The website of Zimbabwe’s main opposition party was once shut down by an ISP under the pretext that the online facility was doing email spam.

Ironically, the site only operated an opt-in mailing list at the time.

But today an activist who once worked there believes there's sometimes no alternative but to use spam in order to get the message out – especially to cellphones.

The person is Brenda Burrell, who now runs the award-winning Zimbabwean civil society site Kubutana.

She made the case for spam at the DCI, but also warned that today’s ease of publishing poses real dangers for cyberactivists.

The risk lurks in the metadata of documents and images hastily posted online.

An example is the anonymous testimony of a victim of state violence, where the author’s identity, or the computer used, unintentionally shows up when the document's properties are inspected.

Despite her country’s difficulties, Burrell concluded with a famous quote: “If it were not for hope, the heart would break.”