In response to a number of proposed laws that would restrict the freedom of the press, Angelo Coppola, a former journalist who now runs a PR firm, has been asking people to sign a petition he drew up.
Despite the fact that I described online petitions as "puerile" and "futile" in a recent column in The Daily Maverick, he badgered me for days to declare my support (or opposition) for "Freedom of expression under attack in South Africa".
I buckled. I signed the petition.
Here is the confirmation e-mail I received yesterday, at my brand new e-mail address, malemajulius@rocketmail.com:
Dear J Malema,
This e-mail message is sent to you from PetitionOnline to confirm your signature as "J Malema" on the online petition: "Freedom of expression under attack in South Africa" hosted on the Web by our free online petition service, at: http://www.PetitionOnline.com/FoESA/
Your signature on the petition is already complete, and there is no need to reply to this message.
Your signature number for this petition is 1033.
There are, of course, a few issues with this mail. For a start, I am not Julius Malema. He did not, in fact, sign the petition.
Geoffrey Crayon, the pseudonym of the late Washington Irving, author of stories such as the Legend of Sleepy Hollow and Rip van Winkle, also did not sign the petition. Steve Hofmeyr? Nope, he didn't sign it. Sorry, Steve. If a person named Vindaloo Patel did exist, he'd also deserve an apology for being impersonated. It is possible, though unlikely, that Comrade Gadzira Chirumhanzu, the director for Science and Technology of ZANU-PF, will object to his signature on the petition. He received a confirmation e-mail at his real e-mail address.
My real name also appears, as signatory 1072 on the petition. I received a confirmation e-mail to this effect last night. Problem is, I did not add my name. Someone else did. I was not required to agree, confirm or otherwise endorse that signature. In short, like the names I added, my own name on the petition is fraudulent. I suppose it saves me the trouble of expressing my support for "freedom of expression under attack". Or was that opposition?
Signatory number 649 is Robert Mugabe. I did not add this name, so we can safely assume he really is speaking up for freedom. Signature 651 is one L Armstrong. Sadly, Satchmo died in 1971, but it's nice to know he still cares about our wonderful world.
Number 451 is Thor, whose hammer clearly reaches far. There's a road, or a wallet, that signed too: R572, at number 433. Signature 195 is spam for an online comic by Damien Koh, known as 21st Century Co-Eds, which despite the tantalising title appears to be safe to read at work.
Evelyn Herzfeld, signatory 689, added a comment asking to have a word in the petition changed. She signed it, without that change. Signatory 716, Melvin McHenry, added links to pages declaring Jews to be the master race. Robert Mugabe, Steve Hofmeyr and I are in great company, clearly.
Several organisations appear to have signed it, including the South African chapter of the Media Institute of Southern Africa (MISA-SA), the Human Rights Education Centre Southern Africa, and the Southern African Media and Gender Institute (SAMGI). Do they count for one person? Many? Did their members approve the signatures?
If recipients of online petitions took them seriously, they'd be idiots.
Ivo Vegter, ITWeb contributor
Many people gave only their first names. Is "Wikus" the character or the actor? Which "Michelle", "Amanda", "Allan" and "Stephen" signed? Who is "Bob"?
Online petitions are pointless, for many reasons. Most importantly, as illustrated here, there is no way to determine whether signatories are genuine.
This petition, for example, does not even try to determine whether a visitor has already signed it. Multiple signatures from the same computer are possible as a result. This problem cannot be solved, because in some cases, such as a shared computer at a school or Internet caf'e, this would be legitimate behaviour.
It also does not require e-mail confirmation. One fake entry used real credentials (Gadzira Chirumhanzu). So did my own signature, faked by someone else. A few entries used made-up e-mail addresses (Steve Hofmeyr, Geoffrey Crayon and Vindaloo Patel). And even if active confirmation was required, creating a false e-mail address (as I did for the Julius Malema entry) is trivial.
If someone wanted to drum up serious support for a petition, they could whip up a little script that generates fake names and e-mail addresses, and happily populates the petition.
To spot such frauds, you'd have to verify that every e-mail on the list really does belong to a human signatory. Then you'd have to confirm that each signatory really intended to sign the petition. Since the default privacy setting is not to even disclose the e-mail address to the petition author, this vetting process is not just extremely impractical, but impossible.
There is no way for the ultimate recipient of the petition to verify the authenticity of all of the names, nor to verify that the names, even if genuine, really do support the petition.
A petition also does not record opposition. So a thousand people signed it. Should one assume that the other five million South African Internet users oppose it? Did they get an opportunity to record their opposition? Do they just not care? Did they not hear about it? There is no way to tell. The petition's thousand-plus signatures represents about 0.02% of the online population. No doubt, the signatories feel strongly about it, but sadly, their voices are mere whimpers in a storm.
As Evelyn Herzfeld discovered, the text of a petition is unalterable. In this particular case, it is very vague. It doesn't actually demand anything, nor make a specific point. When (if) this petition is handed to president Jacob Zuma, there is no indication of how exactly the signatories, real or fake, expect him to respond. What, stop the "attack by the government ... aimed directly at your constitutional right to freedom of expression"? He denies that such an attack is taking place. At the very least, it should have identified which particular laws the signatories expect him to sign, or not sign, as the case may be. It doesn't. So what exactly does the petition demand?
If recipients of online petitions took them seriously, they'd be idiots. This one appears to be for a good cause, but how many petitions have you seen calling for causes that are offensive, petty, inimical to our constitutional rights, or shared only by a vocal minority?
It would be lovely to think that sitting comfortably at your desk signing online petitions achieves something. It doesn't. Even the best online petitions (which this one is not) fail in this respect. They are useless. They are a waste of time, unless self-delusion gives you the warm fuzzies.
If you want to make your voice heard, go on radio. March on Parliament. Send a letter to a newspaper, your ward councillor, or the president. Write an article or a blog post that argues your case. Make a submission as part of the mandatory public comment process, so your view is represented to the legislators who vote on new laws. Start a grassroots campaign to educate voters about the issue. Launch a court action to stop the process, or convince someone else to do so. Exercise your right to vote against the ruling party in the next election.
Just don't waste your time and mine with pointless petitions. They do not work, they cannot work, they have never worked, and this one won't work either.
In the interest of doing something about this problem, I implore you, sign this petition: "Let's end these stupid online petitions here!" I did. I feel all warm and fuzzy inside.
Sorry, Angelo, but I'm not signing your petition. At least, I wasn't going to until someone did it for me.
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