Zim tries to curtail ‘Baba Jukwa’

THE mysterious Facebook character “Baba Jukwa” continues to make waves in Zimbabwe and has now prompted its telecommunications regulatory body to crack down on cellphone companies over unregistered sim cards.

Baba Jukwa has been publishing the cellphone numbers of politicians — mostly from President Robert Mugabe’s Zanu-PF, which he accuses of corruption — and urging his followers to call and confront them.

So influential is Baba Jukwa — whose Facebook page has more than 357 000 likes — that his warning before the July 31 elections that his followers bring their own pens to polling stations was taken seriously by some voters.

On July 30, Baba Jukwa wrote: “Confirmed from our ZEC [Zimbabwe Electoral Commission] contact, Nikuv supplied ZEC with pens with fake ink which fade within four hours. The pens will be used in MDC [Movement for Democratic Change] strongholds and the votes will be considered spoiled.”

Nikuv is the Israeli company accused of assisting Zanu-PF in rigging the elections.

Baba Jukwa claims to be a disgruntled Zanu-PF member.

The state-controlled Herald reported this week that 38year-old Josiah Mahovoya was sentenced to four months in jail for sending “obscene messages” to police commissioner Augustine Chihuri and ZanuPF MP Dexter Nduna.

Mahovoya told the court he acquired the phone numbers from Baba Jukwa’s page.

Now, in a bid to curtail the blogger’s growing influence, Zimbabwe’s telecoms authority said it had directed the country’s three mobile operators to disconnect unregistered subscribers with “immediate effect”.

Some of Baba Jukwa’s posts have proved to be untrue, for example, his claim on the eve of the elections that influential Nigerian prophet TB Joshua had prophesied a victory for the MDC.

After the post went viral on social networks and news sites, Joshua Synagogue Church of All Nations denied he made the prophecy.