Africa Deleting Facebook? Not Likely. But Context Will Matter More

 By Takura Zhangazha*

When the GuardianUK newspaper broke a story about a data analytics company called Cambridge Analytica and its role in collecting the private data of British and American citizens, African social media did not go apoplectic. This was despite the fact that the same company also allegedly had a hand in two of the continents largest countries’ elections, Nigeria and Kenya. 

Even when the #deletefacebook hashtag emerged in the countries most affected by this revealing story, we did not bother.  At least not enough for anyone in charge of the application to be worried.  For now. 

There were no reports of marked decreases of Facebook users in Africa or in the region.  There were however calls for at least follow up investigations on the role of Cambridge Analytica in Nigeria and Kenya’s elections.  But beyond that, we would be hard pressed to find similar local public outcry about these latest developments as in the global north.

On their own, and because of the global reach of Facebook, the allegations levelled at the latter are very serious.  Not only for their disregard for the right to privacy of individuals using the applications but also for the intended political effects of data gathering and development of algorithms that affect political behaviour.  

As the Canadian born whistle-blower Christopher Wylie said in his testimony before a British parliamentary committee, the effect of the alleged interference and targeted conversion (from not just a click or like but to action such as donations or attending an event)  of users would have had an evident impact on, for example,  the UK's Brexit referendum result.

A mixture of data algorithims and an allegedly deliberate pursuit of orchestrated political electoral outcomes motivated this.  And the real life impact of manipulation of either facebook or other social media platforms to interfere not only with political processes but also their meaning is something that is definitely going to pre-occupy most western democracies.  

Inclusive of the alleged role the Russians played in similar manoeuvres during the last USA presidential election.

Where it concerns us in Africa, there is ambivalence about a similar role being played in our political processes.  Where Cambridge Analytica is accused of possibly/allegedly having tried to influence the Kenyan and Nigerian elections, the outcry is relatively muted.  And in most cases, it is conveyed via the same platforms to limited response or support from users (based in Africa or its Diaspora). 

So we have to examine the meaning of the phenomenon that is Facebook on the continent.  

With over 170 million users as of December 2017, it is a key access to information, entertainment platform for many of us.  More often than not because our mainstream media may not be providing us with the sort of quick access to information and entertainment that we may prefer. But also because we want to be globally connected.  And its enabling of free expression together with access to information is a good thing.

But where such a platform/application begins to have serious problems around data collection as it affects privacy and allegedly seeks to target specific users/voters for specific political outcomes, then we would be well within our right to also call it to order.  This is despite the fact that we are far from its most significant centre and have very limited (legislative/technological/market) power over it or its owners. 

Also given the fact that whatever algorithms it develops and applies on its users even if done globally have contextual effect.  This includes determining newsfeeds based on your own personal preferences as opposed to what may obtain in reality. The latter point being that sometimes the social media application can tell you what you prefer to hear/see than what is factual. 

The key difference however is that there are still comparatively fewer Africans connected to social media or the internet.  So it may not matter as much that Facebook is facing the serious allegations that it is on this side of the world.  But there is no doubt that some if not a greater majority of African governments may decide to tighten controls on social media use and its impact on political processes.  

Not because they will have any direct evidence of such tampering, but more because they will follow the lead of the governments that are currently affected in the global north.  Or those that already have had a carrot and stick approach to Facebook that are in the global east.

The full import of what Facebook is alleged to have done shall be seen via the inquiries that are ongoing or yet to begin in the global north.  What that means for us in Africa may be that social media’s mechanics are not so global in meaning after all.  Context matters.  So do algorithms and the political/profit intentions of powerful individuals that control them.

The only plus is we now have an idea of how it all works. And we must gird ourselves to protect our universal rights to free expression, access to information and privacy. 

*Takura Zhangazha writes here in his personal capacity (takura-zhangazha.blogspot.com) 

Zim's Alleged Externalisers List: Obscuring Private, Public Wealth to Shortchange the National Wealth

By Takura Zhangazha*

In late 2017, the new (and current) Zimbabwean government announced a general amnesty for individuals/corporates that had allegedly not accounted to the national Reserve Bank for foreign currency that they sent out of the country in lieu of specific commodities/goods and services.  

Against the backdrop of the ‘coup-not-a-coup ouster’ of former president Robert Mugabe, this announcement raised high expectations from ordinary Zimbabweans.  The public was highly optimistic as to the law eventually catching up with those that had benefited from the latter’s presidents long drawn leadership of the state and by default, the national economy.

This, as a result of a popular public perception of the ruling Zanu Party as being corrupt and preoccupied with enriching its leaders via the levers of state power.

So Mgangagwa issued the equivalent of an edict to what one assumes are his companieros to,  in South African political parlance, ‘pay back the money’.  Or at least prove it came back to country in cash or kind.   He even had the luxury of extending the ‘amnesty’ for a further two weeks after its expiry in March 2018. 

As promised he published a list of those who allegedly did not account for the money, largely in US$ cash format.

It’s a list that it turns out has disappointed many a pundit and opposition politician.  It is also a list that has angered those that are in private businesses who are either on the list or sympathise with those on it.

Except that the list is as technical as it is political.  Corporate lawyers, individuals, political players and those close to all of the above have decried the injustice of it all.  Not only on technical grounds such as the CD1 form and the inefficiency of both local and central banks information capturing systems.  But more ominously for Mnangagwa’s government, the potential defamation lawsuits of having published such a list in the first place. 

But Mnangagwa never intended for the list to be legally or politically water tight.   His  intention was to always to call the bluff of the wannabe middle and upper class.  Not by way of production.  Instead more by way of ‘lifestyle aspirations’. That is, to have house in the suburbs, or at least the equivalent of the same.  No matter how much it would cost, including the legal risks associated with evading monetary exchange of control regulation acts.  

So in the pub conversations that the list has wrought on, we must ask ourselves serious questions about its broader meaning. 

If we take the angle of querying the political economic culture that informs what we understand as the ‘ease of doing business’, we would argue, like defence lawyers, that there is nothing remiss in someone, with the assistance of the state (Reserve Bank) taking his/her money out of the country, by whatever means, in order to make a profit. 

Unless we never understood how capital’s relentless pursuit of profit has been the arbiter and cause of our current national economic crisis.

And also because of how opaque our private, public and national wealth management systems are. 

Some of us may not understand what national wealth is, so a rejoinder might help.   As the French economist Thomas Piketty has posited: ‘national wealth=private wealth + public wealth’.

To be overly simplistic, what the Zimbabwean government has done is to try and conflate what would be public wealth (the Reserve Bank for example) with that of private capital (individually accumulated capital, for example, profit from a private company).

So the anger about the ‘list’ is not so much about a structural understanding of what’s really going on in Zimbabwe’s political economy.  Instead it is about preference. 

Defending those on the list may be now a matter for legal minds.  Either on the basis of technicalities such as what happened at the Reserve Bank or accusations of civil defamation.

The more significant issue is that those who sought and supposedly got amnesty may have done much more serious ‘externalisation’ and justified it in ways that we will perhaps never know.

What is apparent is that hazy nexus between public wealth and private wealth.  It is designed in such a way as to ensure that the public wealth (land, minerals etc) is no longer being used to create national but private wealth.  And that’s where the bigger problem resides. Even before we start pulling out economic or legal expertise to explain this aberration away in the name of the ‘free market’.

It is the instrumentalisation of the state to create largely private wealth that is the biggest problem our country faces.  Lists or no lists. 

*Takura Zhangazha writes here in his personal capacity (takura-zhangazha.blogspot.com)

Capital’s Interest, Influence in Zimbabwe’s 2018 Election

By Takura Zhangazha*

At the risk of stating the obvious, the ‘ease of doing business’ is an inherently political term. Not merely because the ruling Zanu Pf party’s leader and current president of the country, Emmerson Mnangagwa, is using the term in each and every one of his major speeches.  Locally and internationally.  

It is a phrase that is always sweet music to the ears of global capital and by default, its local mimicking versions. 

Not because of their political affinities but because of what it portends. In keeping with neo-liberal fashion it means that the political leaders of the country are seeking favours from private capital. Political ones before they are economic.

And private capital appears to be catching the bait.  Economic pundits are talking about how the number of investors that are enquiring about Zimbabwe are in their numbers.  Even the Zimbabwean Diaspora is setting up initiatives to cash in on governments laissez faire policy. 

And so far a couple of what the state controlled media refers to as ‘mega deals’ have been signed or revived with a sense of urgency.  The Russian foreign secretary paid us a visit with such deals in mind.  Other promises of investment also keep popping up especially after government announced its intention to amend the Indigenisation Act. Or where the minister of foreign affairs announced a new creature (at least to many Zimbabweans) called ‘transactional diplomacy’.

So there is no doubt that the Zimbabwean government is on a neo-liberal path.  And that capital likes ‘free market’ environments.

But because there is an election scheduled for this year (2018), we have to ask a rhetorical question of who needs who more than the other? And why?

The easy reply would be obviously the ruling Zanu Pf party is desperate for capital (almost any form state and private).  This would be in order to succeed in its quest at retention of power in the scheduled elections.  Except that it has too little time between then and now to produce the ‘jobs, jobs, jobs’ that its leader Emerson Mnangagwa has been promising in his speeches. 

What the government wants is a promise from capital for guaranteed investment in the event of their electoral victory and therefore longer tenure in globally recognised power. And this where the catch is. Because capital loves stability (never mind democracy), it is clearly keen on a government that is talking its language to stay in power.  So any ‘mega deal’ signed in the run-up to the 2018 election is akin to an electoral support pact. 

Private capital knows this.  So they are circling the bait (unlike say the Russian or British government related capital). But in order to be in with a fairer chance they will invariably take all sorts of risks to be in good books with the incumbent administration. And this is in the event that the latter wins the election.

This leads to the bigger question how much of private capital is backing the current ruling establishment in expectation of ‘favours’ after the elections? In 2013 we know that the Meikles Group helped purchase campaign vehicles for the ruling party and that went a long way in changing the complexion and undoubtedly influencing the final result, controversial as it was.

It is from this example that we can get tell tale signs of the undemocratic relationship that the current establishment has with capital.  As President Mnangagwa attends investment conferences, sends his ministers and emissaries to various countries and global capital events/meetings I would not be surprised if the whispered request would be, ‘support us in the next election and we will support you after with your (ease of doing) business.’

Again in neo-liberal lexicon this would be what would be referred to as a ‘win-win’ situation. The ruling establishment wins the election and private capital is left to roam the ‘free market’.

This unwritten but likely electoral pact between the ruling establishment and private capital will soon show itself as the electoral campaign gets into its rancorous full gear.  If you are a neo-liberal (including those in the mainstream opposition) this is the stuff that dreams would be made of.

If you are to the left of social democracy as I am, you would be aware what an undemocratic pact between unaccountable private capital and a resurgent ruling and repressive establishment can bring.  A withdrawn state, privatisation of social services and a singular dominant (almost electorally undefeatable) political establishment that has a revolving door between ruling party and capital. And as always with a sprinkling of formal opposition.

*Takura Zhangazha writes here in his personal capacity (takura-zhangazha.blogspot.com)

Origins, Futility of Contemporary Politically Motivated Violence in Zimbabwe.

 By Takura Zhangazha*

There is a sad and tragic continuing trend in Zimbabwe’s national politics. And this is the seemingly enduring challenge of politically motivated violence against would be opponents in contestations for state or political party power.

It rears its ugly head through the form of physical violence, hate speech and acts of exclusion (barring each other from meetings, censoring differing views in mainstream and social media). 

Recently there have regrettable incidents of politically motivated violence by alleged members of the mainstream opposition the MDC-T.  The assumed reason/motivation for the violence has been the issue of who succeeds the party’s late leader Morgan Tsvangirai.  Or at least who acts as president until an elective congress of the same party is eventually held. 

The party’s own leaders and even the ruling Zanu Pf have condemned the acts of violence with the former promising thorough investigations and bringing the culprits to book.  Some of the alleged perpetrators have also been arrested and questioned by the Zimbabwe Republic Police (ZRP).

There is however more to these unacceptable acts of political violence that must be examined if we are stop them recurring either in the short term electoral future but also as a dark part of our national political culture. 

There is therefore a need to examine the origins of a culture of politically motivated violence in contemporary Zimbabwean politics.  And some of these origins are historical where coercion and direct violence were tools of not only the colonial state but also ended being those of leaders of the liberation struggle. n fact the colonial state was the primary purveyor of politically motivated violence by way of both state structure and intention.  It meted out forms of violence not only by way of enforced physical dominance by a minority group but as the anti-colonial movement grew by atrocious levels of violence with impunity  that included bombings, parading deceased bodies of liberation struggle comrades, enforced encampment (keeps), abductions and evictions. Just to list but a few. 

With those that led the liberation struggle, violence was formally adopted as a necessary change of strategy against the settler state but it also had its own tendencies to be meted out against the people it sought to liberate.  Hence the jarring tales of violence at ‘pungwes’ or abductions and murder of those that were alleged sellouts in rural areas.   the settler state did not do the same. 

In the urban areas, again, the use of violence between rival nationalist movement camps Zanu and Zapu is well recorded in the urban history of what were the then African townships.  Add to this the perennial and overriding violence of the colonial state (riot police, abductions, confinements) and we have a compounding of a regrettable culture of violence. 

It is a culture that is carried over to post independence Zimbabwe through again the legacy of colonialism and the struggles against it. But more significantly it is instrumentalised by the ruling establishment to retain power. 

Though contemporary leaders of Zanu Pf would deny this, violence and exclusionary language was to reach its zenith with the rise of the opposition MDC in the late 1990s. And the violence also included the use of state apparatus’ such as the police, prisons and party leaders/youths.

In the conundrum that it became this violence also then lead to a developing culture of mimicry in the opposition.  Because the culture of violence had led to many opposition supporters feeling they had no option but to stand by their party(ies) and individual leaders, they copied some of the habits of the ruling party.  They also protected political turfs with youths, embraced subtle ethnic undertones to their politics and began to use the language of exclusion in public (making statements on how they have been there from the beginning of the party etc).

In both the ruling party and opposition the culture of violence is largely internal before it is meted out on others. And this is largely due to the lack of organic internal democracy in the parties (this includes even the smaller ones).  Perhaps with changes in leaderships of the main parties this culture might change but it looks less likely in the short term.  There is too much entitlement to political leadership especially by way of ‘long duree’ status in the ‘party’ and slogans such as ‘chine vene vacho’ (it has its owners).  Thelatter phrase having found its way into opposition lexicon after the ruling establishment’s ‘coup-not-a-coup’ change of leadership. 

And the thousands of unemployed young Zimbabweans will take the hand that they are dealt.  If not to make some sort of income but also just to belong to some forward looking cause.  Especially in an election year. 

But the reality of the matter is that acts of contemporary politically motivated violence are in the final analysis, futile. Both for the party and for the individuals involved.  They do not portend ideas nor do they inspire toward greater democratic consciousness and progress.  Instead they create fear and always the potential of victims becoming perpetrators if they survive it all. 

Those in the leadership of the various political parties including the ruling Zanu Pf and mainstream opposition MDC-T need to understand that it is not enough to condemn political violence.  They need to act concertedly to embrace internal party democracy and  also allow others to democratically arrive at leadership positions. Regardless of age, gender, ethnicity or race.  They need to allow in particular young members of their parties opportunities to lead at earlier stages of their membership and democratically institutionalize their parties more than they do the individuals that lead them.  ‘Vene vacho’ will then become not the individual but the values and principles that the party stands for.  And for an immediate posterity where politically motivated violence will become a thing of the past.

*Takura Zhangazha writes here in his personal capacity (takura-zhangazha.blogspot.com)