ZIMBABWE-COMMUNICATION: Internet Offers An Alternative Voice

By IPS Correspondents Reprint | | Print |

Gumisai Mutume

JOHANNESBURG, Nov 13 1996 (IPS) - Behind their computer screens all across the globe, Zimbabweans meet every day on the World Wide Web (WWW) to discuss and debate issues which are not so freely discussed in their home country.

Access in Zimbabwe to the global Information Superhighway, and more specifically the Internet, is still severely limited and hampered by a state-owned telecommunications sector and an absence of an enabling regulatory environment.

Internet services that do exist in the country are semi- clandestine, meaning that while the telecommunications monopoly ZPTC (Zimbabwe Posts and Telecommunications Corporation) allows the service providers to operate, they are not permitted to advertise or operate on fully commercial lines.

But outside of its borders, the Internet has become an alternative medium for free expression by Zimbabweans on issues — ranging from the reasons for widespread poverty in the country to the recent building of a 30-room mansion by the country’s new first lady Grace Mugabe, which has been dubbed ‘Gracelands’ on the Zimbabwean Internet discussion forums.

Participants in the internet discussion conferences also have questioned the need for Zimbabwe’s relatively large number of diplomatic missions, when the government is one of the highest spenders, eating up about 40 percent of Gross Domestic Product (GDP) annually.

They also question the extent to which a government where all but 2 of 150 parliamentarians are members of the ruling Zimbabwe African National Union-Patriotic Front (ZANU-PF) party is representative.

“It is true, the roof above us is leaking … I mean the economy is in bad shape,” said one U.S.-based Zimbabwean on a conference site. “We as a nation must begin to examine seriously the source of those leaks.”

The Zimbabwean discussion conferences also give both sides. While there are critics of President Robert Mugabe, there are Mugabe faithfuls too who defend their leader with gusto.

“Most Zimbabweans like Mugabe and his government because on a scale of averages, they have done more good than harm …For millions of Zimbabweans, Mugabe will remain forever ‘the greatest’,” said one Zimbabwean subscriber resident in neighbouring South Africa.

The Zimbabweans who are conversing on the Internet have plans to take their views beyond the computer screen. They plan to organise a major development summit soon to take the suggestions that have come out of their discussion conferences to a larger audience.

Farai Bere, a Zimbabwean student at the University of Witwatersrand in South Africa, said that a summit would be one way to make all the ideas and visions discussed on the Internet available to Zimbabwe’s political leaders.

According to Bere, the menu of the Zimbabwean discussion conferences on the Internet ranges from “politics to social issues, from economics to sports, from jokes to greetings.”

Some Zimbabweans have also used the Internet to inform others of happenings at home. Zano Mataruka, for example, posted a message on the conference site about the September civil servants strike and the black-out on covering the strike by the state-owned media.

“…There was a complete blockade of news coverage (of the strike) on ZBC (Zimbabwe Broadcasting Corporation) and in the ‘Herald’ (daily newspaper). You would go into town and see all sorts of demonstrations – yet you wouldn’t find anything about that in our local media.”

Zimbabwe’s PTC is currently negotiating with the U.S. international, Sprint, to offer Internet services in the southern African nation.

But given its poor track record in providing quality telephone services and the absence of a regulatory framework for the Internet, it will make a weak candidate as the country’s sole Internet Service Provider.