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Prosperity Mzila Correspondent
The world has truly become a global village, where almost everything that happens in one country has an effect all over the world. The physical borders that previously separated the states and supposedly provided “security” from possible invasions from other nations have been “removed” so to speak. The physical borders no longer suffice as bulwarks from outside influence or invasions, rendering them useless.

This phenomenon called social media has opened wide the issues of all nations and laid them bare for all nations to participate in the affairs of other nations like vultures feasting and de-fleshing the carcases of a dead animal leaving only the bare bones.

As issues are thrown into the social media space, different nations and their nationals receive these messages and react differently to the messages depending on the culture embedded in them. Zimbabweans are a peaceful people, who even as they are bombarded with different social media messages instigated for purposes of causing civil discord, they choose peace, hard work and progress.

National cultures are different and they react differently to information as evidenced by the latest spate of events, where the people of Tswane in South Africa have revolted to a point of burning buses over a mayoral candidate that has been chosen by the ruling party for their local elections due in August. Zimbabwe has had different mayors at Town House with the current Mayor Bernard Manyenyeni on suspension even as we speak, but our culture is not one to go and throw stones at buses that have come with business people from foreign lands. For us foreigners are a source of foreign currency income and we handle them like kings. The burning of buses in protest is not Zimbabwean. Our culture is of progress and of a sound mind, where issues are solved amicably at the table by way of negotiation. Thank God, Zimbabwe is a peaceful nation that is neither moved nor perturbed by the reactions of other nations on how to deal with issues.

True we have a cash crisis in Zimbabwe and so far the issue has been handled admirably, thanks to the Reserve Bank of Zimbabwe Governor Dr John Mangudya and other stakeholders, people have been educated on how to go around their normal bill payments.

Use of plastic money has made everything so much easier, carrying large amounts of money risking being robbed is a thing of the past. People are adapting and all is working well. However, by mid-day Monday the phones were beeping off the hook, with notifications of a burning POSB Masvingo bank apparently set alight by clients disappointed at not accessing their cash. As usual, it was a malicious falsehood and Zimbabweans treated it like the joke it was, copied, pasted and forwarded to the next person/group and the day progressed without anyone thinking about it twice.

If it was South Africa on the other hand, buildings and cars would have been burnt and people killed or maimed.

The inter-connectedness of the globe has promoted the prying eyes of the bully nations and hyped their interests and their eyes are prying more on the resources of the different nations.

They are drooling over the richness of what they see and want everything and will do anything to have access to the resources of the different nations; greed controls them and they feel they can start a brawl with any nation by using the “hard beans” to blow issues out of proportion and in making a mountain out of a molehill. These people should go back to the drawing board, because Zimbabweans cannot be moved by issues that are peddled through the social media. Zimbabweans are just not a violent people and they will not be used like puppets in a show to destroy their inheritance, while some bully from the West siphons their natural resources and treasures that are still being discovered even to this day.

As messages go back and forth on the social media networks, it has enabled not just a sneak peek into the affairs of other nations, but has also been used as conduit of lobbying peoples of the different nations to rise against their own governments to causs unrest, thereby destabilising the smooth flow of the nations’ affairs. Egypt, Tunisia, Libya and Syria are all casualties of social media, as they embraced and put their faith in the new warfare weapon.

If these countries were to be given another chance to do it all over again, they would definitely have a different perspective about the use of social media in their respective nations, as Libya today lies in ruins since the fall of Muammar Gaddafi.