Last Saturday as a friend and I were driving along Borrowdale Road we witnessed a full commuter speeding at an estimated 120km/hr as compared to the 70km/hr speed limit. To make matters worse the driver was bullying other cars out of his way!

Commuter transport operators have become a law unto themselves. In a report published in The Herald last week, Inspector Chigome from the Zimbabwe Republic Police named commuter transport operators as the main culprits in road traffic accidents that have killed 1 500 people and injured more than 12 000.

The majority of the public have no choice but to take their lives into their hands and board a combi because what other transport options are there?

The police are useless to the public. The recent police blitz on combis ended in commuters having to walk several kilometres to and from work. This is not the first time the operators have taken out their frustrations on the public. In more than one incident, I along with other passengers, have been forced off a combi after complaining about many things, including fares that double or treble after leaving the commuter rank, change not being returned, reckless driving, or overloading.

Police corruption doesn’t improve matters either. I have witnessed for myself a commuter driver bribing the police to get a car that was obviously overloaded and unroadworthy past a roadblock.

This is no way to live. I have had enough. On Saturday I took this picture of the combis licence plate – ABJ 7892. For your own safety, if you see this combi don’t get on it. If you are driving and you see it on the roads, stay very far away from it.

Mona Eltahawy writing for The Africa Report discusses the power of new media in an article called Facebook Against Faceless Authority. Here it is:

Khaled Said was not the first Egyptian to be brutally beaten by the police. What was unprecedented was the number of Egyptians who have protested police brutality since the 28-year-old businessman died on June 6 – up to 8,000 at one silent protest in his hometown of Alexandria alone. On July 27, the two policemen initially connected to his death stood trial on charges of illegal arrest and excessive use of force. If convicted, they face three to fifteen years in prison.

Social media – Facebook, Twitter, YouTube and blogs – were central to organising those protests and to bringing together activists and many ordinary Egyptians who turned out to demand justice for Said. Around 3.4 million Egyptians use Facebook, meaning that Egypt has the largest subscriber base in the Arab world and 23rd-largest globally. One of the many Facebook groups launched in Said’s memory now has almost 250,000 fans.

Social media have connected Egyptians and amplified both the voices and the courage of those who want to protest against President Hosni Mubarak, who has been in power for 29 years.

Across the Arab world, these forums have given a voice to the voiceless, providing a platform for the most marginalised to challenge authority, be it political, social or religious.

Long ignored by the state-owned media, young people and women are using the Internet to reach those who had been most eager to ignore them.

In Saudi Arabia, which fuels most of the world’s cars but bars half of its population from driving, women’s rights activists have used Facebook and email to collect petitions against the driving ban. One of the activists, Wajeha al-Huwaider, posted a video on YouTube of herself driving as she narrated an open letter to the Saudi interior minister.

In Lebanon, Meem – a group of lesbian, bisexual and transgendered women – uses a website and Twitter to offer shelter and support.

The desire to take on both the current regime and the old guard of their own movement compels young Muslim Brotherhood members in Egypt to blog. One of them, Abdelmonem Hahmoud Ibrahim says that he started his blog Ana Ikhwan (I am a Muslim Brother) “so that I can show my true self”. The desire to express oneself and to circumvent censorship has created a thrilling equation in the Arab world: one person + the Internet = one very angry president.

Regimes throughout the region intimidate and arrest bloggers, which begs the question: what do all those rulers, in power for so long, have to fear?

Back in Egypt, young people who have known no other ruler than Mubarak and who realise that any one of them could have been Khaled Said, seize the chance to challenge the state and its once-absolute ownership of the narrative.

The majority of the Arab world is younger than 25 years old. The power of answering back – that is now the power of social media.

Some of the feedback we’ve received from members of the Kubatana community:

I’m very much worried about the so called ZESA load shedding especially in the area I live, Hatfield. Usually the cutoff is at 5.30pm and will be back at around 10pm and will also be off as early as 4.30am. We hardly use electricity. To my surprise the bills are just too much as we hardly use electricity. One wonders why such load shedding is like that in this area which is along the airport road. This road is usually used by government officials, diplomats, tourists, and investors. How can we have tourists and investors to this country when they are driving in the dark from the airport? This will obviously turn most of our potential investors and tourists away. Their first sight to the country of hope is just darkness and they will feel they will be throwing their money in the dark. My suggestion to this load shedding is that, cut offs should be done during the day, lets say from 9am to 4pm. Lets market our country for potential investors in light. I feel ZESA authorities should look into this matter with broad minds which are full of sales and marketing ideas. Lets market Zimbabwe to rebuild our economy.

——————————————————————

I am getting very agitated with the way Ruwa Local Board is managing the service delivery in the otherwise very quiet and potentially well managed surburb. For starters the board has simply resigned on the water provision aspect, they sit back and relax while the residents go for months on end without water. Awhile ago they used to provide water from a couple of boreholes located on the USAID side but those days are way behind us. Residents resorted to sink wells in their yards but due to the poor rainfall last season the watertable is now miserably low and all you get from the well is mud . . . is this not precipitating a cholera outbreak!!!! To add insult the board has the audacity to dispatch water meter readers for the drops that drip out of the taps once in a blue moon. The drips are so brown from the rusted pipes that you do not even dare use them for flushing the toilet because you will stain it forever. The refuse collection side is even more disappointing. They have a known schedule that the residents know and early in the morning on the particular day all households bring out the refuse outside their yards to be picked up . . . this is a mirage, the refuse is never collected for weeks on end. I just wish the Board could use their municipal police to announce in advance that they will not be picking up the refuse anytime soon and it stays hidden in the yards. I am so fed up of officials who sit in the office and do nothing except grow big tummies from the rates that we fork out every month.

The banning of SMS messaging in Mozambique is but one of several signs that both SMS (short message service) and the internet are changing the way media creates a national conversation in African countries, writes Russell Southwood on Pambazuka.

Read this very interesting article on the use of new media here but take note that Kubatana did not provide the MDC with an interactive voice response system for its phone in information service.

Okay so it’s official. Freshlyground have been banned from performing in Zimbabwe next month because of their Chicken to Change video. I know it’s official because I saw it on ZA News. Those puppets don’t lie.

Meanwhile, I’ve just made the Freshlyground Chicken to Change song my ringtone. Maybe now I’ll look forward to people phoning me . . .

You can download the ringtone here.

Zimbabwean people speak out . . . here are a few questions from a Kubatana subscriber.

1. When the municipal police raid vendors, where do they put the merchandise coz the bulk of times the raided stuff does not reach the police station?

2. Why do police raid people trying to make a living by selling when the council and the government they are serving can’t create jobs to absorb those people? Do they want to turn them all into thieves?

3. Where is the money being collected at Toll Gates going if roads remain that bad even around cities when the people collecting the money are cruising in modern-mech cars?

4. Besides getting high perks, chasing vendors from the streets, and involving in corrupt land deals what else do the council administrators do on a normal day?

It’s a disgrace, God help us.