Photos faked to make a crowd appear larger than in reality, publications touting fictitious government actions… Disinformation is omnipresent before the elections in Zimbabwe, in particular on WhatsApp. The country is preparing for a tense vote on August 23 to elect the president, parliamentarians and municipal councilors, amid opposition repression and fears of electoral fraud.
Large-scale disinformation campaigns ahead of an election are now common in Africa, and Zimbabwe is no exception. But whereas in Kenya or Nigeria the spreaders of fake news have acted openly in recent elections, most often on Facebook and Twitter (recently rebranded as ‘X’), in Zimbabwe it’s mostly on encrypted WhatsApp messaging, according to experts, making it more difficult to verify the fake content proliferating there.
“For most Zimbabweans, the internet is WhatsApp,” observes Nqaba Matshazi, a journalist for the NGO Media Institute of Southern Africa (MISA) in Zimbabwe. Only a third of the country’s 15 million people have access to the internet, says a 2023 report by data analyst firm DataReportal. But while only 9% of internet users use social media, WhatsApp is used far more and many Zimbabweans consider it a safe means of communication in a country where criticizing the government can land you in jail.
The team of the “fact-checking” group ZimFact now devotes most of its activity to scouring Whatsapp groups in search of messages to refute, explains its editor, Chris Chinaka. However, social networks are not free from erroneous content. Twitter, in particular, is inundated with posts from “bots” (accounts operated by computers) tasked with advancing the government’s case, political analyst Jamie Mighti points out.
Some inflate the record of the Zimbabwe African National Union-Patriotic Front (ZANU-PF), the ruling party since independence in 1980. Others echo President Emmerson Mnangagwa’s rhetoric that Western sanctions are responsible economic collapse – the United States and Europe deny, pointing out that the sanctions target leaders accused of corruption and human rights violations.
Retouched images
On Twitter, few people discuss politics under their real name, because of the “risk of arrest”, Mr. Matshazi points out. But WhatsApp is not a free zone either, with several people ending up in jail after posting there, he adds. In May, Zimbabwe approved a vaguely worded law imposing harsh penalties on those who would harm the country’s “sovereignty and national interest”. A text which, according to its critics, effectively prohibits any criticism of the government. This law has aggravated “an already infected wound in an environment where freedom of expression is frankly restricted”, believes Mr. Matshazi.
Both ZANU-PF and the main opposition Citizens Coalition for Change (CCC) make extensive use of manipulated photos and videos, analysts point out. They “used doctored images from old rallies or completely different settings to create a false impression of broad support” from the population, says Bhekizulu Tshuma, professor of communications at the Zimbabwe National University of Science and Technology.
Parties also used tactics to suggest their rivals had few supporters, and campaign messages were deliberately distorted. A clip of the head of the CCC, Nelson Chamisa, was thus modified to make him say that he supported a cancellation of the radical land reforms of ex-president Robert Mugabe (1987-2017, died in 2019) and a return of the lands in the hands of white farmers. Television is not spared: the public broadcaster ZBC, according to observers, often portrays the CCC as an unpopular party and takes the words of its leaders out of context.
Zimbabweans abroad, in South Africa and the UK in particular, play a crucial role in amplifying misinformation, experts say. “A lot of talk about the Zimbabwean elections is happening on the internet and in the South African, European and American media, mainly because of restrictions in Zimbabwe and fear of reprisals,” said analyst Jamie Mighti.