Introduction

Internet shutdowns have become a common tool through which undemocratic states manage information flows globally, not least in Africa (Freyburg & Garbe, 2018; Ayalew, 2019; Marchant & Stremlau, 2020; CIPESA, 2013, 2017). This happens at a time when the number of internet users on the African continent has increased exponentially, reaching about 601 million (Internet World Statistics, 2022). The continent recorded an increase in the number of internet shutdowns (Access Now, 2021) with Chad and Cameroon taking the lead for the longest shutdowns in the world (Marchant & Stremlau, 2020). However, Access Now (2021) reported that twelve countries cut the internet nineteen times in 2021, three more than the previous year.

While it is now generally known that authoritarian governments use internet shutdowns to curtail citizens’ political engagement, very little scholarship, if any, has been devoted to understanding their impacts on citizens, particularly from a Global South perspective. As a result, there is a knowledge gap with regard to how states that implement internet shutdowns play havoc with citizens’ epistemic rights and their ability to know how they are governed. Grounded on the concept of digital rights, this chapter qualitatively explores how internet shutdowns impact citizens in a semi-authoritarian state. How citizens interpret the motives of the shutdowns, their consequences on citizen political engagement, and collateral effects are questions pertinent to this exploration.

Zimbabwe is aptly suited for a study of this nature, given historical antecedence whereby the country has previously employed wider censorship practices to suppress the mainstream media. In addition, there has been a clampdown on the internet, the latest such move being in 2019 when the country imposed a three-day shutdown on the internet following citizen protests against spiralling prices of fuel (Access Now, 2019). The government’s resolve to clamp down on internet communication and crime was given a boost when Parliament of Zimbabwe passed the Cyber Security and Data Protection Act in September 2021 (Murwira, 2021). Given the less-than-transparent manner in which internet shutdowns have been implemented and the country’s notorious history of media repression, there are fears that internet shutdowns which have affected the whole country may become a permanent feature of the government’s strategies to deal with citizen dissent. There is no doubt that the influence of the internet on citizens is set to grow in a context where the number of internet users is over 8.4 million, which is more than half of the population (and still growing) (Internet World Statistics, 2022).

Since the goal of this study is to broaden insights into the impact of internet shutdowns on citizen rights, data for the study was collected through interviews with twenty-three purposively selected Zimbabwean citizens who had experienced internet shutdowns. The interviews were partly conducted through an open-ended electronic questionnaire emailed to the participants or via Zoom or Skype. The interviews were conducted between July and September 2020. Due to the ravaging COVID-19 pandemic at the time, it was not possible to conduct face-to-face interviews. Participants were identified through the author’s offline and online links, using the referral system, thus making the sampling strategy quasi-snowball (Berg, 2001). Among the participants were journalists (6), computer experts (1), representatives of civil society organisations (5), and ordinary citizens (9) who had competence in answering some of the questions, given the specialised nature of the subject. Given the political bifurcation of Zimbabwean society, it was also necessary to balance views by making an effort to include participants from different age groups, geographical regions, and political affiliations. On the latter aspect, an attempt was made to include participants from either side of the political spectrum, who were known by the author to have extreme political views. To protect the identity of the participants in light of the political sensitivity of the topic, code names, P1, P2, P3, etc., were used. Data were transcribed, thematically coded, and reported in narrative form.

The rest of the chapter proceeds as follows: after this introduction, the next section discusses the concept of digital rights, and a brief discussion is provided on the link between epistemic rights and other human rights. This is followed by a presentation of study findings and lastly the concluding remarks wherein I critically reflect on study findings.

Digital Rights as Epistemic Rights

One way of trying to understand the impact of internet shutdowns on citizens is the concept of digital rights (Mathiesen, 2014). As illustrated in subsequent sections of this chapter, citizens use digital media to expand their knowledge because the internet widens their information sources and provides information alternatives to state propaganda. Citizens are able to monitor the misdemeanours of public office bearers, deliberate among themselves, mobilise for political purposes, and exercise their right to vote electronically. Thus, the internet enhances both epistemic and non-epistemic rights. Any action that disrupts the functioning of the internet is a violation of citizens’ digital rights. Mathiesen (2014, 4) argues that all rights have an ethical dimension because they oblige states to ‘act so as to fulfil those rights’. This means that digital rights should have the same status as all other human rights binding on all members of a moral community. Denying citizens their right to access information becomes an immoral act (Mathiesen, 2014). The ‘human dignity’ aspect of human rights means that people ought to ‘live minimally good lives’ and must be given ‘ample opportunities to exercise agency’ by ‘being able to exercise important human capabilities’ (Mathiesen, 2014, 4).

Because internet shutdowns violate the fundamental ethical tenets of ‘living minimally good lives’, they are a transgression against human dignity. When the quality of information consumed by citizens is compromised, their ability to make informed choices is diminished and the essence of citizenship is threatened. The notion of digital rights here covers both positive rights whereby digital media are viewed as ‘infrastructure for the realisation and promotion of human rights’ (Karppinen & Puukko, 2020, 314) and digital rights as vehicles of information justice wherein digital media are seen as a ‘means to protect vulnerable groups online’ (Karppinen & Puukko, 2020, 317). Mathiesen’s (2014) conception of digital rights implies that citizens must enjoy access to the internet without interference; the state must protect citizens’ right to access the internet the same way it protects civil and political liberties. The state is compelled to put in place institutional arrangements to ensure citizens have technologies requisite for internet access. This idea resonates with the notion of human rights promoted by the United Nations, which emphasises human dignity, the ability of citizens to communicate with each other, the right to deliberate, and the right to seek knowledge and information, all of which are realisable through access to the internet (Mathiesen, 2014). A report of the Special Rapporteur on Promotion and Protection of the Right to Freedom of Opinion issued on May 16, 2011, states that ‘the Internet has become an indispensable tool for realising a range of human rights, combating inequality, and accelerating development and human progress, ensuring universal access to the Internet should be a priority for all states’ (cited in Pollicino, 2019, 265).

The characterisation of digital rights outlined above demonstrates that digital rights have a natural affinity with epistemic rights; being rights pertaining to ‘epistemic goods such as information, knowledge, understanding, and truth’ (Watson, 2018, 89). Thus, epistemic rights ‘afford their bearer a complex set of entitlements that provide justification for the performance and prohibition of certain actions regarding epistemic goods. […] The right to information, the right to know, the right to true and justified beliefs, the right to understand, the right to truth—these are all epistemic rights’ (Watson, 2018, 89). Watson argues that ‘it seems plausible that many epistemic rights are, or should, be considered human rights’ (Watson, 2018, 91). While digital rights are derivative from moral rights, their inclusion in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights and the International Bill of Human Rights shows that they are not trivial or peripheral but substantive rights which need to be protected by the state. The broadened conception of epistemic rights advanced by Watson is best suited to explain how digital rights and the right to access the internet in particular should be considered a human right. Citizens will need to be liberated (Diamond, 2010) from the clutches of elitist and hegemonic media-prone misinformation, disinformation, and accredited ‘putative experts’ pundits and talking heads with an inclination to foster ignorance among the citizenry through misrepresentation of complex issues (Habgood-Coote, 2022, 426). Digital technologies can help ameliorate ‘intellectual vulnerabilities’ among citizens by undercutting hegemonic epistemic institutions upon which citizens are forced to depend due to a lack of alternative sources of information.

As societies become more wired and people’s lives become intricately interwoven with digital technologies, the internet has become a crucial vehicle for delivering ‘epistemic goods’ (Watson, 2021). Any attempts to interrupt the smooth functioning of the internet will jeopardise both epistemic and human rights as the two become enmeshed. Narratives by Zimbabwean citizens discussed below demonstrate this as much.

Political Weaponisation

One of the objectives of this study was to gain deeper insights into the motives of the internet shutdowns in Zimbabwe. The dominant view was that internet shutdowns were a political tool to suppress citizens’ civil and political liberties. Participants pointed out how the government had issued directives to ‘network providers to act accordingly’ (P19). A university lecturer blamed the government for the shutdown, pointing out that internet shutdowns were politically motivated because they were meant to prevent citizens from organising and mobilising through social media. He explained thus:

The government wanted to prevent people from communicating and organising themselves against fuel price increases. […] This is a clear testimony that the shutdowns will not be due to technical challenges but politically motivated and served the interests of the status quo. (P12)

The above quotation indicates the belief that the government deliberately orchestrates internet shutdowns to prevent citizens from exercising their epistemic and civil and political rights. That citizens use the internet and social media to communicate shows how epistemic rights intersect with broader human rights. The fact that the state orders shutdowns shows the crude way in which they are implemented in Zimbabwe. This links up with Mare’s (2020) observation that state-ordered internet shutdowns have become part and parcel of the ‘ever-expanding authoritarian toolkit’ of authoritarian governments (Mare, 2020, 4227).

Political weaponisation of internet shutdowns is further demonstrated when they are described by one ordinary citizen as ‘purposefully imposed so as to disrupt political activities’ and ‘timely executed on days of […] political demonstrations by the opposition party’ (P9). This is corroborated by an advocacy officer in an information rights NGO:

The demonstrations that happened in January 2019 when people were demonstrating over fuel price increases and the resultant mass beatings, rape, and torture of people by suspected state agents. The curtailing of the free flow of information is a way to manage political tensions in the country. Internet shutdowns are synonymous with the clampdown of civil and political liberties in the country. (P1)

The fact that internet shutdowns coincide with citizen engagements such as demonstrations is a testament to the fact that internet shutdowns are orchestrated by the state for political capital. Thus, internet shutdowns become part of the state’s censorship strategies (Marchant & Stremlau, 2020, 4327) to ‘harvest fear’ among the citizenry (Zamchiya, 2013, 955). Fear has anti-democratic consequences because it discourages citizens from participating in democratic processes and from looking for information on how they are being governed. The psychological impacts of internet shutdowns on the citizen illustrate internet shutdowns are an antithesis of epistemic rights and human rights. This is because citizens use the internet for free expression and a shutdown impinges on this. Ayalew (2019, 224) argues that free speech is the ‘foundational stone of democratisation’ because it embraces other rights such as the right to seek, receive, and impart information using any medium, including the internet.

Human Rights Violations

The link between epistemic rights and other human rights is illustrated through the sentiments of some participants who reported that internet shutdowns were used as an alibi to camouflage human rights violations, allegedly perpetrated by the state during citizen protests. Participants talked about their inability to receive or share information about human rights violations among themselves and the outside world. This shows that internet shutdowns are not just a threat to epistemic rights, but also a cloak to hide human rights violations.

Participants mentioned how internet shutdowns were followed by ‘abductions’ and ‘harassment’ of opposition activists, journalists, and ordinary citizens. As one state-owned media journalist opined, shutdowns were instituted ‘because the platform provides an avenue through which people can air out any issues they have against the authorities’ (P3). According to the journalist, shutdowns provided the state an opportunity to unleash violence against citizens.

The prevalence of human rights violations is corroborated by the following statements by the state media journalist, a civil society organisation officer, a freelance journalist, and an ordinary citizen, respectively:

What immediately comes to mind when someone mentions internet shutdown in Zimbabwe is the unleashing of violence by the state against citizens because the abuses cannot be beamed to the outside world. (P3)

[…] the shutdown is effected to give time to state actors to do heinous crimes without being noticed. (P1)

The internet shutdown of January 2019 also allowed for violations of human rights that are reported to include: 1803 cases of human violations, 17 extrajudicial killings and 17 cases of rape and sexual violence. (P7)

The most worrying thing is that the blackouts are accompanied by acts of brutality and abductions, you never know what’s happening and your safety is compromised. (P10)

The common refrain in these quotations is that shutdowns were meant to cover up human rights violations. This demonstrates how ‘digital darkness’ (SFLC, 2018) creates havens for human rights abuses. Internet blackouts prevent citizens from knowing what is happening around them, which in turn puts their right to life in danger. This means a threat to epistemic rights inevitably leads to a threat to social and economic rights.

The state media journalist narrated how the internet shutdown adversely affected him and his family, thus:

The government had already arrested an opposition leader who was behind the planned protests and a journalist who exposed some corrupt activities in the Ministry of Health on the procurement of COVID-19 materials. On July 31, I personally could not use my home Wi-Fi as I was working from home as part of the decongestion of workplaces to prevent the spread of the coronavirus. My four children, one in high school and three in primary school, could not write their end of year online examinations. I had to call the school authorities to inform them of the connectivity challenges we were facing, and the children were allowed to submit late the written examinations. (P3)

The close connection between epistemic rights and broader rights has been noted by Rydzak et al. (2020, 4271):

When authorities claim an existential threat to the government, rank-and-file security units or militias are deployed as protectors and enforcers of the status quo. This goal often takes precedence over facilitating citizens’ rights, as in the massacre of peaceful protesters by militias from the Rapid Support Forces in Sudan in June 2019. In this way, shutdowns often act as invisibility cloaks for abuses by street-level security forces.

Given the political motives behind internet shutdowns and their opaqueness, it is easy to understand why citizens ‘fear being tracked, monitored, or assumed bullying’ online (P4). This shows that apart from being denied the right to know, they also face threats to their safety. Internet blackouts fertilise the ground for violation of political, economic, and social rights. This was bolstered by a statement made by the director of an NGO in Zimbabwe who indicated that internet shutdowns ‘precluded citizens from enjoying their rights to free expression, rights of access to information, freedom of association’, and also ‘compromised financial independence and basic economic and social rights as citizens have been stripped of access to mobile money services, which are key to transacting in Zimbabwe’ (P15). This shows that the internet is not only critical for fulfilling epistemic rights but also central in protecting other rights, such as the right to life.

While the main target of internet shutdowns could be epistemic rights, other human rights suffered collateral damage. SFLC (2018, 66) points out that during internet shutdowns, citizens are ‘cut off from emergency services and health information, mobile banking and e-commerce, transportation, school classes, voting and election monitoring’. That the internet enables citizens to expose human rights violations and other political misdemeanours such as electoral fraud is indicative of its importance in protecting human rights (Freyburg & Garbe, 2018).

Semi-authoritarian governments that combine elements of liberal democracy and authoritarianism employ rhetorical tropes to gain acceptance by the global community, but expeditiously and surreptitiously use blunt instruments of coercion such as internet shutdowns to hide human rights violations (Ottaway, 2003). This fosters mistrust among the citizens when they realise the gap between authoritarian tendencies such as internet shutdowns and their democratic rhetoric.

Erosion of Public Trust

The ‘curious’ timing of internet shutdowns, lack of transparency in their implementation, and the questionable justification proffered by the government have resulted in mutual suspicion between the government and the citizens. Consequently, citizens cast aspersions over the legality and legitimacy of shutdowns, particularly given the fact that they always ‘coincide’ with demonstrations and protests (Wagner, 2018). A freelance journalist noted how the shutdown ‘coincided’ with a call for protests by the Zimbabwe Congress of Trade Unions (ZCTU), adding that one could infer that it ‘was meant to deprive citizens of both digital rights and the right to demonstrate’ (P7). A media advocacy expert with a local NGO opined that there had never been ‘a justification for the shutdown of internet services in Zimbabwe’. He pointed out how an application to interdict the shutdown at the high court by the Zimbabwe Human Rights Lawyers (ZHRL) and the Media Institute of Southern Africa (MISA) argued that the shutdown was a ‘deliberate intention to limit citizens’ rights to engage in discourse’. The participant felt that the measure ‘was drastic and far-reaching and has a far-reaching impact on citizens’ daily interaction’ (P20). Her sentiments signal the breakdown of the social contract between citizens and governors, which is vocalised in counterarguments claiming that shutdowns were justified on grounds of what some scholars refer to as the ‘national security’ narrative (Howard et al., 2011; Wagner, 2018). The following quotations from a state media journalist, university lecturer, and ordinary citizen, respectively, are illustrative:

The government justifies the shutdowns citing security reasons although as alluded above in some of the instances it will just be a ploy to muzzle people from freely expressing themselves. (P3)

In most cases, there is no specific reason provided by the government apart from the SMS that subscribers get from the network providers apologising for loss of communication ‘due to government orders’. This is a clear testimony that the shutdown will not be due to the technical challenges but politically motivated and serving the interests of the status quo. (P12)

Justification such as system upgrades have been given but it appears they are politically motivated. (P14)

Phrases and words such as ‘ploy’, ‘no specific reason’, ‘not due to technical challenges’, ‘interests of the status quo’, and ‘politically motivated’ signify that citizens feel powerless and the original idea of democracy where true power is vested in the people becomes an aberration. Since there is a natural association between public trust and democracy, internet shutdowns widen the epistemic gap because citizens are forced to depend on one-sided information churned out by government outlets or become predisposed to misinformation, disinformation, and fake news. This is illustrated by an ordinary citizen who experienced the January 2019 shutdown:

There was a great deal of information being circulated that highlighted the various incidents taking place like looting of shops and the stoning of a Chitungwiza police station. Some of the incidents that were being reported were false. (P17)

That citizens become exposed to fake news is worrisome because fake news undermines citizens’ right to know the truth and their ability to make informed decisions related to their safety during a time of upheavals. Unreliable news and information also expose citizens to harm. Scholars argue that fake news, misinformation, and propaganda are human rights issues because lack of access to accurate information undermines citizens’ ability to make accurate voting decisions, as much as health information from quarks poses a risk to their right to life (Latham, 2020).

The contested nature of the concept of fake news has been exploited by the Zimbabwean government to justify the interruption of the internet (Mugari, 2020). Some participants in this study demonstrate the problematic nature of fake news by foregrounding the importance of context. The examples below from a freelance journalist, a privately owned media journalist, and an ordinary citizen, respectively, are illuminating:

[…] the government says [internet shutdowns] are a way of maintaining order in the country by disrupting communication among protest organisers. This of course sounds reasonable, but the effects are always costly. (P18)

No hard feelings on government because every nation has its own beliefs when it comes to security issues and threats. […] Government considered national security and public order […] a tool being used by the West to spread propaganda to communicate in a bid to remove the ruling party from power. The justification varies according to their line of thinking […] every household runs his family in a manner fit […] that might be different from every home depending on background levels. (P19)

It is plausible considering that protests witnessed in Zimbabwe, particularly August 1, 2018, have left a precedence of vandalism on private property. Therefore, deploying the internet shutdown controls the magnitude of violence which has been left by protests of this kind. (P13)

Therefore, any cause which consolidates mass action against ZANU PF creates paranoia considering the current government’s image management after the fatalities of August 1. The memory of August 1 is still fresh in the mind of the state’s preservation agenda. (P13)

These statements foreground the supremacy of public order and national security at the expense of citizen rights. Human rights are understood as contextual rather than universal. This view is supported by Mugari (2020, 1):

[…] social media platforms have been used to instigate violent protests, to issue subversive statements and to spread fake news, causing fear and despondency amongst citizens. Social media platforms have also been used to facilitate other crimes such as human trafficking and distribution of pornographic material.

This argument invites a sober reflection on the role of the internet on human rights and democracy. The ‘interpretive flexibility’ approach adopted by social constructivists (Klein & Kleinman, 2002, 29) to illustrate that the design of technology is an open process that can ‘produce different outcomes depending on the social circumstances’ is useful in this regard. Questions relating to why, where, how, and when should internet shutdowns be implemented as well as, who benefits from them require a more careful reflection, given the fact that digital technologies can either be a boon or bane. Watson (2018, 91) alludes to the contextual nature of rights when she states that epistemic rights ‘arise within and are bound by epistemic communities, comprised of individuals’. Tellingly, she posits that ‘one’s epistemic rights are inextricably tied to the social world that one inhabits as a knower, believer etc.’ (Watson, 2018, 91).

Conclusion

This chapter has employed the concept of digital rights as a conceptual lens to illuminate how internet shutdowns impact on citizens’ everyday lives in Zimbabwe. The goal was to broaden understanding of the way in which epistemic rights are intricately interwoven with broader human rights in a semi-authoritarian state in the Global South. How citizens interpret the motives of the internet shutdowns, their impact on political engagement, as well as their collateral effects are questions at the core of this exploration. The study revealed that citizens view internet shutdowns as political weapons of the state to curtail freedom of expression and civil and political liberties of citizens. The study has pointed out that citizens view internet shutdowns as an alibi by the state to perpetrate and cover up human rights violations as well as insulate itself from the global community spotlight. The heavy-handed manner in which they are instituted, their opaqueness, political instrumentalisation, and the ‘questionable’ justifications proffered by the government have elicited public scepticism, resulting in waning citizen trust in the governance system, thereby leaving democracy in the intensive care unit.

The chapter argues that there is a link between epistemic rights and broader human rights in the sense that the internet provides citizens with a platform to access information and knowledge alternative to that provided by the state, as well as space to deliberate, mobilise, and organise for political purposes. The internet also enables citizens to monitor human rights abuses perpetrated by the state. The imposition of an internet shutdown blocks citizens from knowing what is happening around them and also takes away their right to force the state to account for human rights violations. Intellectual vulnerabilities (Watson, 2021) of citizens increase as they are forced to rely on unverified information in the rumour mill, thereby falling prey to fake news, misinformation, and disinformation which are human rights issues because lack of access to accurate information may undermine citizens’ ability to exercise informed political choices, the same way unreliable information threatens one’s right to life (Latham, 2020).

The study’s conclusions regarding the impact of internet shutdowns on citizens, however, need more nuanced scrutiny. The sample was small and largely drawn from metropolitan areas. In-depth face-to-face interviews could not be conducted due to the COVID-19 pandemic. In order not to run the risk of a utopian vision of the internet (Mou et al., 2011), conclusions regarding its role in promoting human rights and democracy need to be tampered as well, particularly given the ambiguous nature of the internet. The views of some of the participants in this study reflect a lack of consensus on the role of the internet, human rights, and democracy and the necessity of foregrounding context. The dystopian view of the internet is sceptical about the internet’s potential to foster a public sphere in the Habermasian sense, arguing, instead, that the medium has not increased but lowered civic engagement due to the displacement of public affairs content with trivia (Mou et al., 2011, 341).

Whether the internet had increased the level of civic engagement among citizens could not be determined as this was outside the scope of the study. Future studies could work with bigger samples drawn from more diverse groups and employing mixed methods research design to create a holistic picture of how internet shutdowns impact political engagement.