Speaking during a radio interview on Capitalk 100 FM this morning, Presidential spokesperson, George Charamba said that the government will shut down the internet again if there are “disturbances” in the country. He also said that it’s standard practice all over the world when there are serious disturbances in the country.
As a matter of fact, it’s a standard practice that whenever you have very serious civil disturbances in any country or an attack of a terrorist nature – we saw it recently in the UK – those services are suspended. Only for the duration of the disturbances. In our case, it was even more compelling because we then discovered that the internet was being used to coordinate those demonstrations unnecessarily. If it was a weapon of choice by the demonstrators, we had to make sure that that weapon of choice was denied them.
The internet is always live all the time and so it becomes a tool for coordinating for those trying to cause chaos and mayhem in society. So yes it will be suspended. It was suspended and it will be suspended in the future.
The Zimbabwe government shut down the internet on two occasions in the week of the demonstrations and blocked access to social media for close to a week. It was only ordered by the courts to restore access when activists approached the High Court.
More: Capitalk 100 FM