Protests in Tunisia are continuing, with demonstrators objecting to the dominance of leaders from the toppled president’s party in the country’s new “inclusive government.” They say the dictator may have gone, but the dictatorship is still there.

They are also concerned about the elite transfer of power which created the unity government, and are demanding more grounded constitutional reforms. Speaking in an interview with the BBC yesterday, the spokesperson for the Communist Workers Party of Tunisia said “We don’t have a constitution. We have a document that has been written, and rewritten, to maintain the dictatorship.”

Sound familiar?

Ethan Zuckerman recently published a great blog on Facebook. Here’s an excerpt, but read the whole post.

Algorithms, Unbirthdays and Rewiring Facebook

Tuesday was my birthday, and I spent the day largely offline. That meant that Wednesday morning, my email inbox featured hundreds of messages from Facebook, each alerting me to a birthday greeting on my Wall. (I’m an infrequent Facebook user, so I usually find these sorts of alerts useful and haven’t disabled them.) On the one hand, this outpouring of online affection was wonderful – I felt grateful to be remembered by people I’ve not spoken to since high school.

On the other hand, it’s basically impossible to respond to the flood of messages with anything other than “Thanks!” And, of course, there’s usually nothing to the message than the greeting itself – the message is symbolic, not substantive. Which left me thinking

-    I should be better about logging onto Facebook and sending my own symbolic, semantically void greetings
-
and then

-    I should write a Facebook ap that partitions my friends into 365 roughly equally sized groups and encourages me to say hi to that specific, small set of people on that day. I’d occasionally reach someone on their birthday (though I could add additional logic to pick only unbirthday folks.) Unbirthday notes would arrive on days when people weren’t overwhelmed, and might actually spark a conversation and a chance to catch up.

Socially transgressive, or a helpful hack for building actual conversations between out of touch friends? Would other people resist such a rewiring of Facebook and the social norms it embodies, or embrace it?

When I heard that The Kids Are All Right had won the Golden Globe for best film (comedy/musical) yesterday, I was confused. It certainly wasn’t the best film I saw last year, nor would I have called it a comedy. But then I remembered – there’s that part where Nic, Anntte Bening’s character, breaks into All I Want by Joni Mitchell at the dinner table.  Ah. It must have gotten it for best musical.

You see those fliers always strewn all over the place by pro-democracy activists be it about the constitution, elections or whatever? They could be dangerous to your health after all, and this not because they are environmentally unfriendly or anything of that sort.

I picked up one the other day under a tree where a friend was having his hair trimmed by those outdoor barbers who have become ubiquitous in Bulawayo. Also there chatting with the barber was a cop I am acquainted with. The guy helpfully says to me, be careful about just picking up these papers in the street and reading them. I give a knowing laugh that he is warning me that someone might have used it as toilet paper, but the guy says, no dude I’m serious. Then he explains, and it is not about hygiene considerations:

A man obviously minding his own business picked up one of these pro-democracy fliers just in front of the Western Commonage courts in Bulawayo – there is also a notorious police station here.  As he was busy going through the flier, two men approached and asked him to tell them what Tsvangirai was saying. The man was bamboozled. “Isn’t you have read this piece of paper, now tell us what it is saying.” The poor man was like “who the fuck are you people?” the two men were like, “we are asking you politely and you are saying such rude things.”

Turns out the two were plain clothes cops, and the cop under the tree tells me, these two wanted to take this poor man in and give him a thorough beating, but they “realised” the person they were dealing with was clueless about what they were talking about – and the gravity of the offence, I might add. So they let him off with a stern warning: don’t go about reading these papers put on the streets by unknown people or else you will die for things you don’t know [that’s a direct translation from the vernacular they spoke].

And to me the cop says, “When you see these papers and want to read one, just pick it up, put it your pocket and read it in the privacy of your home”! Why? But I answered it myself – to avoid being picked up by the spooks for reading “subversive” material. I thanked the cop for the invaluable “tip” but in my mind yelled, “Idiot!” I suspected he was one of the said cops as the chap is already known in the locality as a super patriot and moron.

There you have it folks, careful what you read, you may not exactly die of a misprint, but political zealots may just not like what you read and you may die of that dislike from people with apparent dyslexia!  The mind control could be working overdrive ahead of elections, after all, haven’t some people been beaten up in the not-so-distant past for reading the Daily News and other newspapers critical of Zanu PF? Certainly the Zimbabwe we do not want.

In a post titled: Democracy won’t help Zimbabwe, Mugabe is not the problem, blogger African Aristocrat share’s his thoughts on the regime change agenda:

It is tempting to believe that if we manage to dislodge Zanu PF Zimbabwe will immediately turn into a land of milk and honey. It will not. This is an inconvenient truth and will likely irk the many evangelists of hope that write in support of the opposition. Let us be reminded that these are the same people who just two years ago told us that billions of dollars in aid awaited Zimbabwe and would be speedily dispensed the moment Tsvangirai put his hand to paper and committed to a power sharing agreement. Following Tsvangirai’s participation in government, the reality has not be quite as colourful. Zimbabweans are still poor. Serious problems persist in the health sector. Not only so, all indicators point to a prolonged struggle ahead.

The greatest challenge we face when analysing the Zimbabwe situation is that of deliberate amnesia. The general consensus is that Zimbabwe should not have gone to war in the Congo. I agree. Zimbabwe should not have taken over white owned farms in the manner that it did. Again I agree. Gideon Gono should not have kept the printing press in an endless loop. This again is true. There is a lot more that could be said of Zanu PF’s mismanagement and errors of judgement in the past years. There is no defence, they messed up.

But this view is misleading. It assumes that people started suffering in Zimbabwe following the events just detailed. This is not so. The past decade has simply brought poverty to the formerly privileged. The majority of Zimbabweans had been living in these desperate conditions even when Zimbabwe was lauded as an economic success story. Let us imagine that all of this had not happened and we were back in the comforts of August 1998. Would Zimbabwe’s intelligentsia protesting so loudly. I doubt it.

But remember this dear reader. In August of 1998 millions of Zimbabweans lived in the rural areas. Millions of Zimbabweans ate bread only on special occasions and they considered basics such as jam a treat. These many millions struggled to earn a living tilling their land. Why was there no call for Mugabe to step down then? The Zimbabwean middle class seemed content to live in a country in which others lived in such desperation whilst they enjoyed the fat of the land.

What would happen if the middle was restored to its former luxury? Would they continue to call for democracy. I doubt it. In 1998 Zimbabwe was hardly a democracy, say the wrong thing and even then you could disappear. But people really didn’t care for democracy. They were comfortable.

I get distracted. I started by suggesting that democracy will not help Zimbabwe and that Mugabe is really not the problem. Those who think Mugabe is the problem view the Zimbabwean crisis as one which began only 10 years ago. This is untrue. The rural folk have always been in crisis and it has become a way of life for them. This is what explains their continued support for Mugabe. It often goes unmentioned that although the MDC won more seats in parliament in the free and fair 2008 elections, it is ZANU PF that won the popular vote. More people voted for ZANU PF than for the MDC.

Why do people in the rural areas vote for ZANU PF? Certainly not for economic reasons, since 1980 Zanu PF has done very little for the rural man as an entity. The rural vote is based on liberation nostalgia and ignorance. This, I accept, is a vulgar generalisation of the rural electorate. But that is beside the point. What I am trying to highlight is that the rural folk have not really been shaken in their support for Zanu PF. The people in urban areas have. In the past decade it is those in urban areas who lost the most. Those in rural areas continued farming their land and living off it. They have complaints but nothing that compares to those of the city dweller.

Now let us come to the issue of democracy and Zimbabwe. I have done my best to explain how what we call the best years really where not the best years. The majority was living in squalor, out of sight is indeed out of mind. People call those days democratic. So what then did this democracy yeild for the average Zimbabwean? Very little, if we are to be objective in our analysis.

What we need in Zimbabwe are men of vision. Politicians and technocrats who have radical ideas as to how we can solve the considerable problems that we face. I admire the Cubans, their doctor : patient ration is impressive and shames many Western democracies. Their life expectancy is 77, just a year below the Americans. This in spite of the fact that the Americans have for years tried to strangle the nation through an unjustifiable embargo, even the menacing Iranians are not subject to such. Fidel Castro is many things unpleasant but he managed to inspire a people into an ideology. I need not say that his ideology is not entirely wholesome but there is much we can learn from the Cubans.

Apart from the impressive healthcare statistics the government has managed to create a food subsidy for ALL CITIZENS which guarantees them a basic food basket. That basket constitutes up to 70% of a Cubans daily intake, which is above 3000 calories. These are impressive numbers for a third world country.

We can speak of Brazil. It has come up with a genius food security strategy. City councils lease lucrative market stalls but set the pricing for anyone wishing to sell in those stalls. Sellers are then given land within the city to farm. The sellers are thriving and prices are affordable. The supermarkets are complaining as they continue to lose custom to the cheaper markets. The people are celebrating. I have simplified the Brazilian model but those eager for learning can easily research these matters.

I give these example not necessarily because they are a solution for Zimbabwe but because they are a radical approach to peculiar problems. What Zimbabwe needs is a government that cares for all citizens, not just those above the upper quartile. Zanu PF has had 30 years to prove itself competent. It has failed. Nothing in the MDC election manifesto infuses me with confidence that they will be any different.

South Africa is a democracy as is Nigeria. The poor in these countries are paupers when compared to the poor in Cuba. The poor in Cuba have easy access to healthcare. They will certainly live longer that the South Africans who perish at a youthful 50years of age or the Nigerians who die at a pathetic 47. The difference is not money. Nigeria [GDP $173billion] and South Africa [GDP $290bilion] both have much more money than Cuba [GDP $62billion]. The difference is not democracy either. Cuba is not in anyway democratic. So how is it that the poor in Cuba have it so good? They have a leadership that thinks outside Western textbook economics.

I am yet to hear the MDC or Zanu PF offer us anything in the way of such revolutionary policy.

Everyday – and I mean everyday – I read about rape cases and am eerily reminded of South Africa being touted over the years as the “rape capital of the world.” Our courts are no doubt kept busy by this violation, but there is one particular case that got me questioning the wisdom of the courts that perhaps evoked emotions and images of Sharia-like dispensation of justice as some know and prefer it.

In a story headlined “Teacher to do community service for statutory rape” [Chronicle, 11 January 2010], it was reported that a 39-year old Mberengwa teacher “was in a relationship” with a 14-year old Form Two pupil and had sex with her on several occasions. The teacher was sentenced to 105 hours of community service.

Here is how “the relationship” began: The teacher proposed love to the 14-year old, and forced the minor – the court admits this is minor despite the sentence handed out – after he confiscated her blouse while she was doing her laundry at a local borehole. To make mattes worse, the school head discovered “the affair” but took no action against the paedophile!

The teacher pleaded for leniency with the court saying he wanted to continue serving as a teacher and was his family’s breadwinner. Believe it or not, this worked with the magistrate – female for that matter!!  I’m still trying to understand why as this does not hold for mitigation for a crime that serious. Who can challenge the postulation that here is serial schoolgirl rapist in the making? Send him back to class and he is your typical recidivist, what with his daily interactions with the 14-year olds and also knowing from experience that he get nothing but a slap on the wrist for his roving eye? The law is an ass, and it is people like this magistrate who assify it!

The only “consolation” I guess is that the State has appealed against the sentence at the High Court, but it does show there are many things wrong with the application and interpretation of the law in Zimbabwe in dealing not only with rape cases but certainly across the whole criminal justice gamut.

No activists with sandwich boards demonstrating against such sentences? Who will protect these young girls from these randy savages whom they look up to in loco parentis? And obviously one has to ask the position or policy of the Ministry of Education on teachers who rape their students and tell the courts they “deserve the court’s leniency” because they love serving the country as teachers. It stands to reason that it’s not the teaching they love!