Zimbabwe’s social media revolution by-passes rural areas

Deep in Zimbabwe’s drought-stricken rural district of Chiredzi, news of the biggest protests against President Robert Mugabe in a decade reached Peter Mufaro only after a week.

The demonstrations in Zimbabwe’s towns and cities are being organised through social media that few people have access to in remoter villages such as Malipati, where Mufaro works as a carpenter and part-time farmer.

“When you catch up with the news, it feels like you are not part of the country,” he said of last month’s ‘stay at home’ demonstration when urban Zimbabweans vented their anger at Mugabe’s handling of a failing economy.

“People here are focused on the hunger, we do not hear about demonstrations. I rely on the radio for news but they don’t report everything,” the 32-year-old father of two said.

Malipati, 500 km (300 miles) southeast of the capital Harare, is generally cut off from the internet – and the disparate social media-based groups mobilising the protests – by a poor telecommunications system and the high cost for those lucky enough to get a connection.

The two thirds of Zimbabweans who live in the countryside largely rely on state media that are tightly controlled by Mugabe’s ZANU-PF party, but the news still filters through.

Many urban residents come originally from the villages and return home to visit family and friends, bringing with them tales of what’s happening in the cities. Use of the WhatsApp mobile phone messaging system is also spreading, despite the low internet penetration in the countryside.

The rural vote is the mainstay of support for Mugabe and ZANU-PF, which liberated Zimbabwe from white minority rule in 1980 after fighting a guerrilla war. But were it to turn against Mugabe, this would pose the gravest challenge to his 36-year grip on power at a time when he has fallen out with his war veteran allies.

Gauging the rural mood is difficult. There are no opinion polls and villagers are frequently anxious about expressing anti-government views in public.

But history shows that support for ZANU-PF there isn’t unconditional, and Mugabe needs look no further than 2008. Then he was defeated in the first round of presidential elections by main opposition leader Morgan Tsvangirai, and ZANU-PF lost its parliamentary majority for the first time after some rural voters rejected the party at the height of an economic crisis.

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