Charles Mabhena
The recent slam on the so-called social media abuse by President Robert Mugabe should be taken seriously, as his words are not mere words, but, a command to his ministers.
The Zimbabweans should bear in mind that this has a strong bearing to their freedoms of access to information and expression respectively.
While the introduction of the Cyber Crimes Bill is welcome in the country, considerations should be made in the revision of many of the definitions in the Bill to increase its specificity and remove vagueness and ambiguity.
When it becomes law after being tabled (which is likely to be, because of the ZANU PF’s majority in Parliament) it should be noted that to avoid it being used by the state to target its perceived critics, it should have clear definitions spelt out.
During a workshop hosted a few months ago, by the Zimbabwe Information and Communication Technologies, it came out that the bill, had a lot of irregularities, including giving too much powers to the authorities to spy on the citizens.
Most ICT experts also expressed reservations on the Bill; some say they were never consulted to give their input when the Bill was being drafted, despite them being key players in the sector. According to them, this could render the task more to be more complicated even for the government itself. Others claimed that the way the Bill came out it shows that the recommendations given in some consultations were not taken into account, when it was actually crafted.
According to the Bill, even Internet Service Providers (ISP) are vulnerable, this means, their input during the drafting phase should have been sought so that they voice their concerns in relation to the contents of the Bill.
Therefore, there should be everyone’s input, in most cases this could result in compromises that would make no one too happy, while leaving no one in the cold either.
The bill is defined as ‘A Bill for An Act to criminalise offences against computers and network related crime; to consolidate the criminal law on computer crime and network crime; to provide for investigation and collection of evidence for computer and network related crime; to provide for the admission of electronic evidence for such offences, and to provide for matters connected with or incidental to the foregoing.’
With some sections of it running counter to the Constitution, especially the Bill of Rights, in the event that it is passed as it stands, would see several cases taken to the Constitutional Courts for interpretations and clarity. It has a number of contestable clauses like sexually explicit conduct, computer crimes, cyber crimes, a thing, a device, and the like.
The Guidebook Internet Governance’s 2016 Media freedom in a connected world states that internet governance shouldn’t be a government monopoly, as a lot of stakeholders are set to be affected. It states that even churches, journalists, corporate entities, civil societies, governments, and the general citizenry are to be equally affected, hence the need to balance the governance scope.
Source: https://zwnews.com/2016/12/22/internet-governance-collective-effort/