Back to Index

This article participates on the following special index pages:

Mugabe's paranoid view of the information age
Media Monitoring Project Zimbabwe (MMPZ)
Extracted from Weekly Media Update 2003-49
December 8th - Sunday December 14th 2003

Despite Zimbabwe’s suspension and subsequent withdrawal from the Commonwealth, President Mugabe took the opportunity to demonstrate his capacity to address world forums by attending the United Nations’ World Summit on the Information Society (WSIS).

However, instead of speaking of the immense benefits that information communications technologies (ICTs) have brought by enhancing connectivity between world communities and improving access to and the dissemination of information across the globe, Mugabe paraded his paranoid view of the information age by pursuing his attacks on the West, particularly Britain and the US.

He accused the two countries of using their ICT superiority to "challenge our sovereignty through hostile and malicious broadcasts calculated to foment instability and destroy the State through divisions".

And he used this imaginary threat to justify his government’s intention to subject all electronic communications in the country to surveillance and control.

Mugabe also claimed that the "genesis" of ICTs "lies in the quest for global hegemony and dominance on the part of rich and powerful nations of the North", The Herald (11/12 & 12/12).

Mugabe’s threat to crack down on electronic communication to back up government’s suffocating mainstream media laws ran exactly contrary to the spirit of the WSIS, which seeks to develop a plan to promote global access to ICTs, such as the Internet and electronic mail, because of the improvement they bring to the free flow of information, and which, in turn, contributes immensely to better informed societies.

The Daily Mirror (9/12) revealed that government intended to purchase equipment worth $4 billion dollars to monitor information disseminated through the internet and e-mail in a bid "to tighten its grip on information flowing into the country".

The paper revealed that government also wanted to set up 24-hour Short Wave and Medium Wave radio stations, which would use the same frequencies as those used by the privately owned SW Radio Africa and Studio 7.

Clearly, these developments represent shameless attempts by the government to further deny Zimbabweans, who have been subjected to unbridled government propaganda since the banning of The Daily News, their right to any alternative sources of information.

Such government intolerance resulted in The Zimbabwe Independent (12/12) dismissing Mugabe’s statements at the WSIS as hypocritical. The paper pointed out that his government’s repressive media laws, such as the Post and Telecommunications Act, the Access to Information and Protection of Privacy Act and the Broadcasting Services Act, were the very antithesis of the objective of WSIS which is "to promote the urgently needed access of all countries to information, knowledge and communication technologies for development"’.

Visit the MMPZ fact sheet

Please credit www.kubatana.net if you make use of material from this website. This work is licensed under a Creative Commons License unless stated otherwise.

TOP