Vincent Chenzi. Seton Hall Journal of Diplomacy and International Relations. Volume 22, Issue 1, Spring-Summer 2021.
This manuscript evaluates fake news receptivity among Zimbabwean citizens. It argues that the Mnangagwa regime has utilized fake news via traditional and online digital platforms with the purpose of destroying the political opposition and vindicating the state’s role in corruption and human rights abuses since 2017. The study’s findings were collected from a sample of 100 respondents from both the incumbent Mnangagwa regime and political opposition stalwarts. The research concluded that the state-sponsored fake news campaign has, to a larger extent, failed to appeal to the wider Zimbabwean population except for a small segment made up of ruling party loyalists profiting from the status quo.
Introduction
This study sought to interrogate the depth of state-sponsored fake news receptivity among Zimbabwean citizens from diverse socio-economic and political backgrounds. It was conducted using three variables: fake news undermining the role of corruption by incumbent government officials; fake news rejecting the state’s role in human rights abuses; and fake news directed at extinguishing the political opposition. The study argues that there is overwhelming evidence that implicates the Mnangagwa regime in corruption and gross human rights abuses against journalists, civil rights, and political activists. According to the Transparency International corruption list, Zimbabwe is ranked at 160 out of 175 countries. This is slightly behind Nigeria, whose corruption is perceived to be endemic for decades, and just above Iraq, whose corruption is considered a greater threat to domestic stability than terrorism. Also, Zimbabwe is among several nations where comprehensive and targeted sanctions regimes have been imposed due to human rights abuses, specifically civil and political rights. Apart from Zimbabwe, other nations on the sanctions list include Belarus, Burundi, and Cuba. Furthermore, agents of the Mnangagwa regime have indiscriminately incarcerated, tortured, maimed, and murdered Zimbabwe’s political opposition, journalists, and civil rights activists. Hove and Chenzi also stated that:
Since Mnangagwa came into power, human rights abuses and deaths have been recorded. For example, alleged protesters were killed by the military on 1 August 2018 soon after the contested 30 July 2018 harmonized elections. Once more during the #ShutdownZimbabwe upheaval, at least 12 people were killed whilst 78 suffered from gunshot injuries and more than 242 reports of torture and inhumane treatment; also, 466 cases of arbitrary arrests and detentions were reported..
This situation in Zimbabwe has been worsened by the COVID-19 pandemic, with cases increasing by 141 percent, whilst COVID-19 related deaths increased by 235 percent between December 31, 2020, and January 31, 2021. There are also serious allegations that the Mnangagwa faction has weaponized COVID-19 to eliminate supporters of his lieutenant, Vice President Constantino Chiwenga. This is grounded on the basis that five military bigwigs, who were responsible for removing Zimbabwe’s erstwhile leader, President Mugabe, and are aligned to Vice President Chiwenga, have all died under suspicious circumstances but have been officially reported as COVID-19 fatalities. Moreover, errant opposition political parties, trade union organizations, and human rights activists have been brutally suppressed under the guise of upholding COVID-19 lockdown regulations. On the other hand, the ruling party, the Zimbabwe African National Union Patriotic Front (ZANU-PF), and its affiliates continue to conduct rallies, meetings, and festivities without any consequences. Furthermore, by-elections in opposition strongholds have been indefinitely suspended on the pretext of preventing the spread of COVID19. Additionally, Zimbabwe’s biggest mobile network provider Econet was barred from sending ‘unsolicited’ daily COVID-19 update text messages. It was suspected that Econet’s daily COVID-19 updates were making it difficult for the Mnangagwa regime to doctor figures in order to deny opposition and civil rights demonstrations on the pretext of upholding COVID-19 lockdown regulations.
The research, therefore, argues that the incumbent Mnangagwa regime has utilized fake news for misinformation and disinformation purposes to conceal the truth regarding its role in corruption allegations, human rights abuses, and perplexing the political opposition. The misinformation and disinformation campaign by the Mnangagwa administration is spread via traditional media platforms, such as press, radio and television, and online digital platforms, such as Facebook, Twitter, and WhatsApp. In this regard, Mwareya stated that financial desperation, coupled by the proliferation of digital technologies in Zimbabwe, makes it potent for the distribution of disinformation among its population. This was evidenced by a pronounced increase of internet and mobile phone penetration which increased by 52 and 85 percent respectively during the first quarter of 2018. Therefore, the study sought to identify the extent to which Zimbabweans have accepted the state-sponsored fake news by interrogating citizens from both the political opposition and the ruling ZANU-PF party. The research is significant towards understanding the understudied subject of fake news receptivity in Africa in general and Zimbabwe in particular. The study also sheds light on the nexus between fake news, crime, and human rights in the Global South. Furthermore, the research sheds light on how autocratic governments in the developing world are using digital media platforms for misinformation and disinformation purposes.
Although there is no universally agreed definition for fake news, for the purpose of this study, fake news refers to any content that is deliberately fashioned to mislead the public, which includes gossip, deceptive information, and hoaxes. However, in this research, conspiracy theories will not be considered as fake news because by definition they are problematic to authenticate as true or false and they are naturally created by individuals or groups who believe their conspiracies to be true. The distinction between misinformation and disinformation can be reduced to intention. Whereas disinformation is normally used to refer to orchestrated or deliberate efforts to confuse and manipulate people, misinformation typically refers to deceptive information that has been generated or shared without malicious intent. The study is broadly divided into four sections excluding the introduction. The first part comprises the study’s methodology, whilst the second part contains the literature review. The conceptual framework forms the third segment whilst the discussion of findings constitutes the fourth and final portion.
Methodology
This study was largely qualitative and descriptive, and it sought to shed light on the understudied phenomenon of fake news receptivity in the Global South through a Fake News Receptivity Test (FNRT) using Zimbabwe as a case study. The research was conducted in Harare Zimbabwe’s capital between February 20, 2021, and March 10, 2021. The study was largely restricted to Harare’s Central Business District (CBD) due to its convenience in accessing key informants. A total of one hundred participants were purposefully sampled from Zimbabweans belonging to the two major political parties (ZANU-PF led by Emmerson Mnangagwa and Movement for Democratic Change Alliance [MDC-Alliance] led by Nelson Chamisa). The participants were selected through snowball sampling after identifying sixteen key informants based on their position and role in Zimbabwe’s politics. The sixteen participants referred the researcher to the rest of the informants. From the hundred participants, fifty were supporters of the Mnangagwa regime. These included two senior military officers, eight intelligence operatives, one former Member of Parliament (MP), five junior police officers, five junior military officers, six war veterans and twenty-three members of ZANU-PF party structures. The other fifty participants were drawn from supporters of the MDC-Alliance, and they comprised of eighteen members of MDC-Alliance party structures, five human rights activists, two councilors, four nurses, eight vendors, three teachers, two lawyers, three journalists, four university students and one MP. These respondents were aged between 22 and 74 years, while 78 percent of the informants were males, and the remaining 22 percent were females. Regarding education levels of the participants, 6 percent had doctorate degrees, 38 percent had university degrees, 13 percent had college diplomas, 39 percent had high school diplomas, and the remaining 4 percent were holders of junior certificates. All the informants were able to read and write in English.
Given the diverse personalities of the people who were interviewed, it was the researchers’ opinion that their views would be vital for this study. Whilst a one-hundred-person sample may appear small for a study of this nature, the research identified participants from various walks of life who represented the Zimbabwean population. Furthermore, other scholars argue that findings from small sample populations are more reliable than larger ones since small sample sizes usually furnish highly dependable findings depending on the adopted sampling routine.
The study utilized questionnaires that were broadly divided into two segments. The questionnaires were given to the participants after they had expressed interest to partake in the research. Thus, a sample of 100 questionnaire respondents was considered to be satisfactory to avoid data saturation. The first segment of the questionnaire was quantitative in approach, and it consisted of mostly closed-ended and pre-coded questions to permit analysis of data via Software Package for Social Sciences (SPSS). Respondents were asked to indicate how they considered state-sponsored fake news using three variables: corruption, human rights abuses, and the political opposition’s activities. They indicated their responses on a five-point scale denoted by 1-5, with 1 representing strongly disagree and five signifying strongly agree. The second section of the questionnaire consisted of only three open-ended questions drawn from each of the three variables which invited the respondents to comment on how they viewed the state-sponsored media reports on the three variables. Qualitative data was analyzed through summative content analysis and was used to support the quantitative data from the first segment of the questionnaire. The information was analyzed using SPSS to disclose descriptive statistics. Each interview session lasted between 25 to 35 minutes.
To enhance the credibility of the findings, primary data supported by secondary data from online and print media platforms was also utilized. The sources mainly consisted of both state-sponsored and anti-state reports covering issues on corruption, human rights abuses and political opposition activities. The sources provided evidence of the nature and intentions of state-sponsored fake news including evidence to prove its fallacy. All ethical protocols were observed in this study. Respondents and participants voluntarily provided their information, and they were assured that their information would be used solely for this research. To maintain anonymity, all the responses were not linked to any particular respondent or participant. However, where necessary and for the sake of emphasis, responses were linked to a group of participants, as opposed to individual participants.
Literature Review
Globally, there is a growing body of literature on fake news receptivity. However, the bulk of these studies were conducted in the global north, especially in the United States. Gordon Pennycook, a professor of behavioral science, has conducted a few key studies that have evaluated people’s receptivity to fake news. In 2015, Pennycook teamed up with four other scholars in a study titled, “On the reception and detection of pseudo-profound nonsense.” He described “nonsense” as something that is intended to affect; though, it has been created without consideration for the truth. Lying in contrast involves a deliberate subversion and manipulation of the facts. Pennycook et al came up with three questions: 1) Is the audience capable of detecting blatant nonsense? 2) Who is most likely to fall prey to nonsense and 3) why? Using hundreds of participants and the BRT to assess if a person is likely to accept nonsense as real news, Pennycook and his team discovered that people differ in their proclivity to attribute profundity to nonsense statements. That is, people with inferior cognitive aptitude are more susceptible to ontological misperceptions and conspiratorial ideation.
Using the BRT, Pennycook and Rand published a manuscript that disclosed that exposure to fake news is appropriately explicated by a dearth of perception, rather than motivated reasoning. They also critiqued Kahan’s motivated reasoning approach that was used to describe fake news acceptance, as it suggested that belief in political fake news was primarily motivated by partisanship. For example, people are more inclined to fake news information that is agreeable to their political ideology. In this context, the motivated reasoning explanation has been suspected to predict a positive rapport between analytic reasoning and hypothetical accuracy of politically consistent fake news headlines or that political polarization augments with more analytical reasoning. However, by conducting research that involved over 3,000 participants, Pennycook and Rand identified constant evidence that people who are more keen to reason analytically when given a set of reasoning problems are less likely to mistakenly reason that fake news is truthful, irrespective of their political ideology.
On a similar note, Anthony and Moulding conducted a study that indicated that cognition and political identity are factors that influence fake news reception. In a U.S. study, participants were evaluated on a Political Identity Scale (PIS) ranging from 0 (strongly pro-Clinton) to 100 (strongly pro-Trump). It was discovered that the closer a participant was to a score of 100 on the PIS, the more they regarded fake news about Hillary Clinton as accurate. Likewise, for participants with a score closer to 0 on the PIS, in other words, those who were more pro-Clinton, the more they evaluated fake news about Donald Trump as truthful.
Outside of the U.S., results obtained from a study with Saudi Arabian participants showed that fake news acceptance was determined by three demographic categories: gender, age and education. Age had the highest consequence on the reception of fake news. Education, on the other hand, displayed a negative result, which led scholars to conclude that education negatively influences the acceptance of fake news. It was also discovered that culture was not a direct factor of fake news acceptance; nevertheless, it did have a noteworthy effect on the spread of fake news.
In the Global South, dis- and misinformation campaigns are also utilized by governments to realize various goals which may not be in the best interest of the citizenry. There is still a dearth of literature on fake news acceptance. For example, Chenzi conducted a study that argued that the proliferation of digital technology and social media platforms in the African continent is intensifying xenophobic violence in South Africa and other parts of the African continent. His main argument was that xenophobic fake news disseminated by both indigenous South Africans (autochthons) and foreign migrants (aliens) living in South Africa via online echo chambers increased xenophobic tensions. That is, through these online echo chambers, they share and discuss confirmatory information which usually contains deliberately false claims which intensify tension during xenophobic episodes within and outside South Africa. Although scholars generally agree that fake news has a part to play in Africa’s socio-economic and political landscape, the bulk of the literature has tended to explore the consequences of accepting fake news as truth. Therefore, there is still a need to conduct research focusing on the subject of fake news acceptance within the African continent.
Theoretical Framework
This research subscribes to the counter-publics theory. Counter-publics communities are spaces where marginalized subaltern underbellies of society utilize alternative media platforms to challenge the state and the political elites in power. The study posits that the anti-state counterpublics communities thrived during the Mugabe era and were instrumental in his deposition. In Zimbabwe, the counter-publics communities mainly utilized Twitter, Facebook, and WhatsApp to organize pockets of resistance, where issues ranging from state corruption, human rights abuses, and electoral fraud were freely discussed without fear of the state and its agents. These counterpublics communities acted as echo chambers, where elements opposed to the government freely congregated. Jamieson and Cappella expound that the allegory of an echo chamber refers to a space where common reference frames and reinforcing feedback loops are generated for those who listen to, read and watch media from particular platforms. Since 2000, the Zimbabwean government imposed a monopoly on all traditional media outlets, reducing them to mouthpieces for government propaganda. This forced elements that were opposed to the state to conceal themselves in online digital echo chambers with the intention of enjoying the media freedoms that the state denied them. However, echo chambers tend to have a downside, as debates among likeminded individuals, who are shut off from external sentiments, can have a negative effect on the emotions of individual members within the cluster and reinforce group polarization. Furthermore, experimental evidence has revealed that confirmatory information shared within echo chambers gets easily accepted, even if it contains deliberately false claims.
A direct connection between fake news, corruption, and human rights abuses exists in Zimbabwe. That is, fake news sponsored by the state has been utilized to deny the existence of corruption and human rights abuses. Since the ascendency to power by Emmerson Mnangagwa following the November 2017 coup, fake news through misinformation and-disinformation campaigns have been a weapon of choice for the Mnangagwa regime. This does not imply that there were no misinformation and disinformation campaigns before Mnangagwa’s ascendency to the presidency. Under the Mugabe regime, there was similarly rampant state-sponsored fake news. However, the misinformation and disinformation by the Mugabe regime was limited to the public sphere via traditional media platforms, such as press, radio and television, which allowed the opposition community to congregate online by forming digital counter-publics communities. These online communities dispelled the state-sponsored fake news and mobilized anti-state resistance. Unlike the Mugabe regime, the Mnangagwa regime increased its tempo by utilizing both traditional and online digital platforms to destroy the anti-state digital counterpublics communities by recruiting moles to spread fake news on the counter-publics spaces.
The counter-publics theory posits that the proliferation of media platforms, in this case internet social media to the general public can influence widespread political revolt. The marginalized citizens often embrace and make use of these alternative media platforms to create counter- hegemonic cyber-communities to confront the state and the political elites in power. In Zimbabwe, the existence of suffocating regulations including the Public Order and Security Act (POSA) of 2002, and Access to Information and Protection of Privacy Act (AIPPA) of 2002 which violated personal freedoms of assembly, expression and opinion led many to embrace digital counter-publics communities. Accordingly, Susen also postulated that:
Social groups that are excluded from sharing the monopoly of symbolic violence in a given society have an interest in creating alternative public spheres that are materially sustained by counter-hegemonic practices and ideologically legitimated by counter-hegemonic discourses. The empowering potentials of alternative public spheres emanate from their capacity to challenge the legitimacy of dominant practices and dominant discourses by creating counter-hegemonic realms based on alternative practices and alternative discourses.
Zimbabweans especially members of the political opposition embraced alternative counter-publics spaces to challenge the state especially in the post-2009 era when economic reforms led to the proliferation of digital media technologies. Consequently, these digital counter-publics spaces especially, Twitter, WhatsApp, and Facebook enabled marginalized Zimbabweans to circumvent legal constraints and challenge the authoritarian state. Hence in 2016 alone, Zimbabwe recorded over forty civilian-led demonstrations which were spearheaded by digital counter-publics communities. In this regard, the emergence of the Mnangagwa regime in 2017 coupled by a volatile counter-publics community led the government to also embrace digital counter-publics communities by proxy through state sponsored agents known as Varakashi.
Hence, it is against this background that this study subscribes to the counter-publics theory as the appropriate theoretical framework. The Mnangagwa regime utilized the public sphere of press, radio, and television, yet most Zimbabweans distrusted the public media since it had been reduced to ruling party propaganda tools. Thus, the real threat of the state-sponsored fake news was felt on the online digital counter-publics platforms.
The anti-government digital counter-publics spaces were mainly dominated by members from Zimbabwe’s urban regions, which are technologically advanced and are also centers of the opposition MDC-Alliance. These digital counter-publics spaces emerged during the 2009 period following the Government of National Unity (GNU) between the ruling ZANU-PF party and the MDC formations. Graphic images, videos, audio recordings and documents which implicated members of the ruling party on issues regarding corruption, gross economic mismanagement, poor service provision, abductions, police and military brutality and extrajudicial killings were openly shared and discussed. There is overwhelming evidence on these digital counter-publics spaces to suggest that Zimbabwe’s economic crisis is largely a consequence of the corrupt cartel activities linked to the ruling ZANU-PF party. According to the Maverick Citizen’s “Report on Cartel Power Dynamics in Zimbabwe,” dishonest cartels run the country in order to fulfil a monopolistic role, fix prices, and stifle competition and are comprised of influential politicians and private sector players. Furthermore, there is serious entanglement and abuse of institutions for managing property rights, law, and finance. This is more pronounced in the mining, transport, and agriculture sectors to facilitate rent-seeking by cartels. Zimbabwe’s political patrons, especially from the ZANU-PF party, are at the center of virtually all cartels-aiding public and private sector bureaucrats and businesses loyal to them from which they accrue illicit profits. The chairperson of the Zimbabwe Anti-Corruption Commission (ZACC) Justice Loice Matanda-Moyo also reported that illicit cross-border transactions alone cost the country USD $3 billion each year. Furthermore, evaluations suggest that gold worth more than USD $1.5 billion is smuggled out of Zimbabwe each year, often ending up in Dubai. Moreover, there are reports that Zimbabwe’s diamond industry lost billions of dollars’ worth of diamonds still unaccounted for, the value of which is conceivably as high as USD $15 billion.
Billions of dollars have been fraudulently taken from ordinary citizens as a result of the cartels domestic activities. Corrupt private sector players and public bureaucrats are the recipients of these funds. In addition, Zimbabwe loses a billion dollars each year from corruption by police, education, transport and local government officials according to the Transparency International Zimbabwe (TIZ) report. Moreover, the report implicated Zimbabwe’s incumbent president in a scandalous deal that immediately depreciated by 23 percent the value of the country’s currency. Added to that, the Zimbabwe Coalition on Debt and Development’s (ZCDD) analysis of the 2018 Zimbabwe Auditor General report revealed that:
In 2018, transactions worth US$5.8 billion, EUR5 million and 319 thousand South African Rand had financial irregularities ranging from unsupported expenditure, excess expenditure, outstanding payments to suppliers of goods and services, transfers of funds without treasury approval among other issues. This constitutes about 82 percent of government expenditure for 2018.
Consequently, the majority of Zimbabweans live from hand to mouth and the members of the political opposition and Western nations attribute these corrupt activities as the main cause of Zimbabwe’s economic crisis. However, through the agency of traditional and digital media platforms, the ruling ZANU-PF party utilized fake news (mis – and disinformation) to deny its role in the corruption scandals. Instead, the responsibility for failing to deliver public goods is attributed to the “illegal” sanctions imposed by the United States and its Western allies. Therefore, this study sought to analyze the degree of receptivity of the false state-sponsored narrative denying its role in corruption, human rights abuses and the underperforming economy by sampling Zimbabweans who are generally the main target of the fake news campaign.
Besides corruption, state-backed human rights abuses in Zimbabwe under the Mnangagwa regime are endemic and fake news has been utilized to conceal the abuses; that is, the freedom of expression and the press has been brutally suppressed. Journalists and activists are frequently arrested, imprisoned and occasionally tortured and murdered. On March 6, 2021, the MDCAlliance national chairperson Thabitha Khumalo was attacked and left for dead at her residence whilst Lovernder Chiwaya, former MDC-Alliance Hurungwe Councilor was abducted and murdered on August 20, 2020. In Zimbabwe, more than 5,500 abductions were recorded since 2000. During the August 1, 2018, January 14-17, 2019 and August 16-22, 2019 protests, a total of 23 protestors were killed, at least 17 women were raped, 81 suffered gunshot wounds, whilst more than 1,000 civilians were summarily imprisoned as suspected protesters during door-to-door raids. Out of the 23 murdered protesters, twenty of the victims died from gunshots, while three died from injuries sustained following severe beatings.
These former victims recalled graphic memories of being forced to endure horrendous abuse at the hands of masked assailants. This included being beaten and denied food for days, electrocution, rape, death threats and being forced to consume each other’s bodily fluids. However, these activities have not gone unnoticed by the general public through anti-government digital counter-publics spheres, which have exposed the abuses to the world. Jonathan Moyo a former ZANU-PF member during the Mugabe regime, exposed the identity of the faceless group behind the clandestine killings, torture and abductions on his Twitter account. He stated that the assailants were all affiliated to ZANU-PF, but some were either employed by the dreaded secret police or Central Intelligence Organization (CIO), the Zimbabwe Republic Police (ZRP), or Military Intelligence Division (MID).
Consequently, these topics had a negative effect on the Mnangagwa regime. Particularly, electoral defeat evidenced by the 2018 harmonized elections whereby the Solidarity Peace Trust (SPT) reported that due to the disgruntled electorate, the MDC-Alliance won 71.12 percent and 66.32 percent of the presidential vote in Harare and Bulawayo, respectively, which are Zimbabwe’s major urban centers. The urban electorate felt that a change in government was in order so as to curtail human rights abuses, corruption, and improve public service provisions. The other effect of the anti-state online counter-publics community activities was that they led to the polarization of the Zimbabwean government by the international community due to human rights abuses. On February 1, 2021, The United Kingdom announced its first set of sanctions against Zimbabwe for human rights violations, which included a travel ban and asset freeze. It cited a crackdown on protests in January 2019 and post-election violence in 2018, which all led to the deaths of 23 Zimbabwean protestors. These sanctions targeted four Zimbabwean senior security officials: Minister for State Security Owen Ncube, CIO Chief Isaac Moyo, ZRP Commissioner General Godwin Matanga, and former commander of the presidential guard Anselem Sanyatwa. Again, U.S. President Joe Biden extended sanctions against Zimbabwe’s government officials for another year, including Emmerson Mnangagwa from March 6, 2021. President Biden cited issues regarding the absence of progress on the most fundamental reforms needed to guarantee the rule of law, democratic governance, and the protection of human rights.
The other effect of the negative publicity by anti-government digital counter-publics communities was low foreign direct investment (FDI). This was despite the Mnangagwa regime’s assurances that Zimbabwe was once again ready to reengage with the international community through its mantra, “Zimbabwe is open for business.” Nevertheless, Zimbabwe remained a pariah state for international investors, who cited state corruption, political instability and economic uncertainty fueled by hyperinflation tagged at a yearly average of 838 percent. The counterpublics community also encouraged nationwide anti-government civil unrest on August 1, 2018, January 14-17, 2019, and August 16-22, 2019. They also quoted the government’s complicity regarding high inflation, eroded incomes, food insecurity, and shortages of fuel and water.
To avert the unceasing tide of online criticism and its negative consequences, the Mnangagwa regime created its own anonymous shadow organization of social media trolls utilizing similar counter-publics spaces to spread fake news on its behalf best-known locally as Varakashi. The faceless group Varakashi was officially launched in May 2018 by President Emmerson Mnangagwa during a political rally towards the July 2018 elections. Varakashi have used all forms of underhand dealings to tarnish and destroy the lives and social standing of their online targets. These activities have ranged from lies, exaggerations, fabrications, hate speech and even hacking. This group is mainly composed of unemployed youths, state security operatives and ZANU-PF sympathizers. Therefore, Varakashi became instrumental in spreading fake news online on behalf of the Mnangagwa regime. The word varakashi is derived from Shona, Zimbabwe’s main indigenous language, and it directly translates to the English word destroyers. The name resonated with the primary purpose of the group, which was to “disrupt online debates and stymie criticism against the Mnangagwa regime.” At the inauguration of Varakashi, President Mnangagwa stated that, “Some of us are old; you are still youthful and masters of technology. The new digital chatrooms are war rooms. Jump in and hammer party enemies online. Don’t play second fiddle.” The paper argues that the emergence of Varakashi was motivated by the desire to counter the proopposition counter-publics echo chambers by puncturing holes through state-sponsored narratives laced with misinformation and disinformation. This was driven by the desire to win the urban electorate, dispel allegations of state involvement in corruption and human rights abuses, exonerate the Mnangagwa regime’s role in Zimbabwe’s crisis, and boost foreign investor confidence.
Different countries have experienced the challenges of fake news differently since it is a heterogeneous phenomenon that has been used for varying motives. In the Zimbabwean case, fake news is at the very center of the Mnangagwa regime’s effort to sanitize its image both locally and abroad. Through the agency of Varakashi and state-controlled media, the Mnangagwa regime embarked on a misinformation and disinformation campaign to counter allegations regarding its involvement in corruption, human rights abuses and violating the rule of law. On the issue of the alleged abductions and torture of journalists and activists, fake news through misinformation and disinformation by Varakashi was utilized in denying the allegations. Instead, the heinous acts were blamed on a “third force” or accusing the victims of staging false abductions and torture allegations to soil the “good name” of the Mnangagwa regime. As a case in point, Zimbabweans were astounded with disbelief following the testimony by two army generals at the commission of inquiry into the August 1, 2018, shootings in Harare following the country’s disputed elections. Although the shooting of the civilians was captured on camera by dozens of foreign journalists, the generals denied that government troops were involved. Instead, the military accused the opposition MDC-Alliance for the shooting.
Again, the Mnangagwa regime, through its media channels, strongly denied any corruption activities by its affiliated members or its devastating effects on Zimbabwe’s economy despite evidence to the contrary. Instead, it launched a global state-sponsored misinformation and disinformation campaign which attributed the Zimbabwean crisis to “illegal sanctions” by the United States and its allies. Sanctions, rather than corruption, were pointed out by the Zimbabwean government as the primary cause of Zimbabwe’s woes. Consequently, October 25, 2019 was declared a public holiday to facilitate an “anti-sanction march” in Harare. The Mnangagwa regime utilized its traditional and digital media platforms to embark on a misinformation and disinformation campaign which blamed sanctions for everything including economic collapse, low FDI, unemployment, poor service delivery, famine and even low pass rates in local schools. However, it has also been discovered that sanctions can provide autocratic regimes with an excuse to obscure economic misconduct and fraud, while the public shoulders the burden of heightened resource shortage and deteriorating livelihoods. Furthermore, through its misinformation and disinformation outlets, the Mnangagwa regime also downplayed the impact of corruption and argued that it was doing everything in its power to bring to justice all alleged corrupt officials through the ZACC.
The Mnangagwa regime also utilized fake news to destroy the opposition MDC-Alliance and its members. Between August 16-22, 2019, the MDC-Alliance had intended to organize a wave of nationwide nonviolent protests to compel President Mnangagwa to resign due to increasing socioeconomic and political challenges affecting Zimbabwe. However, on the eve of the protests, the ZRP appealed to the High Court to accept a claim that the MDC-Alliance was organizing a violent protest. In support of this, the police alleged that they had seized bags of granite stones and dozens of catapults from two unmarked automobiles a few days before the protests, although there was no evidence linking the contraband to the MDC-Alliance. Nevertheless, the High Court granted the petition, and the report was broadcast on state-affiliated online and public media outlets. Consequently, the protests were violently suppressed by heavily armed police.
Again, Nelson Chamisa, the leader of MDC-Alliance, has been a target of fake news attacks by the agents of the Mnangagwa regime or Varakashi. In February 2019, Chamisa fell victim to an online attack by a ZANU-PF propagandist and member of Varakashi using the Facebook name Jones Musara. Musara used his own Facebook page to post allegations that the MDC-Alliance leader was having an extramarital affair with a Harare woman. The accusation was meant to disqualify Chamisa from the electorate since he was challenging Mnangagwa’s presidential victory in the highly contested July 2018 elections. Yet again, Chamisa fell victim to fake news after another member of Varakashi posted a viral crudely doctored WhatsApp conversation purported to be between Chamisa and Charlton Hwende, a Kuwadzana East MP. The doctored messages appeared as if Chamisa and Hwende were overjoyed over a planned violent demonstration led by the Matebele minority, which was to be staged in May 2019 to overthrow the Mnangagwa regime. The intention of the post was to score a number of victories for the Mnangagwa regime, such as creating enmity between Chamisa and his Matebele support base; deliberately providing the police with compelling evidence to prohibit a planned MDC-Alliance demonstration; and imprisoning Chamisa for treasonous charges. In July 2019, members of Varakashi hacked Chamisa’s Twitter account and posted comments which appeared to portray that the opposition leader was supporting the Mnangagwa regime’s unpopular policies. The hacking and posting of the controversial comments by Varakashi disguised as the opposition leader was meant to do irreparable damage to the image of the opposition leader and the MDC-Alliance in the eyes of the opposition electorate. Drawing from the above stated state-sponsored fake news campaigns, the study further investigated the extent to which Zimbabweans in particular and the international community in general accepted the Mnangagwa regime’s fake news crusade.
Discussion of Findings
The paper conducted a FNRT to assess whether the state-sponsored fake news campaign to sanitize its role in corruption, human rights abuses and incriminating the political opposition was effective. The results obtained from the FNRT indicated that fake news acceptance was primarily determined by political affiliation more than anything else. That is, 67 percent of the respondents strongly agreed that the Mnangagwa regime was complicit in human rights abuses, corruption and destroying the political opposition. The 67 percent was made up of fifty respondents from the political opposition and seventeen respondents from the Mnangagwa regime affiliates. These associates comprised of members from the security sector, such as junior police, military, and intelligence operatives. It appears that although junior members of Zimbabwe’s security sector are enforcers of the Mnangagwa regime’s will, which makes them de facto ZANU-PF supporters, they do not genuinely buy into the misinformation and disinformation campaign. Instead, their duty to the government as civil servants makes them unwilling tools of the Mnangagwa regime.
The remaining 33 percent which agreed with the Mnangagwa regime’s fake news campaign largely comprised of ZANU-PF stalwarts, including senior military officers, MPs, war veterans and members of ZANU-PF party structures. There are several reasons why they accept state-sponsored fake news. Namely, these individuals are chiefly the ones enjoying the status quo and are the same people largely responsible for the propagation of fake news. Consequently, this makes the FNRT a question of political affiliation. This scenario echoes Anthony and Moulding’s findings that cognition and political identity are factors that influence fake news reception. However, unlike Anthony and Moulding, in Zimbabwe the FNRT is determined primarily by political identity more than anything else. This is because the 33 percent which agreed with the state propagation comprised of people with various educational, gender, economic, age and occupational backgrounds but belonging to the same political party. To this end, it can be gleaned from the FNRT’s findings that the state-sponsored fake news campaign has been a failure since the bulk of the political opposition, and some of the agents of the Mnangagwa regime itself, do not agree with the misinformation and disinformation.
Furthermore, there is evidence to support the findings that the state-sponsored fake news has failed to convince Zimbabweans that the Mnangagwa regime is not involved in corruption, human rights abuses and political opposition victimization. The October 25, 2019 “anti-sanction march,” for example, was spoiled by poor attendance and a survey by Eyewitness News reported that numerous citizens argued that the march failed to address the issue of biting economic depression, which citizens believed was primarily instigated by the state. In addition, Zimbabwe remains a pariah state in the international community since FDI remains stagnant. More so, members of the Mnangagwa regime, including President Emmerson Mnangagwa himself, remain on the targeted sanctions list for human rights abuses despite extensive misinformation and disinformation campaigns to exonerate the regime.
Conclusion
Zimbabwe remains a pariah state within the international system characterized by corruption, human rights abuses, and repression of the political opposition. Recent technological advances have only made matters worse. The proliferation of online digital technologies has only become a weapon of choice for the Mnangagwa regime to expand its fake news campaign to sanitize its role in gross human rights abuses, corruption, and political chicanery. Fortunately, this misinformation and disinformation crusade has largely failed to exonerate the regime in the eyes of both Zimbabwean citizens and the international community.