DECRIMINALISE MISINFORMATION AND DISINFORMATION – REFLECTIONS ON THE PRESIDENT’S REMARKS ABOUT SOCIAL MEDIA ENGAGEMENTS- Kellys Kaunda

By Kellys Kaunda

DECRIMINALISE MISINFORMATION AND DISINFORMATION – REFLECTIONS ON THE PRESIDENT’S REMARKS ABOUT SOCIAL MEDIA ENGAGEMENTS

As Zambians, we must push for the decriminalization of misinformation and disinformation.

If it has to be an offense, reduce it to a civil matter and let the value of damages not amount to making the guilty insolvent.

As citizens, we have just handed politicians the most precious gift ever.

With it, the ruling party will willy nilly send every opponent and critic to jail.

These politicians, in and outside government, routinely engage in misinformation, disinformation and outright lies.

When they are in office, they want to portray an image of righteousness, epitomes of moral virtue and excellent examples of what it is means to be patriotic and model citizens.

Try suing a government or ruling party official for lying or hate speech.

Due to inbuilt double standards, it won’t happen. Those in power don’t sin. Only those outside are sinners, is the reasoning.

This government has sent to jail individuals that are only guilty of engaging with politics in a manner even the ruling party benefitted from while in the opposition.

The remarks the President made to parliament yesterday calling for “responsible” engagement on social media may have sounded innocent and well-intended.

But anyone who knows how political parties, including UPND, engaged in propaganda while in the opposition knows all too well that his remarks didn’t come from a place of sincerity.

For a country that hosted political exiles at the height of the apartheid regime to produce its own political exiles is equivalent to pouring scorn on the struggles of freedom fighters.

We need to be the best examples of what tolerance and freedom of expression feels and looks like.

Our struggle for independence was bitter and humiliating because we believed in these rights.

We hosted liberation war movements and suffered the loss of human lives and destruction of property for these rights.

What was that all about if we can still go to jail for the same offenses colonial authorities sent us to jail?

Have we inadvertently lost our sense of history or it’s deliberate? To me, the latter seems more like it.

The damage or threat to law and order we imagine is occasioned by misinformation or disinformation is a political construct which serves as a perfect cover for the ill-intentions of those in power.