adminNcube then added that Zimbabwe’s situation was “unlike in America where freedom has allowed them to continue to produce the likes of Google and Twitter because the free flow of ideas in their society allows it”.
Really? Twitter and Google are not a direct result of press freedom, but similar to Facebook and other social networking domains, they are products of human creativity.
When board members of an American podcasting company called Odeo came up with the idea that eventually became Twitter in 2006, neither the inspiration for the project nor the further development of ideas was linked to the general free-flowing of ideas within that society.
One of Twitter’s creators Jack Dorsey said, “. . . we came across the word ‘twitter’, and it was just perfect. The definition was ‘a short burst of inconsequential information,’ and ‘chirps from birds’. And that’s exactly what the product was”.
To come up with something like this, all one needs is for the creative juices to flow in some direction.
The article on Trevor Ncube also mentioned “repressive measures to curtail the flow of information through laws such as the Access to Information and Protection of Privacy Act and the Official Secrets Act, Public Order and Security Act, Criminal Law Act, all of which are out of place in a democratic society.
In any case, it is simply not true that there is any form of restrictions on Zimbabwean electronic content.
Zimbabwean online newspapers continue to present misleading and sometimes downright false information, and for more than 10 years since they started mushrooming, not one of the website-based newspaper personnel have been sanctioned.
In fact, some years ago, one foreign-based Zimbabwean online newspaper ran a campaign whose primary objective was to persuade Western governments to deport from their respective countries anyone thought to have any links to Zanu-PF.
The campaign urged readers to submit information on any Zimbabwean associates of Zanu-PF members and that data, including personal information such as full names, contact details, physical addresses and employment or study history were posted online for all to see.
If this was not invasion of privacy and endangerment of people’s lives, then nothing is.
No legal action was taken against the online newspaper’s owners, an indication that the so-called media repression, if indeed it exists, currently has no bearing on what happens on the Internet.
Zimbabwe’s cyberspace is just as free as that of the ‘champions of democracy’, if not better.
Unlike other countries where content is restricted, Zimbabweans enjoy unlimited internet access.
Online content is strictly controlled in some Asian countries due to a combination of religious and political reasons.
But that has not stopped online users in those countries from developing application software for their specific audiences.
Right now, there is Facebook versions in Mandarin used in South East Asia, that are estimated to have almost the same numbers as the American version.
And that applications were developed in a country with three different ministries monitoring online content and restricting some websites deemed to ‘Western’ by the authorities. In anything, censorship in Asia is aiding development of local versions.
China’s domestic social media sites like Weibo are booming because of better knowledge of the world’s largest Internet market — and the censorship stifling foreign rivals like Facebook, Twitter, and Google-owned YouTube.
If Chinese students who access only a tiny fraction of the web can develop their own social network forums for hundreds of millions of users, then young Zimbabweans have more than enough resources to develop their own ideas.
There is no need to hide behind some phantom pretext or blame Government for lack of creativity because there is absolutely no excuse for Zimbabwe not to have its own version of social networking sites.
When Larry Page and Sergey Brin started to develop Google into a multinational corporation with services including searching, software, cloud computing and online advertising in 1998, it was not because of the freedom that American media enjoys, it was because the two Phd students found a way to make search results more relevant by devising a better system that analysed the relationships between websites, giving users easier access to information they needed.
Zimbabwe is lucky to have so many talented youngsters who are only getting to know more about the Internet, the opportunities and limitations.
It is only a matter of time before Zimbabwe has its own version of Facebook, or Google or Twitter.
Zimbabwe needs more time because we have only had unlimited, (relatively) fast and reliable internet for about ten years.
Zimbabwe currently has no local versions of Twitter or Google because of a number of reasons, but AIPPA or POSA or the big bad government has nothing to do with that.
Online Reporter