Should surfing the web count as a human right? The view from South Africa.
| Johannesburg
Should internet access be seen as a human right?
To answer that question, activist Onica Makwakwa likes to begin with a story.
In 2015, South Africa鈥檚 capital Pretoria began setting up free Wi-Fi hotspots across the city. Local media interviewed a teenage boy from Atteridgeville, a poor black community on the city鈥檚 fringes, who regularly walked four miles roundtrip to use the nearest hotspot.
Why We Wrote This
Despite how deeply the internet has reshaped our lives and societies, it鈥檚 still unclear how it fits into the language of human rights. The web can be a tool for protecting or expressing them. But is web access itself a right?
Why is this free Wi-Fi so important to you? they asked.
鈥淚 live in a shack,鈥� Ms. Makwakwa remembers him replying. 鈥淏ut when I鈥檓 on the internet I鈥檓 no longer a kid living in a shack.鈥�
The internet, in other words, opened the world to him. Today, roughly half the planet鈥檚 population is online, and the gap between the vast universe they can access there 鈥� from information to employment to digital money 鈥� and the analog existence of the other half is opening wider every year.
Activists like Ms. Makwakwa, Africa coordinator for the Alliance for Affordable Internet, say that鈥檚 a crisis. Without internet, many of the world鈥檚 poorest are being left behind in the global economy. Those who are most oppressed are being denied knowledge and ways to organize.聽 聽聽
But increasingly, activists are finding success in pulling down barriers to internet access by framing their campaigns as a matter of human rights. In South Africa, for instance, after years of pressure by activists, a business tribunal found earlier this month that two main providers鈥� high costs for mobile data were 鈥渁nti-poor鈥� and that they must slash their prices in order to create 鈥� moving forward as the country moves into the digital age.鈥�
鈥淚n another era, we decided that education was a right, and that it had to be ensured even if you couldn鈥檛 pay. That鈥檚 the point we鈥檙e coming to with the internet now,鈥� says Ms. Makwakwa. 鈥淲e need to treat it like a basic utility, a commodity like water or electricity that the poor deserve access to in order to live a dignified life, even if they can鈥檛 pay.鈥�
The South African case underscores that point. The Competition Commission wrote in a report that the country鈥檚 two largest cellular providers 鈥� MTN and Vodacom 鈥� had engaged in 鈥渆xploitative price discrimination.鈥� The problem was both the high cost of data 鈥� around $10 for a gigabyte 鈥� and the higher costs of pay-as-you-go services compared with contracts, which activists argued discriminated against poor South Africans who could only afford to purchase airtime in small increments.
The commission agreed. It demanded that the companies cut the price of data within two months, likely by 30% to 50%, and provide all prepaid customers 鈥渁 lifeline package of daily free data to ensure all citizens have data access on a continual basis, regardless of income levels.鈥�
The report nodded to the fact that the 鈥渞ight to communicate is a fundamental right,鈥� says Lazola Kati, who organizes campaigns around communication rights for the South African nonprofit Right2Know, which advocated heavily for the reduction in data prices.
That view is also backed by the United Nations, which has made increasing internet access part of its sustainable development goals 鈥� indicators that are meant to track the quality of life in different countries.
Not everyone agrees with that assessment, however.
鈥淭echnology is an enabler of rights, not a right itself,鈥� . A human right 鈥渕ust be among the things we as humans need in order to lead healthy, meaningful lives, like freedom from torture or freedom of conscience.鈥� By putting the internet in the category of human rights, , it places an unfair burden on states to pay for their citizens to have web access, even when they cannot afford it.
But for many governments, restricting the internet is not about saving money. It鈥檚 a tool to suppress dissent.
In 2018, for instance, experienced a full or partial shutdown of the internet, mostly in response to protests. In countries like Zimbabwe, where more than 95% of financial transactions happen via mobile money, those kinds of shutdowns have profound effects on daily life.
But those shutdowns, ironically, also showcase the internet鈥檚 growing importance as a tool for free speech on the continent. In 2018, a quarter of Africans were online 鈥� well below , but a substantial increase from the 4% of Africans using the internet a decade ago.
鈥淭he rising number of users is posing an ever bigger threat to governments,鈥� Juliet Nanfuka, a researcher at the Collaboration on International ICT Policy聽in聽East and Southern Africa, an internet think tank and advocacy organization based in Kampala, Uganda, told the Monitor in January.
At the same time, even in African countries where government doesn鈥檛 interfere, the high prices of internet access also shut out many potential users. Across the region, for instance, the is about 8% of the average monthly salary. In Congo, Central African Republic, and Chad, . (For an American worker earning $50,000 per year, paying 8% per month would be about $330.)
Approximately half of South Africans are online, but the divide between users and nonusers mirrors the divides in wealth and opportunity in the country more generally. Rich South Africans are far more likely to use the internet than poor South Africans. People in urban areas use it more than those who live somewhere rural. White people have better access than people of color; men than women.
Those gaps can never be filled by the market, says Ms. Makwakwa, especially in a place like South Africa, where resources of all kinds were until recently divvied up according to race.
鈥淭hese kinds of inequalities didn鈥檛 create themselves,鈥� she says. 鈥淎nd so our governments have to act intentionally to close the gap as well.鈥�
