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| July Moyo addresses the Zanu PF Masvingo PCC at GZU’s Robert Mugabe School of Education on Sept 06, 2020 |
Moses
Ziyambi
MASVINGO
– Jittery
about the increasingly influential role of social media in the formation of
public opinion, the ruling Zanu PF party plans to deploy activists in
every district to counter online narratives that are not favourable to it, TellZim News can report.
Speaking at a Zanu
PF Masvingo Provincial Coordinating Committee (PCC) meeting on September 07,
secretary for transport in the party’s politburo July Moyo said social media
was a new political frontier that could no longer be ignored.
“We want to know that
we have our own people defending the party against distractors. We want to know
that we have capable people doing our social media work in Mwenezi and every
other district. We must leverage the power of ICTs to help make sure our party
retains power in perpetuity,” said Moyo.
He made the remarks
while presenting on the party’s decision to revive District Coordinating
Committees (DCCs) that were disbanded in June 2012 after they became
flashpoints of factionalism.
“ICTs are among the
points we must emphasise as we revive the DCCs. We want to make sure that when
we elect new DCCs leaders, we don’t elect deadwood. Voting should not merely be
on the basis of who can sing the most or chant slogans the loudest, but on who
can bring value to the party. We want our own social media vigilantes to do our
bidding as a party,” said Moyo.
In the past, President
Emmerson Mnangagwa has called upon party supporters to get on to the social
media space and defeat detractors at their own game.
“Isu vadhara, nana Mai
Muchinguri vedu ava hatizvigoni zve social media. Imwi zera renyu iri, tambai
navo musocial media imomo. Musakundwa musocial media. Pindai, movarakasha vanhu
musocial media imomo,” Mnangagwa told the Zanu PF national youth league in March 2018.
Since then, there has
been a steady rise of pro-Zanu PF trolls who, on Twitter, were later derisively
nicknamed Varakashi.
Content which dominates
the social media space in Zimbabwe is largely anti-Zanu PF.
Government has
responded to this by drafting the highly-controversial Cyber Security and Data
Protection Bill which, when passed into law, will punish those deemed to have
abused social media or published falsehoods against the State.
