Zimbabwe's 'silly twitter movement' can't be stopped

It is said of this season that you can cut all the flowers but you cannot stop spring from coming. And it's amazing, is it not, that what was in the early days described as a "silly twitter movement" has now caused the system to get its knickers in all sorts of unconstitutional, irrational, illegal and desperate knots? We have been labelled cyber terrorists. The army has threatened us. The police are now punishing us because our voices have become too loud. They hate the cumulative discontent that pervades the country. Our crime? To want better for our country. The citizens of Zimbabwe yearn for better because it is deserved. Zimbabwe, our great or big house of stone, deserves to be great in the true and full sense of the word. When that aspiration is crushed, the citizens protest – as is their right.

Protesting is of immense value to the continuation of an open, transparent, democratic society as it allows us to hold politicians and public administrators to account, to ask them key questions, to register our discontent and give them an opportunity to rectify their maladministration. Protesting also draws attention (local, regional and international) to the issues of concern to us. Protesting is a means by which we can communicate our dissatisfaction to and with the system. It often has an instant impact – which can be confirmed by the fact that the Vice President who has been wining and dining with his family and tribe in a hotel for about two years on our tab has since vacated the hotel. It was a protest and not court action or a vote that brought this about. Protesting unifies us – it demonstrates (pun unintended) that one is not alone in the discontent one faces but he problems causing the protest resonate deeply with a large cross-section of the population. We must of course vote in 2018 – but in the mean time, we are well within our rights to protest – because this enables us to articulate our problems with the status quo and demand that they are addressed satisfactorily by anyone who wishes to take over. The political aspirants must sell themselves and their policies to us based on the issues of greatest concern to us – this exchange obviously has to take place before voting day.

There can be no doubt that S.I. 101a of 2016 (a purported ban on all demonstrations in Harare for two weeks) is unconstitutional, invalid and of no force or effect – inter alia because a police officer does not have the power to enact subsidiary legislation that infringes upon section 59 of the Constitution which guarantees the right to demonstrate and present petitions peacefully. The statutory instrument is also an undue restriction on the exercise of our political rights guaranteed in section 67 of the Constitution including the right to participate in peaceful political activity and to participate in group activities that challenge the policies of government or a political party, in this case ZANU PF.

It is an unlawful limitation of the Bill of Rights section of the Constitution as it not a law of general application as required by section 86(2) of the Constitution – focusing as it does on Harare Central Business District only. The restriction in the application of the purported subsidiary legislation further breaches section 56(1) of the Constitution which guarantees the right of those within Harare to equal protection and benefit of the law. There is no basis upon which it can be suggested that those in Harare should not be allowed to demonstrate as permitted in the Constitution while those elsewhere in Zimbabwe remain entitled to the benefit of this fundamental human right. A word on reasonableness – section 68 of the Constitution as read with section 86 require that police conduct be reasonable and that any powers they exercise have to be fair, reasonable, necessary and justifiable in a democratic society based on openness, justice, human dignity, equality and freedom. There is no explanation as to what difference two weeks will make to their ability to "deal" with a demonstration – have they run out of teargas? Are they looking for money to pay their hired guns – the brutal riot police? Will they renew the ban upon expiry?

Whichever way one looks at it, one thing is clear – the citizens are unhappy. Even if you ban us from protesting on the streets, you will certainly hear us speak out in our tweets!

The suggestion that the "silly twitter movement" was diaspora driven and could not translate to street action has been resoundingly proven to be patently ridiculous. You can teargas the demonstrations but you cannot teargas our heart for Zimbabwe – that heart grows everyday and by crushing us you are only feeding our desire for sustainable change.

Spring is definitely here – no matter how much the establishment cuts the flowers, new ones will regenerate. The only way to stop the flowers from blooming is to remove them from their roots. Thankfully, you cannot uproot 14 million Zimbabweans from their land. So these little bans are tantamount to burying seeds and hoping they will disappear! They do not call us sons and daughters of the soil for no reason.

And for the record, there are a million ways we can protest that cannot be controlled by teargas, water canons and baton sticks. So protest we shall. Peaceful we shall remain.

Let's make Zimbabwe great again. #THISFLAG #ZIMBABWESPRING