Kubatana.net

Amanda: From an external environment, the economic situation has been a big challenge. Issues of infrastructure, connectivity, and electricity. Poverty is high. So purchasing information is a problem for people. Unemployment is at 90 percent in Zimbabwe.

From our internal perspective, funding has not been easy for media and consumption as most of the funding has shifted from media towards humanitarian aid, health, HIV and AIDS, vulnerable children, etc. We have consistently argued with the donor community that information plays a key part in democracy and in the emancipation and in the core program areas of all the NGOs working in whatever sector. So I think we have a range of challenges. The brain drain has also been a challenge.

Amanda: It is a question of fundraising, administrative and the management of it. Being a bit more creative. It is a challenge as we have high unemployment around. Coming up with innovative strategies even while facing obstacles.

Bev: Lack of access to information locked up in the NGOs and CSOs in Zimbabwe. Within the NGO community there was not much energetic uptake of online material in Zimbabwe so that project was conceived to share the information widely.

Lack of access to information and the censorship of materials in Zimbabwe coming from a repressive regime.

The repressive environment over the last 8 years made Kubatana develop online activism to regularly encourage Zimbabweans to use the information communication technologies (ICTs) that they have access to and advocate, mobilize and lobby.

Bev: I consider myself to be an information activist. I was particularly concerned by the censorship and about the lack of access to information in Zimbabwe and wanted to enhance circulation of information to the ordinary people in order to enhance their ability to participate so that they are more socially and politically aware. So this comes from some motivation of personal activism.

Amanda: It is yes and no. The information we aggregate and share is useful and certainly unofficial being an informal channel, but government would either agree or disagree with us. There is a separation between government and the civil society and we wouldn't be doing government's job. It is not necessarily unofficial as the government could have done the same. Government should have been providing more basic information on human rights, etc.

Bev: We also share information on critical issues including cabinet meetings, elections, active participation of the elections, informing people about parliament meetings, local councils operations, etc.

Our online NGO directory is updated regularly, keeping the contacts accurate and over the years people all over the world have managed to get in touch to work with the NGOs in Zimbabwe. The directory has helped get access to direct funding or support from a variety of places because our aggregation and our information has acted as a connector of NGOs to other organisations.

Bev: Let me give you a concrete example. Here in Zimbabwe, just recently the government has set up toll gates on major roads and for many years Zimbabweans were kept in the dark about how public funds are used. And many millions of US Dollars have been generated from these toll gates. We put up an activist message in one of our newsletters and asked where the money is going. The conditions of the roads in Bulawayo, Mutare, and Harare are very poor. We put this note in the newsletter to get people to think about and we asked the people to write Transparency International Zimbabwe to do something about it. Our membership rallied, mobilised and Transparency International Zimbabwe investigated and did something about it.

Kubatana has had the courage to ask questions in a country where debate has often been stifled.
For example where did President Mugabe get his money if his Members of Parliament are being asked to identify and campaign with their business opportunities yet he imports all his food?

So we use our membership structure to take the information and the motivation we send and use their voices to bring pressure on political organisations, demanding them to be held accountable and transparent because this citizenry has been abused far too long.

Bev: Most of the day goes into the project even using our overtime. Most of the time we have three people. This project takes up a lot of effort. The compilation, dissemination, and building of that information into activism requires a lot of thought and care.

Amanda: Collecting and distributing that information is really the core of what we do. Converting an article into something for us and putting into our website. Management of the subscription and content system. We have over 9,000 sms subscribers and over 1,800 emails every month is quite demanding. Conceptualising information for the campaign is also demanding.

Amanda: I think a lot of work goes into getting the information in a repressed environment and passing it on the people that need it. So for us getting the information that was repressed and passing it on to the people that need it gives us a lot of value.

Bev: Since we started publishing as Kubatana, we believe in the power of good solid relationships. In order to do good work we need to build a good constituency so we do lot of partnership building by using a variety of interventions including: printed flyers, sending promotional emails, placing advertisements. Even the government press has stated our website address and also has published our press releases, etc. A consistent use of PR is crucial to ensure participation of subscribers in the project. We plan to be consistent as people are always wanting to be informed in a new and exciting way.

Bev: We have also found that word-of-mouth has been a tremendous amplifier for our work. We have also quite often used as a little by-line: "you add, we multiply," which has helped communicate what we do.

Bev: You might be interested in the campaign that we have just started called Say Who You Are. Because of the repressive background, through this we are encouraging Zimbabweans to overcome the fear to identify themselves with the information that can help save them.

Even our membership has been encouraged to answer six questions like who and where they are in Zimbabwe. We put out questions to our members and intend to take a photo of them, interview and bring them into our advertising campaign in 2010. We get their opinion and feedback and that way create a solid sense of belonging to the project and this way we will be encouraging Zimbabweans to overcome their fear of association with a project that might seem dangerous to belong to when it really shouldn't.

Bev: People find a sense of a community in belonging to the Kubatana network. They speak positively of being part of it as they get info that is not biased, not sensational. They feel that being part of Kubatana, they are part of positive movement. There has been a lot of paranoia and negativity about Zimbabwe. Right from its conception, Kubatana has been a project that is more about encouraging positive growth. And we have encouraged people to speak to become part of a positive change and have helped people from all walks of life to be part of a life. We embrace people from all walks of life to share their experience together, to share information that build people up rather than pulling them down.

Amanda: Business Development skills to help develop the work. Administrative interests too need more attention.

Bev: We have been dependent on donor funding which is generally insecure and you cannot bank on that to sustain the project. And our challenge in Zimbabwe given the economic environment all over the world is that few appreciate the value of electronic communication and media information projects wondering how to make such financially sustainable. We wish to see our members and subscribers to realise the value of the information we publish so that they will be able to pay for it.

Bev: We work with many other organisations like the very strong like Women of Zimbabwe, constitutional groups, groups working on vulnerable children and sexual rights.

Amanda: What has happened over the years is that a variety of regional and international organisations like International Bar Association, Amnesty International, Human Rights Watch, have also seen Kubatana as a consistent source and reference for human rights violations and have quite often used our website to download important information that are produced by human rights groups in Zimbabwe. We have links with OneWorld, Radio Netherlands, Deutsche Welle Radio. So our reach is very wide, encompassing both local and international networking.

Amanda: Yes we do. We actually developed our own website. My colleague Brenda Burrell who is technical director was really active in developing the back-end of it. More recently we have developed our own tool called Freedom Fone which is a web-based service to enable organisations to easily run their own small audio service, which people can easily phone into and access recorded menus of information - for example on cholera, a constitutional service or engagement by the state and issues under debate, etc.

We have also been active in using Frontline SMS. We were actually among the very first users and helped the developers decide what kind of capacities this had for use in the civil society organisations.

Amanda: It is a challenging question to answer as we are seen different depending on who as some people with more controlling mindsets tend to want repression while some respect what we do.

Bev: The challenge is that most governments underestimate the impact of electronic media. Kubatana.net has a large network as we can email our subscribers reaching about 18 thousand people and this is a significant number of people to reach. I think that the government has very little appreciation of the far-reaching impact of new media. Recently we have seen in the press that the government of Zimbabwe has been talking about Twitter and about mobile phone messaging like in Iran and I wonder whether in the next elections in 2010 in Zimbabwe, we won't see more of crackdown on NGOs using new media to encourage participation of the public.

Amanda: Yes, because part of the problem Kubatana is trying to address is the repressive media environment in the country as a whole that limits free access to information and freedom of expression. There is a wide range of layers of repression like lack of liberalisation of airwaves, public order, Security Act, Media Commission, ICT policy, etc

Bev: I don’t think so though what comes to mind is Oneworld.net. Otherwise Kubatana.net is extremely proudly Zimbabwean. We use Internet, Email, Blogging, SMS, Freedom Fone and print to reach different constituencies in Zimbabwe. Our information is wholly local because that is our focus as we are interested in Zimbabweans to learn about other Zimbabweans and share Zimbabwean experiences.

We have 230 NGOs in our directory and whenever docs are published and shared on Kubatana we archive that material on their factsheet on Kubatana.net, meaning that our archive is 15,000 documents strong. You won't find such a thing elsewhere.

Bev: That would be completely wonderful. We could use the money primarily for engaging and retaining staff that makes such a project successful. At the moment in Zimbabwe has a government of national unity, and there is talk of the need for a new national constitution, so we would use the money on an educational outreach campaign for true democratic change and we would be using our experience and capacity in the new media aspect in an outreach campaign of that nature.

Amanda: We look forward to the World Cup 2010. The issue of the constitution is quite exciting. Then when the elections will be. The issues with a government of national unity. I think that a project like Kubatana and the civil society will work with a critical mind to make a difference in the country.