{{Zimbabwe’s government has blocked mass SMS bursts ahead of next week’s election, hobbling a powerful source of non-official information in the tightly controlled southern African state, activists and a phone company source said on Friday.}}
With the clock ticking to the July 31 poll in which President Robert Mugabe is looking to add to his 33 years in power, web portal Kubatana.net said it had noticed this week that its mass text messages were mysteriously getting lost.
Its provider, Econet Wireless – Zimbabwe’s largest mobile phone firm with 8 million subscribers out of a population of 13 million – declined to comment.
However, a senior company source confirmed the firm had bowed to government pressure to block mass SMS services around the election “in the interest of peace, national security and stability”.
“We have just been told we cannot be facilitating bulk SMSs during the elections, roughly for the next two or so weeks,” the source said. “Our understanding is that they will take our network down or cancel our license if there is any violation.”
A spokeswoman for the regulator, part of the telecoms ministry, declined to comment.
Although Internet penetration rates have soared since the end of a long economic meltdown in 2008, many Zimbabweans only have simple phone handsets, making the plain old SMS a more effective way to disseminate news and views to a mass audience.
Kubatana, whose messages contained headlines, quotations, proverbs and political questions, said the shutdown was an infringement of the freedom of expression enshrined in a constitution only ratified in May.
“Kubatana.net views the interference in our work as obstructive, repressive and hostile,” it said in a statement.
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