Mushrooming Social Networking: The Competitive Strength of The Human Rights and Democracy Campaign in Swaziland
By: Lucky Lukhele (DCI 6.0 Speaker)
The competitive strength of the human rights and democracy campaign in Swaziland is premised on the emerging globalisation tendencies i.e., mushrooming social networking, user friendly tools and the universal support for democracy in general. This competitive advantage has manifested itself in the existence of the Swaziland Solidarity Network (SSN) Blog established five years ago to counter the monopoly of Mswati’s regime over the Swazi government’s public radio, TV and news paper; a monopoly that is provided for by the infamous 1973 Decree Act, the Tinkhundla Act of 1978, the current Constitution and the Electronic Communication Bill 2009.
The major disadvantage for King Mswati’s regime is that currently, it lacks the means to have absolute control over public access to social networks based on telecommunication and computer networks, for example, SSN Blog, Facebook, Twitter and others. In this regard, the SSN remains in the pole position to continue with cyber activism of disseminating information about mal governance, corruption and abuse of power by King Mswati’s regime to the media and amongst cyber activists whilst ensuring that the SSN blog is managed professionally, ethically and is democratic.
As evident from the recent Arab uprising, it is beyond any reasonable doubt that cyber activists have already played a remarkable role in promoting freedom of expression and information in Africa. Therefore the conclusion is that social networks will continue to promote freedom of expression by enabling users to speak out on any matters that affect them not what the blogger thinks is relevant.
