something the police officer conjures up especially when you seem not willing to part with a few dollars.
You won’t have a good story to tell about your Zimbabwean experience to would-be tourists. I have always argued that tourists need not fear crime in Zimbabwe but other things.
Social media offers powers that be who are worried about the economy for their survival to engage with the citizenry and map a sane way forward.
There are many cases of organisations and citizen groupings like the @263chat, Bulawayo City Council and Bulawayo Progressive Residents’ Association that make good use of social media to address certain salient issues in society.
I have noticed that, even though not entirely believable, the Tourism minister tries to address and discuss certain issues with some of his followers especially those that relate to tourism.
In an exchange with yours truly he ended up arguing that he engages in constructive criticism and I am still to find out what that meant as my primary school teacher told me criticism is criticism; there is nothing called constructive criticism.
And the hosting of the World Cup in the 2030s better left untouched. David Coltart was one prolific minister who used Twitter and Facebook effectively, fearlessly walking into storms at times.
Social media may be used to give leaders advice and also ask them to act since they are public servants. One thing that we must learn from President Robert Mugabe is the servant-hood of all public officials.
If you listen to Mugabe’s speeches during Heroes, Independence and Defence Forces days, besides having a go at his enemies, he reports back to the masters-the electorate-what his government has done.
There is an entry point for social media in our political systems and we need to engage with our leaders at ward to national levels via such applications as Facebook, Twitter and WhatsApp.
Imagine if the Finance minister opens up communication lines so that students and traders may contribute to his national budgets!
But what have we done with these technologies?
We have engaged in what Fela Kuti calls the politics of “shuffering and shmiling†in one of his albums. The song addresses what Nigerians go through at the hands of religious and political leaders.
I am no expert in Pidgin but having interacted with a lot of Nigerians I will use Fela’s lyrics to make a point:
Every day my people dey inside bus
(My people commute daily in the bus)
Forty-nine sitting, 39 standing
Them go pack themselves in like sardine
(They pack themselves sardines)
Them go reach house, water no dey
(When they get home, there is no water)
Them go reach bed, power no dey
(When they go to bed, there is no electricity)
Them go reach road, go-slow go come
(When they get on the road there are traffic jams (sometimes caused by roadblocks)
Them go reach road, police go slap
(When they get on the road, they are slapped by cops . . .)
I have never heard of cops beating up people, but I have heard of them throwing spikes at moving cars filled with passengers.
Whenever something horrible happens to us – politically, economically or socially – we suffer and immediately start smiling and laughing about it even though without solutions. Thus being cheerfully complicit.
Zimbabweans, in a space without efficient public watchdogs and arms of the state that watch over corruption and excesses by the powers that be, have failed to take it upon themselves to demand meetings with leaders and politicians who mess around.
They are not the ones to organise boycotts of airtime when a bizarre tax on airtime is imposed, or boycott going to work because of the unnecessary early morning roadblocks that delay people on their way to work.
Rather, what one finds are the jokes about these issues; a classic case of expressing pathological timidity that is a hallmark of most people’s existence. And, as Fela says, they argue that “E dey happen to all of us everyday†(These things happen every day).
Of course these jokes about our politicians, police, PhDs and celebrities that circulate via social media are a form of political commentary, expression of anger and resistance against the system, but there is just too much laughter and less engagement that leads to solutions. People “shuffer and shmile†then life goes on.
Imagine a situation where politicians and vice-chancellors make themselves available on Twitter and WhatsApp so that their respective communities may interact with them! In this small way, social media offers an opportunity for our national institutions to be open and transparent.
A closed society, one where a citizenry fears its leaders and only exchanges jokes about them in a subaltern way robs itself of democracy and accompanying freedoms. It sets a terrible precedence to future generations who drink from these shallow cisterns of fear and hopelessness.
People do not only “laugh at†the current difficulties and the powers that be which are the protagonists.
People are “laughing with†the current madness-since they are a powerless party and parcel to the present comic reality.
Laughing at suggests critical, distance and therapeutic laughter. But again laughing does not come cheap in the face of difficulties and uncertainty.
It takes a lot of energy for a people to reconcile themselves to watching the buffoonery at a political level, participate in it and then deconstruct its limitations and their participation in comical stagnant ways.
Shepherd Mpofu is a media studies and journalism lecturer at Nust. He writes in his personal capacity.