When the Zimbabwean government ordered internet service providers to shutter parts of the web in an effort to curb anti-government protests, it also plunged homes into darkness because people can\u2019t pay their utilities online.<\/p>\n
Most people in the southern African nation use Econet Wireless Zimbabwe Ltd.\u2019s Ecocash mobile-phone payment system for daily transactions. They buy electricity in units of $5 or less and almost all domestic users are on prepaid meters, so many buy for $1 at a time.<\/p>\n
According to Zimbabwe\u2019s Finance Ministry less than 5 percent of commercial transactions in the country involve cash, mainly because it\u2019s hard to find. Instead Zimbabweans use Ecocash or bank cards.<\/p>\n
\u201cTonight will be spent in darkness,\u201d said 42-year-old John Pedzesai, who sells plants on a sidewalk in the capital, Harare.<\/p>\n
Econet, Zimbabwe\u2019s biggest mobile-phone company, declined to comment.<\/p>\n
When the Zimbabwean government ordered internet service providers to shutter parts of the web in an effort to curb anti-government protests, it also plunged homes into darkness because people can\u2019t pay their utilities online.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":341034,"featured_media":94206,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_sma_x_autopost_status":"idle","_sma_x_autopost_error":"","_sma_x_post_id":"","_sma_facebook_post_id":"","_sma_instagram_post_id":"","_sma_threads_post_id":"","_sma_x_attempts":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[18],"tags":[37957,175,3442],"class_list":["post-292284","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-internet","tag-econet","tag-internet-shutdown","tag-zimbabwe"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/292284"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/341034"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=292284"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/292284\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":292286,"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/292284\/revisions\/292286"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/94206"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=292284"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=292284"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=292284"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}