By Tatenda Dewa | Harare Bureau |
Zimbabwe’s Postal and Telecommunications Regulatory Authority (POTRAZ) closed ranks with the main service providers on Wednesday and warned against the abuse of social media.
The warning came as civil servants responded well to a stayaway call over delayed salaries, poor working conditions, corruption and a biting economic crisis while social media platforms experienced glitches for the better part of mid-week.
The joint public notice warning was issued by POTRAZ, Econet Wireless Zimbabwe, NetOne, TelZim, Liquid Telecom, ZOL, Powertel, TelOne and Africom.
They threatened abusers of social media with disconnections and arrests.
“We, the telecommunications service providers in Zimbabwe, together with…POTRAZ, have noted with concern the gross irresponsible use of social media and telecommunication services made through our infrastructure and communication platforms over the past few days,” read the statement.
“We would like all Zimbabweans to know that we are completely against this behaviour and therefore advise that anyone generating, passing on or sharing such abusive and subversive materials which are tantamount to criminal behaviour will be disconnected and the law will take its course,” continued the service providers.
However IT experts told Nehanda Radio, Whatsapp remained the safest platform for Zimbabweans to use as its messages were encrypted and no one could snoop on them.
“Authorities in Zimbabwe will never be able to read any WhatsApp messages as it offers end to end encryption. This means not even WhatsApp themselves can read our messages, the only people who can see the message are the sender and receiver, period.”
The Joint Operations Command (JOC) that brings together the military, police and national intelligence is understood to have met a day before the joint warning.
The telecommunications service providers and POTRAZ said, as all SIM cards were registered, it was easy to track down people abusing social media.
“We are therefore warning members of the public that from the date of this notice, any person caught in possession of, generating, sharing or passing on abusive, threatening, subversive, or offensive telecommunication messages, including Whatsapp or any other social media messages that may be deemed to cause despondency, incite violence, threaten citizens and cause unrest will be arrested and dealt with accordingly,” read the warning.
However, citizen activists remained unfazed on Thursday as they continued to circulate messages that the regulatory authority and service providers said were prosecutable.
One viral message currently circulating is a “sanctions list” of businesses owned by people connected to the ruling Zanu PF or dealing directly with government departments.
The activists called for a boycott of the Choppies retail chain where Vice President Phelekezela Mphoko has shares, Local Government minister Saviour Kasukuwere’s ComOil, Vice President Emmerson Mnangagwa’s Redcliff Hotel, Zimpapers and ZiFM, which is owned by Supa Mnadiwanzira, the ICT minister.
Mandiwanzira dismissed widespread speculation that government played a part in Wednesday’s jamming of social media.
Instead, he said, service providers were the ones that had been calling for a ban of over-the-top communication platforms like Whatsapp, Viber and Twitter that they blamed for loss of business due to their cheapness and prevalent use.
“Since December last year, this ministry has been under immense pressure from mobile network operators in this country for us to ban over-the-top services like WhatsApp, Skype, Viber and the like because the operators are claiming that these over-the-top services are eating into their revenue, and yet they have not spent any resource in building their networks,” said Mandiwanzira.
“Instead of people coming up with all these falsehoods that government has interfered with over-the-top services, they should give us credit for refusing this insistence by operators to ban over the top services,” he added. Nehanda Radio
