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UK, US using
ICT superiority to challenge Zimâs sovereignty
I wish, on behalf of the people and Government of Zimbabwe, to
thank and pay tribute to the International Telecommunications Union (ITU) and
the people and government of Switzerland for organising and hosting this
landmark summit on the hope for and challenges of a global information society.
I remain cognisant of the fact that this summit is a culmination of a series of
efforts that seek to bring into sharp focus, an integral dynamic human
development, namely information, as well as the infrastructural means of its
delivery, or what we have come to collectively term information and
communication technologies (ICTs).
Mr President, the new millennium
boasts of dramatic technological improvements which have given rise to what is
an information revolution. Time, space and distance have collapsed to create
what for some is "a brave, new world", with instantaneous and simultaneous
dimensions. It is a world of enormous technological leaps, a world where means
have improved well beyond measure.
Yet in this new age, we continue to
face basic paradoxes. The duality of development and under-development remain
implacably in place as the basic and core dialectic to which there is no
apparent synthesis. The rich, imperious and digital North remains on the one end
of the development divide; the poor, dis-empowered, underdeveloped South remains
on the other end of the divide.
Yes, for us post-colonials, we still
have an aloof immigrant settler landed gentry â all-white, all-royal,
all-untouchable, all-western supported â pitted against a bitter, disinherited,
landless, poverty-begrimed, right-less communal black majority we have vowed to
empower, and in the cause of whom Zimbabwe continues to be vilified, in a
country that is ours and very African and sovereign. Hence, in spite of the
present global milieu of technological sophistication, we remain a modern world
divided by old dichotomies and old asymmetries that make genuine calls for
digital solidarity sound hollow. It is a sad, sad story of improved
technological means for unimproved human ends.
Mr President, long after
we have talked about the need for information and communication technologies as
tools with which to contrive the information society, we are soon to discover
that receivers and computers are powered by electricity which is unavailable in
a typical Third World village. Long after we have talked about connectivity, we
are soon to discover that most platforms for electronic communication need basic
telecommunication infrastructure which does not exist in a typical African
village.
What is worse, we will discover, much to our dismay, that the
poor villager we wish to turn into a fitting citizen for our information
society, is in many instances unable to read and write. Where we are lucky to
find the villager literate and numerate, we soon discover that he or she is not
looking for a computer terminal but for a morsel of food; an antibiotic to save
his dying child; a piece of land on which to eke out an existence, in short,
looking for a humane society that guarantees him food, health, shelter and
education. Zimbabweâs own ICT efforts have thus been directed at developing
Zimbabweâs society as a whole in areas of education, health where HIV/Aids
pandemic remains a problem in both elementary and advanced skills development,
as indeed in building a high-level awareness of the peopleâs basic rights.
For us, E-commerce implies growing economies trading fairly in
barrier-free markets. E-education implies economies run for the people, not for
the sake of enriching one or two multinational corporations. E-health implies
affordable drugs for affordable health delivery systems that can only be
guaranteed by policies that are genuinely national. Yes, E-government implies a
sovereign national Government that manages "Top Level Domains" within its
borders and whose preoccupation are its people first and foremost. Yes, for us
E-Zimbabwe means a developing Zimbabwe with a sovereign people, themselves
Zimbabweans, and run and developed by them and not by the racist British,
Australians or Americans. This is a fundamental principle of our UN Charter
enunciated as the right of self-determination which constitutes a precondition
for free E-development in our country.
Mr President, the key to, and
foundation of an information society lies in the resolution of the dilemma of
development. The way to an information society is through even, fair and just
development. There is no shortcut.
Today Mr President, we seek an
information society in a world shaped and divisively structured by global
hierarchies of power â undiminished, hegemonic power made most arbitrary by the
politics of uni-polarity that have led to circumstances of a dis-empowered UN
system. We seek equal access to information, itself duplicitously presented as a
basic human right when in fact it was commercialised and commoditised by a few
rich countries a long time ago; and when it is daily managed and deployed in
defence of the selfish interests of those countries.
Yes, we seek equal
access to information and the control of communication technologies whose
genesis in fact lies in the quest for global hegemony and dominance on the part
of rich and powerful nations of the North. The ICTs that we seek to control and
manage collectively are spin-offs from the same industries that produced the
awesome weapons that are now being used once again for the conquest, destruction
and occupation of our nations. The ICTs by which we hope to build information
societies are the same platforms for high-tech espionage, the same platforms and
technologies through which virulent propaganda and misinformation are peddled to
de-legitimise our just struggles against vestigial colonialism, indeed to weaken
national cohesion and efforts at forging a broad Third World front against what
patently is a dangerous imperial world order led by warrior states and kingdoms.
The deadly, televised spectacle of an unjust war of occupation in Iraq,
based on blatant lies peddled shamelessly on monopolised media, was a dramatic
example of a false and failed global information society founded on the twin
aggressive impulses of shock and awe. These last two years have shown us how
information and ICTs are often deployed as preludes and accompaniments to
aggressing the sovereignties of poor and small nations. I say this because my
country Zimbabwe continues to be a victim of such aggression, with both the
United Kingdom and United States using their ICT superiority to challenge our
sovereignty through hostile and malicious broadcasts calculated to foment
instability and destroy the state through divisions.
Our voice has been
strangled and our quest to redeem a just and natural right has been
criminalized. Today we are now very clear. Beneath the rhetoric of free Press
and transparency is the iniquity of hegemony. The quest for an information
society should not be at the expense of our efforts towards building sovereign
national societies. Our national society does not exist to serve ICTs or
information. Both must be instruments that serve our society as it seeks
fullness through balanced development and self-determination. Both must express
themselves within the parameters of our inviolate sovereignty represented by our
democratic national will which expresses itself through our national laws, our
national policies and our national institutions. On this we are firm and
unbending.
Instead, we should seek to use ICTs as tools that can be
adopted and adapted to the construction of sovereign national societies, with
clear national identities, themselves real and only durable building blocs to
vibrant, diverse, just and sustainable global information society. This is our
belief as a developing state and nation jealously guarding its independence and
sovereignty.
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