Published by the government of Zimbabwe
14 September 2007
Harare — ZIMBABWE should use information and communication technologies to defend its sovereignty, interests, culture, and the rights of the people against Western domination, President Mugabe has said.
The President said this when he officially launched the ICT Policy Framework in Harare yesterday.
"We are a people who have a culture, a cause, an identity, priorities and a destiny we want to take our nation to.
"We have our own sphere, our own space, which we must self-determine and govern as a sovereign people. We will never be that image the British or Americans have put on BBC or CNN, never.
"They do not want us to assume full control of our land, and hence the present fight. And because it is a fight where we again stand on the side of right and justice, the British have sought, through ICT and other means, to mobilise around extraneous issues and images to side-track the world from the core matter at the heart of the present fight.
"They have used propaganda and their global news networks to leverage international opinion against us. This is as 'innocent' and as 'neutral' as information and communication can be. They control the nether, we control truth and in the end right will be might."
Zimbabwe's ICT policy, he said, cannot be an escape from the present fight against continued Western imperialist challenges and must not shirk from standing up to the disparities which that imperialism created on the continent and in the country.
"We should appropriate the power of ICT and use it to defend the interests of our people. That is the major challenge: to make ICT an instrument in the defence of our culture, national rights and the rights of our people. ICT must, thus, be accorded an appropriate domestic or national environment, the recognition nevertheless remaining that our environment also exists in a broader continental and world environment," the President said.
He, however, cautioned against fascination with ICTs as hardware, forgetting the risks associated with the content the hardware enables access to. The so-called information revolution had reproduced dominance, rarefied into the underworld and Zimbabwe was joining something that was hidden and the global village as minors who only consume.
"We do not produce the information or communication which the new technologies convey. We do not have even editing rights. The ICTs have the effect of dumping on us foreign knowledge systems and values capable of reshaping us after our erstwhile colonial masters. And we begin to think like them."
The revolution was not the computer, but the information it made available for unguarded surfing and subsequent gulping. The revolution was not the satellite, but the images it brought into people's living rooms."
The President said there was need to guard against the erosion of cultural values through ICTs, where Western values and pornographic television programmes were brought into people's living rooms.
"We must understand what it is we are embracing, and to what ends; what it is we must reject and by what means.
"We should ask ourselves very elementary questions. When the ICT revolution is expensively installed in our homes, schools, workplaces, play centres, can our people still speak to, and be heard by the world? When the ICT revolution has been consummated, can they still meet themselves and each other through images which accurately represent them? Will they sing their songs, listen to each other, meet their own cultures and values on the net and screens? Or shall we have to become listeners, watchers and readers -- in short, passive receptacles of foreign knowledge often hostile to us?
"We see and make impression of our neighbours via BBC and CNN, via the Internet. But how does a hostile stranger who lives so far away, tell you how bad and undemocratic your neighbour from time immemorial is?
"We have all been made to doubt the reality of the man who lives in our midst, because a far-away stranger gives us horrid images he claims the man truly is!"
Cde Mugabe said if one of his Government ministers were involved in a scandal, the story would be all over the international news networks, but the same networks would completely ignore and not cover a similar story if it involved an archbishop.
The President said the contradiction in ICTs worldwide, especially in the Third World where rural people have been left out, should not find room in Zimbabwe. In this regard, Government had launched a schools computerisation project that he was spearheading, targeting secondary schools first. Once all secondary schools have been completed, the programme would move on to primary schools.
The present ICT disparities were rooted in the history of colonialism and colonial exploitation. These disparities were also perpetuated by dynamics undermining contemporary global asymmetries, principally those related to control of resources, which now meant control of technologies.
"Our rural population should never be left behind on the periphery of ICT development. We maintain that it is not fortuitous that the fault-line of the so-called ICT revolution is the fault-line of global underdevelopment and poverty. It is not fortuitous that regions which are said to be ICT-poor are also the same regions which lie on the periphery of human development, indeed regions which used to be colonies of the ICT-rich North."
The President recalled the cultural forms of ICTs used during the liberation struggle, such as song and dance, drums, mbira and guitars which he described as real arms of war which were used to engage and annihilate the enemy.
At each stage of Zimbabwe's political struggle, different forms of ICT were used to communicate information and carry messages to intended audiences. The pungwe was institutionalised as a veritable platform for messaging and motivation.
Both Zanla and Zipra used the magazine, while their leadership used international platforms and the media to widen the reach of the message. The wide reach of broadcasting technology was also used through liberation radio stations in Cairo, Dar es Salaam, Lusaka and Maputo.
Cde Mugabe said no society evolves forms and technologies divorced from its broader pursuits and the resolution of challenges it faces.
"The field of ICT is no exception and we must reject a too technical interpretation of ICTs that views ICTs as a matter of acquiring hardware which doesn't speak unless it is put together," he said.
ICT should not just be about new technologies, but about their place in the overall quest to reach people on their terms and in their habitats.
The ICT policy framework launched yesterday covers all sectors of the economy and is a culmination of smart partnership between Government and the private sector under the National Economic Consultative Forum as well as the United Nations Development Programme and the African Capacity Building Foundation.
Before launching the policy, Cde Mugabe toured stands put up by companies involved in ICTs at the Harare International Conference Centre.
UNDP resident representative Dr Agostinho Zacharias said the organisation was always ready to help Zimbabwe realise its potential and had provided support in making the country ICT-ready in all sectors of the economy.
However, a number of issues needed to be addressed to improve the low ICT usage in both public and private sectors, and in bridging the urban-rural divide in ICT usage, he said.
Information and Publicity Minister Cde Sikhanyiso Ndlovu called on Zimbabweans to embrace ICT in order to be exposed to various sources of knowledge and learning.
He said the Government and Zanu-PF's seriousness in embracing ICTs was evidenced by the creation of a full ministry as well as a department in the ruling party to deal with science and technology.
Also present at the function were the Minister of Science and Technology, Cde Olivia Muchena, Minister of Transport and Communications Cde Christopher Mushohwe, Harare Metropolitan Governor Cde David Karimanzira, Deputy Minister of Science and Technology Cde Patrick Zhuwawo, Deputy Minister of Information and Publicity Cde Bright Matonga, Deputy President of the Senate Cde Naison Ndlovu, senior Government officials, members of the NECF, and pupils from various schools in Harare.
Be the first to Write a Comment!
Copyright © 2007 The Herald. All rights reserved. Distributed by AllAfrica Global Media (allAfrica.com). To contact the copyright holder directly for corrections — or for permission to republish or make other authorized use of this material, click here.
AllAfrica aggregates and indexes content from over 125 African news organizations, plus more than 200 other sources, who are responsible for their own reporting and views. Articles and commentaries that identify allAfrica.com as the publisher are produced or commissioned by AllAfrica.
