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Dr Panganai Kahuni Correspondent
Social media is increasingly becoming a threat to human security, particularly in Zimbabwe. The events of August 1, 2018 soon after the peaceful general elections were extremely exacerbated by social media.
Political party leadership and non-governmental organisations (NGOs) who both claim to be practitioners of human rights, observers and upholders of rule of law used social media platforms to unethically incite people to engage in violent activities that resulted in innocent citizens getting badly injured and some getting killed.
Property and infrastructure worth millions of dollars was destroyed across Zimbabwe.
Harare and Bulawayo were the worst affected as rogue youths of certain political parties were given terroristic messages through social media to engage in barbaric acts of violence. Shops were looted, buses burnt including privately-owned vehicles that were also destroyed.
One wonders what value system; what culture and behaviour these political parties are giving to our youths in this day and age.
Many of the political conflicts in Africa are exacerbated by social media. While social media platforms are sometimes healthy for disseminating information that help citizens to know what is happening globally, people are worried about negative impact on human security.
In the majority of cases, opposition political parties, particularly those in the developing world are abusing social media platforms. Surprisingly, some NGOs and civil societies who have turned themselves as political activists seem to have relegated their humanitarian agenda.
These NGOs and civic society seem to have joined opposition political parties in severely abusing the social media platforms. One then wonders how civil these civil society organisations are when they engage themselves in what could be easily termed evil acts against humanity.
Civil society in my humble view must be seen as angels of hope. They must never be engaged in activities that threaten human security. Protection of human beings must be the core of their agenda and never be involved in activities that injures or harm human beings.
The theme for civil societies and NGOs whose work is humanitarian, must be “the creation of peace-surplus”. It is not within the scope of civil society to create a peace-deficiency environment in a country and for any reason. It is not within the agenda of the civil society organisations to create “anarchy in any country and for whatever reason”.
When individuals working for civil society organisations and NGOs become heavily involved in politics it then becomes healthier for them to resign and join political parties of their own choice.
It is my humble view that the integrity of NGOs and civil society organisations is being put to question by many governments due to individuals who have turned themselves as political activists.
It is time every citizen begins to use the sixth sense; carrying out critical analysis of what comes out on social media.
With the level of literacy rate that stands at above 94 percent, Zimbabweans should be able to assess the integrity and validity of information that comes up on social media. Experience has shown us that some Zimbabweans are being used by foreign actors to advance foreign interests.
The irony is people who suffer most or even die are not foreign actors or their relatives. These foreign actors in their quest for advancing their own interests use Zimbabweans as cannon fodder. It is my strong and humble feeling that Zimbabweans should be able to at least discern from engaging in activities which result in loss of human life and destruction of property and infrastructure.
While corruption and greed by some public and private sector senior officials militates against Zimbabwe’s economic growth, Zimbabweans must understand that illegal sanctions were crafted to make our economy worse.
Social media continues to be abused by the so called merchants of hope to falsely exonerate the negative impact of sanctions on the innocent youths. As Zimbabwe cannot access credit lines due to the unfavourable economic environment created by illegal sanctions, production of goods and services diminish and company closures increase.
The diminishing of capacity to manufacture goods and services results in high rates of unemployment.
The net effect of such a scenario is that a large number of youths will remain unemployed.
Consequently, the same scenario erodes income of those in employment and reduces the performance of manufacturing industries thereby creating a workers’ retrenchment situation. Sadly, those who get retrenched swell the number of the unemployed citizens.
The challenge thus is when the percentage of unemployed citizens becomes too high, crime and thuggery rate also goes high resulting in human insecurity. Once such a scenario has been created, those who imposed sanctions go on a rampage in abusing social media.
Their social media messages are structured in a demonic manner that targets the unemployed who lost employment as a result of imposed illegal sanctions. The main objective of social media abusers is to create a conflict between Government and the unemployed whose main goal is regime change carried out through violent demonstrations.
It is time we understand that none of the social media abusers will either be injured or killed. People must understand that social media abusers calling for citizens not to be afraid of anything are the cowards who operate in the comfort of their homes and offices.
It is you, the innocent souls, that are made to suffer the wrath of the law. People must know that while it is the citizens who suffer the impact of the responses by security agencies, the same social media abusers use statistics of your injury and deaths to further advance their own political interests.
It is therefore my humble conclusion that people should never respond or act on that which threatens their survival.
I therefore implore citizens not to react to information that threatens human security as we cannot continue to be used as cannon fodder by cowards abusing social media in the comfort of their homes and offices.
Dr Panganai Kahuni is a political socio-economic commentator with a military research background and a diplomat in the southern region. He writes on his own accord.
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