Ntsiki Mazwai. Picture: okmzansi
Activist and poet Ntsiki Mazwai’s attempt to create a social media blackout was not quite as successful as many may have hoped, and she hasn’t been shy to hide her annoyance about it.
Somewhat amusingly, the attempted one-day shutdown of Twitter in South Africa had more people tweeting about how hard it is not to go on Twitter and tweet, than people observing the shutdown.
Mazwai, of course, who was one of the main drivers of the project, managed to maintain her “radio silence” throughout, which is notable in itself considering her machine-gun approach to launching tweets, replies and retweets on the platform. She may well be South Africa’s most prolific Twitter user.
On June 20, Mazwai called on South Africans to boycott all social media platforms from midnight and use the hashtag #SocialMediaBlackout.
The hashtag #DataMustFall trended on Twitter and outlined the boycott’s aims as: “The social media blackout is a campaign that is aimed at lowering data prices. Data costs are obscene and are not affordable for people on the ground. We want to bring attention to this issue; we want to engage government and cellular network companies.”
Mazwai added that people should not buy data for 24 hours. “We will meet back on social media the following day to discuss the way forward. Why should data expire after 30 days when you’ve paid for it?”
She said that in South Africa it remained too expensive to access information.
“We keep talking about #feesmustfall but how must students access information or hand in assignments if data costs are so high? This has a negative impact on entrepreneurs and our families because we can’t communicate with them.”
Presumably, the campaign did not scare the cellphone companies into submission as hoped, and Mazwai has clearly now lost patience with those complaining about data. She called them “annoying” on Saturday and charged that they “had a chance to make a difference and you were arrogant … so shut up”.