Lies and deceit on social media, fabricated quotes by international media and more during the 2023 elections

The practice of manipulating facts to suit one’s own agenda is as old as humanity itself. Unfortunately, this practice has only gotten worse as technology has improved. In this age of social media, this has reached a fever pitch.

This election season we have seen many jostling on social media by political parties. It was not as bad leading up to the elections but went into overdrive on the eve of the elections and has not let up.

We can’t possibly go through all the lies and half-truths but here are a few we saw. You will notice that the goal for many of the authors was to discourage people from voting. Some of it came from overzealous ZEC and government critics who saw election tampering even where it did not exist.

The paint job

“Some voters in Zimbabwe are unable to vote because their names have been moved to other polling stations. They are only told this after election ink has already been applied to their fingers. When they arrive at their polling stations, they are told that they have already voted and are not allowed to vote.”

So read a message along those lines. As you would expect, it made a lot of people angry. “Tha dang ZEC is at it again!”

Of course, it was a load of rubbish. ZEC has enough ‘irregularities’ on its own and does not need us adding crazy stuff like this. Those that bothered to ask got responses like the following:

This is fake 🗞 news friends, you meet the usher first then you reach polling officer who checks your name on voters roll. If your name appears in the voters roll you proceed to get the three ballot papers namely local authority, house of assembly and the presidential. Indelible or phosphoric Ink is applied after getting all the three ballot papers but just before casting your vote inside the booth.

So, as those who voted will attest, if your name was not found in the voters’ roll, you would not get to the indelible link table.

The internet shutdown

We talked about this before. Most people believed the government would try to limit access to the internet.

We were so convinced that even a small dip in internet service quality meant the worst had happened. This narrative was so powerful that some stretched the truth, read too much into nothing, or even fabricated events to support it.

After NetBlocks exclaimed “Confirmed: Metrics indicate that internet service has been degraded in #Zimbabwe,” Tech Cabal ran a story on it and said they reached out to Econet for comment.

TechCabal then proceeded to provide a quote from Econet, “We are facing a system challenge and we are working towards restoring normalcy. Any inconvenience caused is sincerely regretted.”

We reached out to Econet to get more information on the system challenges that they faced on the eve of the elections. A well-placed source in the company told us that TechCabal never reached out to them. The quote was fabricated. Said the source, “They made it up. They didn’t reach out to us.”

I chalk it down to susceptibility to a compelling narrative. It was so juicy of a story that the temptation to make it real proved too strong.

Unfortunately, this news only served to inflame an already suspicious crowd. We cannot afford to dismiss this as a minor issue. This is yet another example of how social media and online media can spread misinformation and worsen an already volatile situation.

We did our own tests, asked others and turned to social media to see if there were many reports of poor internet service but could not find the evidence. There was nothing unusual to see. Yet, people still didn’t believe that the internet had not been tampered with.

Is the government even capable?

Some of the experts we talked to do not believe the government is not able to throttle the internet, even if it wanted to. Except maybe to instruct the Internet Service Providers to shut it all down, which would leave a trail for anyone to see.

When asked if the Zim government had tampered with the internet, one expert said, “No, your government are not slowing or restricting internet access. They are incapable of twiddling their f***** thumbs, never mind restricting the internet.”

This was borne out by Econet saying, “Our traffic patterns are pretty normal. So we are not sure where this is coming from.”

The narrative had taken hold and people believed in spite of contradicting evidence.

The offline voter apathy trap

This was an offline operation but it still warrants a mention. Someone out there spared no expense in trying to dishearten voters and if possible, convince a few not to vote.

CCC confirmed that they were not the ones who distributed these little fliers. Why would they print thousands upon thousands of the things, on glossy paper and in colour no less, and distribute them in the strongholds in urban areas?

I don’t think there are many political parties with the finances and the manpower to coordinate and execute such an operation. Those fliers were seen in many parts of Harare and in other towns and cities. Some of the parties that were contesting did not have enough voters/supporters to even be able to pull it off.

It just goes to show that we can complain about social media all we want. We could murmur until the second coming but it’s not technology’s fault. It’s the humans that are to blame. We lie, cheat and deceive to achieve our goals and even if we banned social media in Zimbabwe, that would not change.

I guess, as Zimbabweans, it is our duty to be critical consumers of information. We should always verify the authenticity and accuracy of any content we come across, even if it sounds good to us. This is especially important in the age of social media, where misinformation can spread quickly and easily.

Also read:

No, the Zimbabwean govt has not disrupted the internet ahead of election day, it’s something else

Social media exaggerates and so should be regulated, says ZEC. No election rigging in most cases.