Rumours of a revolution in Zimbabwe have been greatly exaggerated. Filled with hope but little practical knowledge, several unidentified groups took to Facebook in an attempt to replicate the Egyptian revolution here. These attempts have failed because as Ghandi says ‘Revolution has had no blueprint, and all the blueprints that were written before a revolution never proved true.’

In my recent interview with Professor John Makumbe, this is what he had to say about the failed Facebook attempt:

It failed because everybody knew it was organised from the Diaspora, and the Diaspora has no business organising people in Zimbabwe. It is when people organise through cyberspace in Zimbabwe so that the cyberspace communication is reinforced by clandestine on the ground assurance that things will happen. People are very keen to do it, but they will not do it without knowing someone who is going to be part of it, or someone who is organising it, or someone to whom they will cry if things don’t go well. And it must be someone local. Not someone toying with cyberspace in the Diaspora from the comfort of one bedroom with a large screen television in the hope that they can mobilise the poor people to hit the streets. From there no!

This entry was posted on April 13th, 2011 at 4:06 pm by Upenyu Makoni-Muchemwa and is filed under Activism, Media, Reflections, Uncategorized. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.