‘ZIMBABWE GLOBAL NEWS REACHES 301,580 Members and the Zimbabwe National Army , (ZNA) plans to monitor social media and private communications to guard against subversion’

‘ZIMBABWE GLOBAL NEWS REACHES 301,580 Members and the Zimbabwe National Army , (ZNA) plans to monitor social media and private communications to guard against subversion’
‘ZIMBABWE GLOBAL NEWS REACHES 301,580 Members and the oppressive Zimbabwe National Army (ZNA) has now declared that the military will monitor social media and private communications to guard against subversion as, one of the most challenging issues faced by the oppressive authority in Zimbabwe is their inability to control the free space across social media. ‘
Zimbabwe Global News group 301,580 members now a third of a million, a fast growing group, which encourages participation by progressive minded people in respectful and inclusive debate focused on information dissemination in issues that directly affect the ordinary person including human rights, good governance, accountability, transparency, housing, employment, development, girl child, equality, gender, peace, climate change, pollution, youth, freedom and more issues that directly affect the ordinary person
This is highly alarming as the mlitary is simply instilling fear amongst the public by the, Zimbabwe National Army (ZNA) commander Edzai Chimonyo declaring that the military would soon start snooping into private communications between private citizens to “guard against subversion,”.
Zimbabwe has always been a militarised state since Independence on 18 April 1980 under the late president Robert Mugabe and we are now clearly a surveillance State.
Chimonyo was addressing senior military commissioned officers at the Zimbabwe Military Academy (ZMA) in Gweru who had completed a 25-week training course last Friday.
“Social media poses a dangerous threat to our national security. Social media is one of the tools that is being used for misinformation and I believe that your training has been an eye opener to the rigours and realities of technological advancements.”
When the government can freely shut down the internet and access to social media platforms to control what goes out to the public and becomes the regulator of what should be free space, then the people, and human rights groups, need to swiftly recognise that the monitoring of social media by the army is not a military constitutional mandate and therefore any offences should be police issues.
Cabinet last year approved a Cyber Crime, Security and Data Protection Bill drafted in 2016 and is set to be tabled before Parliament for debate. The Bill seeks to combat cyber crime and will give government a leeway to snoop on citizens’ private communication.
The ZNA commander, added “I must remind you that our detractors have resorted to the use of social media platforms to subvert security forces in pursuit of their own hidden agendas and anyone working on a networked computer is under threat of cybercrime, hacking and subversion thus it must always be the responsibility of every one of you to be on the guard against social media subversion and help the men and women under your command to guard against such threats,” .
In 2019, during protests that saw the army killing civilians in the streets of Harare, State security minister Owen Ncube ordered the shutdown of the internet saying social media was fuelling anger as well as whipping emotions among citizens.
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