The advent of technology has transformed the way human beings live.
Gone are the days when man’s primary occupation was hunting and gathering, where the most advanced tools were sharpened rocks and iron axes.
Nowadays the world has become one giant village, with interconnectedness brought about by the advent of technology.
Information and Communication Technologies (ICTs) have greatly transformed human communications.
Conversations between people in different parts of the world now happen at the touch of a button.
These technologies have also transformed activism, with activists now taking to Social Media their grievances and protest against authorities.
Instead of ruing the effects of marching in the streets, the majority are now in the age of hashtag (# ) protests and movements, with activists primarily using Social Media Platforms, particularly Twitter as an outlet for protest.
Social media played a crucial role in the Arab Spring, a wave of pro-democracy protests and uprisings that took place in the Middle East and North Africa beginning in 2010 and 2011, challenging some of the authoritarian regimes. This resulted in the fall of longterm rulers such as Egypt’s Hosni Mubarak, Tunisia’s Zin Abidine Ben Ali.
Tunisian President Zine El Abidine Ben Ali fled to Saudi Arabia on 14 January 2011 following the Tunisian Revolution protest and the Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak resigned on 11 February 2011 after 18 days of massive protests, ending his 30-year presidency.
The fall of longtime Libyian leader Muammah Gaddafi also took place during the Arab Spring protests that were later supported by NATO which bombed the country and lead to the brutal killing of the maverick leader.
According to Al Jazeera, a Qatar based media house, the Arab Spring uprisings were anchored on Social Media.
“During the early days of the Arab uprisings, when many activists were using Facebook and Twitter to organise and amplify their demands, the social media giants seized the opportunity to brand themselves as platforms for political activism and resistance. To this day, numerous media outlets run the claim that “social media made the Arab Spring” and that it was a “Facebook revolution.”
In United States of America, days after the late George Floyd died at the hands of a police officer, a hash tag “I CAN’T BREATHE” and “BLACK LIVES MATTER” became topical as people protested alleged racism and police brutality.
Coming to Zimbabwe, technology has also been used to denounce alleged government excesses.
Social Media was key in the February 2019 fuel riots, where the government had to shut the internet to stop the spread of the protests. The authorities also deployed the military, which launched a brutal crackdown on protesters.
In 2020, social media platforms went ablaze with hash tag “ZIMBABWEAN LIVES MATTER,” an online protest movement which sought to denounce the authorities’ excessive show of force after the July 31st protests were thwarted by a heavy Military presence on the streets.
Currently, there is a long running online protest movement dubbed “FREE WIWA”, which is protesting the continued pre-trial incarceration of the Zengeza West Member of Parliament Job Sikhala, who has been languishing in prison for over a year.
The movement has grabbed headlines and resulted in the international community speaking out against Sikhala’s unjust incarceration with British Lawmakers in the House of Lords, the upper house of the UK’s bi-cameral Parliament raising the issue.
The online space has also become the default platform of choice for exposing corruption in the country, with several corruption scandals being exposed. The chief among them are “Draxgate” scandal, the Mohadi sex scandal and the Gold Mafia.
In March this year, social media platforms went ablaze after the Qatar based Aljazeera released a documentary, “The Gold Mafia” which exposed massive looting and illegal export of gold by criminal gangs connected to high level government and ruling party officials.
Some of the people exposed in the documentary are Uebert Angel, the Government’s ambassador at large to Europe and the Americas, Henrietta Rushwaya, the president of the Zimbabwe Miners’ Federation, who is also a niece of President Emmerson Mnangagwa.
Ewan McMillan, a well known gold dealer and close associate of the President also featured prominently in the four part series and went on to implicate Mnangagwa, the President’s family as well as Zanu Pf candidate for Mabvuku Constituency Pedzai “Scott” Sakupwanya.
The advent of social media certainly enhanced freedom of expression as it has become easy for people to express themselves freely without the censorship and restrictions of traditional regulated media.