The internet is doing for the world what the printing press did for overly-Catholic Europe.
If you want to have a little fun at the expense of your polished and well-living friend, just ask them what they think of their children’s internet habits. There will be much clutching of yellow gold Tanzanite pendants and decrying of The Young Generation and allusions to how well-behaved they were Back In Their Day.
They weren’t and judging by the 20th century pictures I have seen of what was up in The Good Old Past, they are very lucky that social media didn’t exist to damn the older generations with evidence. The Internet never forgets.
I get it, though. The internet is doing for the world what the printing press did for overly-Catholic Europe. It is giving unfettered access to information to people deemed to be minors, people who are thought not to have the responsibility and maturity to use the information wisely. This is a conservative nightmare.
After all predictability, obedience, short haircuts on boys are cornerstones of a good society, are they not?
Freedom is dangerous, it has to be controlled for the good of society. The internet and its use need care, oversight… censorship. The stern and wise guidance of an adult. Sound familiar?
Most of East Africa is run by folks with solid middle-class values, at least on paper. God, hard work, school, success and family.
Oh, and a hefty dose of paternalism that we embrace it, calling our elected leaders Mother, or Father. I can’t tell you how difficult this makes advocacy work on the ground: imagine convincing grown Africans to claim and exercise their rights when they are busy having Mommy issues with their Head of State?
Of course, the government extends this weird relationship dynamic into the realm of knowledge. Books don’t seem to get banned much, and that is a statement about our reading culture. The internet, however, is policed. We have a pornography filter — great topic for a debate on freedom of information — and we have some regulations that restrict the use of virtual private networks (VPNs).
The latter one kicked in when it was discovered that they can help to circumvent the government’s restriction of social media networks during elections.
Because restricting the internet and social media is inadmissible for a government that is pretending to have free and fair elections, there are no official reports on the issue.
This form of repression is a favourite of East African regimes and it has a very dark purpose.
The real use of an internet shutdown is to control information on atrocities that are being committed. Knowing this, and knowing that we live in a region where political rights are fragile, one would think that more people would be concerned about protecting and even expanding iron-clad access to the internet.
Sadly, this remains a minority issue.
Many of us remain convinced that our government has our best interests at heart, and that if it is scared of the internet then there must be good reason for the control measures it has put in place. After all, it is protecting us all and most importantly our children, right?
Surely, civil liberties are a worthy sacrifice for the warm, strangling embrace of a caring and motherly state.
Elsie Eyakuze is an independent consultant and blogger for The Mikocheni Report; Email elsieeyakuze@gmail.com