Twitter Wars in Zimbabwe’s 2023 Elections: Unmasking Toxicity and Threat to Democracy

The 2023 Zimbabwe harmonised elections proved to be a digital battleground, with the ruling party and opposition members waging war on X (Twitter). Their campaigns were characterised by misinformation, toxicity, muck-throwing, censorship and cyberbullying. The ruling party, ZANU-PF, was accused of using X to spread disinformation about the opposition, while the opposition was accused of the same. Both sides were also accused of using bots and trolls to amplify their political evangelism. 

“It’s now several weeks after the country’s elections, but the nation is still recovering from the cacophony of campaign messaging that flooded various media platforms in the runner-up to the elections. Social media, particularly X (Twitter), played a significant role in shaping public opinion during this period.”

Whilst social media is a fairly new battleground in Zimbabwean politics it offered an alternative media to shape political narratives in the recent plebiscite. This is despite the fact that there is still limited internet access in some parts of the country due to a lack of infrastructure and the astronomical costs of data. 

Notwithstanding, the political parties made sure to make the most of it even just to outdo each other at political mudslinging. The two parties which left an indelible digital footprint pre-election are Zimbabwe’s ruling party, the Zimbabwe African National Union–Patriotic Front (ZANU-PF) and the largest opposition party, the Citizens Coalition for Change (CCC). 

Zimbabwe’s foremost political analyst Dr Alexander Rusero notes that “social media was ‘effectively’ used by both parties for creation of optics.” He further notes, “how social media became an extension of political egos and political lies.”

It is worth noting, however, that this time, both their campaigns lacked substance. Both parties failed to launch their manifesto campaigns, with the ruling party citing that their work is their manifesto at the same time alleging that the CCC plagiarised their manifesto. The opposition which had a pamphlet full of airy promises came out guns blazing in defence saying ‘How could they steal what didn’t exist.’ 

That said, both parties, where they lacked substance, compensated with different shades of propaganda on social media. As political parties took to the ‘streets’ with their political rhetoric, all lines were crossed from body shaming to cyber mobbing of would-be dissent voices. 

The Twar

The election campaign quickly deteriorated into a Twitter war pitting the ruling party supporters against the main opposition party supporters. In the fiery war, both political parties were accused of employing trolls and bots to influence public opinion ahead of the elections. 

It is no secret that AI is about to put to the test humanity’s 2500-year-old experiment with democracy the world over what with the supercharged information it can churn out in record time. In the wrong hands as in the case here, artificial intelligence helped spew all sorts of propaganda at breakneck speeds. 

As each party sought to maintain its ranks in this fracas oblivious of the consequences ethical lines were crossed, intolerance was normalised, facts were soon replaced with exaggeration, objective debate was replaced with an exchange of profanities, critics were cybermobbed, leaders were glorified to stations that of deities as such could not be mocked or questioned. 

This unabated onslaught of intolerant discourse was further spurred by the actions of political leaders who either turned a blind eye or in their political fanatism encouraged the actions of social media users. 

The President of Zimbabwe, Emmerson Dambudzo Mnangagwa who was vying for a second term addressed his supporters at a rally encouraging them to take ‘the fight’ to social media and ‘beat up’ opposition supporters. The Shona word he used is kurakasha which loosely translated means beating up. This word unfortunately caught on and became the battle name of ruling party members online who became known as Varakashi. 

To counter the efforts of Vakarakashi the opposition coined the name Mazizi for their keyboard warriors. Also loosely translated Mazizi could mean the vigilantes or something to that imagination. These were mostly faceless individuals operating under the guise of pseudonyms to troll any critic of their respective parties and to further the political gospels of their leaders. They would exhibit high levels of intolerance and engage in profanities, not debate. The Zimbabwean digital space was now a toxic cesspool.

Simple things such as musical preferences could light up a fierce bonfire of a debate online; the common debate was Jah Prayzah born Mukudzeyi Mukombe and Winky D born Wallace Chirumiko. Jah Prayzah had earlier in his career been unofficially christened a sweetheart of the ruling party. The fact that he had chosen army drabs to clothe his alter ego of a soldier and dished out cryptic metaphors in his lyrics didn’t give the Mazizi much to work with but to label him an enabler of the regime. On the other side of the fence, Winky D verbosely declared his political bias towards the opposition and his lyrics were thought to be an open attack on the government – leading to his censure and being cancelled by many musical promoters. 

A renowned professor and academic Dr Alexander Rusero aptly terms this use of social media as ‘the idiotisation of nations.’ As I paraphrase here, ‘little thought was given the effects, consequences or implications of the narratives being peddled by both parties.’ Without much due diligence or verification of information falsehoods and misinformation were gobbled as gospel truth in the far reaches of the country where information trickled in scantily. 

Thirst for Dialogue

But who are we to blame really? I am not running away from the fact that the toxicity on X was not only a threat to democracy in Zimbabwe. It also made it difficult for people to have civil and productive conversations about politics. It has also contributed to the polarisation of the political landscape. It gave politicians and their supporters a platform to spread misinformation and hate speech. 

Whilst the democratisation of the media space has been an elusive pursuit for the everyday Zimbabweans in Rhodesia and Zimbabwe, it was Robert Mugabe’s rule that mystified democracy and made freedoms of expression not so guaranteed. In the then era the freedom of expression was guaranteed but as for the freedom of expression that was another thing. 

It is no wonder that tech giants especially those in the social media space have cut out a niche for themselves in authoritarian states positioning themselves as an alternative voice of the people. However, just like dancing on a trapezium, this is a delicate feat balancing nations’ sovereignty and upholding internet freedoms.

Political analyst Dr Rusere says, “Social media is a critical democratization tool as it broadens the democratic space outside the physical realm and outside the physical political spaces.” He also says that “social media has its own shortcomings as it has a danger of peddling falsehoods, fake news, misinformation and disinformation in real-time.”

And as such not only the Zimbabwean government but even advanced democracies have been wary about the use of social media. Some have set policies to control the use of it and in the case of Zimbabwe at some point even shut down the whole internet.

The Robert Gabriel Mugabe government did little in the effort to liberate the airwaves to give birth to new, dissent radio and television stations. Only briefly did Zimbabweans witness what seemed to be an alternative television station in 1997 in the form of Joy TV which was short-lived as dew as it was controversially disbanded and banned a few years later. 

This was all in the name of ‘protecting the country’s sovereignty’ and ‘safeguarding the gains of the liberation struggle.’ It was envisaged that any divergent voices, foreign media and media not of the state were bent on nefarious designs. On his disdain for independent media, then-President Robert Mugabe in 1995 is known to have said, “You do not know what propaganda a non-state radio station might broadcast”. 

Fast forward to nearly three decades, social media is a beckoning and relentless alternative voice for the Zimbabwean masses locally and abroad. Shying from the word disrupt, I will say it usurps the monopoly of the political megaphone from the ruling party. In these elections both the parties were scrambling to find a voice for their propaganda amongst the masses and amplify their gospel much to the dismay of the ruling party which was losing traction of its propaganda monopoly.

Sovereignty. Freedoms. Regulation.

There is no clear regulatory framework for social media in Zimbabwe. This means that there are few rules governing how social media can be used for political purposes. This has allowed politicians and their supporters to spread misinformation and hate speech with impunity. This has also given tech giants room to operate without being accountable for the consequences that their platforms might present such as the spread of misinformation, and infringement on rights and sovereignty of states.

Media Institute Southern Africa’s Chairman Dr Thabani Moyo recommends that “there be an all-round thinking that advocates for collaborative technological development between the users and tech companies so that issues of hate speech and online harassment are evolving with our existence, which requires a relook how tech companies view individual knowledge systems.”

Beyond elections, the question of infringement of sovereign statutes and rights still stands. A legal mind based in Harare Advocate Thabani Mnyama believes that a safer social media space can thrive with adequate yet not overreaching regularisation. He says, “Freedoms are not absolute, all other freedoms are guaranteed until they infringe on the rights and freedoms of other people. Individuals can speak freely, comment on what they want or who they want but the moment they start insulting, threatening, cyberbullying other people then we cannot say this is under the purview of freedoms.”

It is therefore imperative that governments and tech giants find themselves a common ground to redress issues that threaten the democratic spaces by regularization of how social media can be used for good.   

In Conclusion

Beyond a muzzled traditional media landscape, citizens have long yearned for platforms where they can freely express their opinions without fear of reprisal. Artists and writers who dared to speak out often faced exile or persecution. Social media inadvertently provided Zimbabweans with an avenue for dialogue and discussion on issues affecting their homeland.

The advent of social media in Zimbabwe has been a much-needed disruption to the media monopoly however in this election it did worse than good. It left scars than it did heal, it left a polarised society than one unified by cause of development for its country, and it came short of infringing the freedoms of users and undermining the sovereignty of the country’s statutes.