https://zimbabwe.misa.org Cybersecurity and Cybercrime Laws in the SADC Region rights to free speech, expression association, access to information and privacy amongst others. of dark forms of participation such as the spread of misinformation, disinformation, malinformation, cyber-bullying, cyber harassment and revenge porn. This is despite the initial celebratory views of the internet as technologies of freedom and accountability. In recent years, fears about the normalisation of communications surveillance, roll out of invasive monitoring and tracking technologies by governments and corporates, state-ordered Internet shutdowns as well as the passage of draconian pieces of legislation have dominated national, regional and international headlines (Mare, 2020). Instead of promulgating laws that are consonant with the Necessary and Proportionate Principles as articulated by Access Now, Privacy International (PI), Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF), and Association of Progressive Communications (APC), some SADC countries have brazenly came up with legal frameworks that violate inalienable human rights as enshrined in their national constitutions. In the era of ‘surveillance capitalism1 ’ (Zuboff, 2018), the increased use and appropriation of digital technologies has been accompanied by massive information collection and processing, including personal data. Data is being collected, processed, shared and transferred every day, with or without the knowledge of the affected persons, which has serious implications for personal privacy (AFDEC, 2020). Because of this intrusive collection and procession of personal data and information by state and non-state actors, the conceptualization of the right to privacy has become very f luid and complicated. The uptake of facial recognition, video conferencing, contact tracing, artificial intelligence and machine learning technologies has expedited the processing, analysis, collection and storage of data, including personal information (Zuboff, 2018). These technologies have augmented surveillance practices, thereby paving way for the setting up of huge databases with technical capacities to anonymise and deanonymise data – all on a wide scale. This turn of events has significant implications on the right to privacy. In Southern Africa, Hunter and Murray (2020) have shown that increased interference with the right to privacy mostly exists in environments with limited oversight mechanisms and results in data breaches, misuse of personal data, un law f u l and indiscriminate interception of communications and impermissible data retention policies. Cognisant of the fact that digital rights have become an inseparable part of our everyday lives because of the complex interaction between human beings and digital technologies, scholars have begun to foreground the advent Many governments in the SADC region are taking steps that undermine internet access and affordability, and weaken the potential of digital technologies to catalyse free expression and civic participation or to drive innovation. In a number of SADC countries, there has been an increase in digital rights violations such as arrests and intimidation of online users, internet blockages, and a proliferation of laws and regulations that undermine the potential of technology to drive socio-economic and political development in the region. Several countries have come up with a number of Bills focusing on data protection, electronic transactions, cybercrimes and computer crimes and interception of communications in the last decade. Instead of helping to increase the accessibility and availability of ICTs, some of these pieces of legislation have contributed to 1 It is a “new economic order” and “an expropriation of critical human rights that is best understood as a coup from above”. 3