Zanu-PF has so ruined Zimbabwe’s economy that it can’t provide food to almost four-tenths of people in the countryside who are at risk of starving. Yet it has found the wherewithal to build a snazzy surveillance apparatus with the help of China’s regime
Save time by listening to our audio articles as you multitaskAnd this is not the only worry. Since 2018 Zimbabwe has collected fingerprints, photos, addresses and phone numbers to clean up the voters’ roll, which was reportedly full of “ghost voters”. This frightens many Zimbabweans, especially those belonging to the minority Ndebele ethnic group, much of which is concentrated near Bulawayo. In 1983 some 20,000 mostly Ndebele people were massacred by the army.
The government is keen to promote the idea that it is all-seeing. Take the case of Joana Mamombe, an opposition, and Cecilia Chimbiri, an activist, who say they were abducted and tortured by state-security agents. Mr Mnangagwa claims they are lying, arguing that the government was “able to trace where they walked, slept and who they talked to”.
Police and spies in many countries use similar tools. But in most democracies, which Zimbabwe still purports to be, their power to do so is constrained by privacy laws and independent judges. Zimbabwe has neither. A purported privacy law passed by the parliament last year established a snooping centre in the president’s office with the authority to issue warrants to intercept communications.
Even bodies that are notionally independent have ties to the government. The electoral commission, which is run by a retired army general, has been accused of giving voters’ data to Zanu-The government’s ambitions coalesce in a huge new data centre, which was built with China’s help. Its purpose is to suck up information from the government and from private firms, including banks. What this means in practice is murky.
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