Manqoba Nxumalo: Cancel Culture and Alternative Ideas and Platforms | eSwatini/Swaziland

Blossom of Thought

In this episode, I'm joined by Manqoba Nxumalo, an activist from eSwatini (formerly Swaziland) currently based in Norway. He is a master’s degree candidate in Environment, Development, and Cultural Change at Oslo University (Norway). Manqoba is the publisher of an online weekend newspaper called The Bridge and a chairperson of the eSwatini Institute of Alternative Ideas (SIAI). SIAI is an independent platform for a healthy exchange of ideas about the developmental, political, social, and economic challenges facing eSwatini. The organization aims to promote alternative ideas on the transformation of eSwatini from an absolute monarchy to a democratic country.

Highlights of the conversation:

• There has always been a form of social censor, but now it happens through online social platforms.
• Cancel culture began on online social networks as an act of social shaming for an act considered cringeworthy. It has also taken another dimension where wielders of materials and power exert some control over a given social milieu. Cancel culture is really marginalizing voices to an extent that they have no opportunity to be part of a discussion.
• Cancel Culture is a dress rehearsal for mass murder or extermination.
• Ultimately, cancel culture is the cancellation of human life – murdering those with differing views.
• Cancel culture in Swaziland – The government has occasionally shut down the internet (violating the right to freedom of expression) to silence calls for democracy and suppress evidence of killings of unarmed civilians by the army and police.
• Courts deny protestors their right to bail and others are given long custodial sentences for minor crimes/felonies of looting or theft during protests.

Find Manqoba on

Facebook:

https://www.facebook.com/manqoba.chavezjuniornxumalo

eSwatini Institute of Alternative Ideas:

Twitter - @lingashoni

Website - https://lingashoni.com/about-us/

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