It is no longer news that the controversial former President of Zimbabwe decided to fight against hate speech on social media during his regime and bring the culprits to court by appointing a minister for whatsapp and facebook.
Appointed as head of this new Cyber Security, Threat Detection, and Mitigation ministry is Patrick Chinamasa who is a former Finance minister. Although, Zimbabweans have joked about the development, claiming Chinamasa’s appointment makes him the “minister of WhatsApp and Facebook”.
However, Chinamasa’s first job, it seems, is to get rid of, or regulate the use of Whatsapp and Facebook, raising serious concerns over freedom of expression, access to information and a clampdown on social media messaging.
Zimbabwe actually did, in fact, issue new rules on using WhatsApp, in the country. The rules order groups to be registered and for the administrator of the group to have government level clearance.
“Social media was abused to create a sense of panic, thereby creating some sort of destabilizing in the economy,” says Mr Charamba
As he is no longer the president of the country, his appointee hasn’t yet been changed. And this is stopping the Zimbabweans from posting hate speech on social media.
Anyways, this draws our attention to Nigeria who has recently declared hate speech on social media a terrorist act and the punishment attached to it, is that of terrorism.
So, this is to guide users on Social media to stop posting hate speech on their timelines, groups, pages, status as the government now sees as an act of terrorism.
BE CAREFUL!