A field and a ball made out of old plastic packets and twine. All you need to get started.

To provide Kenyans with a fair constitution, a panel of experts used 47,793 words. To derail it, someone secretly added two. The attempted sabotage occurred at the official government printer, which was producing copies of the proposed constitution ahead of a national vote on the law in August. The document had been praised for guaranteeing basic freedoms. But in a move that has caused public outrage and prompted an inquiry involving the attorney general and intelligence chiefs, someone at the printing plant was able to add the words “national security” to a key clause on fundamental rights. Nearly 2,000 copies of the altered constitution had been published by the time it was discovered. “It was an outrageous act, unbelievable,” said Otiende Amolo, a Kenyan  member of the committee that drafted the new laws. “The addition of those words meant that all rights could be abrogated in favour of whatever was deemed ‘national security’.” Though President Mwai Kibaki  has ordered a police investigation, the saboteur, widely assumed to be an individual or group opposed to the proposed constitution, has yet to be publicly identified.
- Xan Rice, The Guardian Weekly

Any honest analysis of the MDC post September 15, 2008 would indicate that apart from unsuccessfully declaring unilateral appointments by Mugabe as ‘null and void’ the MDC as we have known it over the years: courageous, confrontational, uncompromising and proactive has become alarmingly ineffective and compromised. Indeed, there might just well be some justification for the view that many in the MDC have become ‘comfortable’ in government and are more focused on enjoying the privileges of office than on challenging Mugabe and ZANU PF.
- Psychology Maziwisa

Joburg has been quiet for the past two days, no soccer action! We got used to rushing home and being stuck in traffic as people find their way to the stadiums. But in all this silence I spent time at the Team Village of the 32 teams taking part in the Football for Hope Festival which kicks off in Alexandra on Sunday.

Young people are taking part in a mixed 5 aside tournament which has no referee and where disagreements are resolved through dialogue. I spoke to two of them, 17 year old Hemanta Acharya and 18 year old Mubasher Hassan. They are part of the Football United Team from Australia. Both are refugees. Hemanta is Bhutanese and Hassan is Sudanese. Other team members are from Kenya, Iraq and Cyprus.

They are excited about being in South Africa and looking forward to making new friends from other teams. While they are here for the soccer tournament they will also be learning about being good leaders and HIV/AIDS amongst other issues.

Today, the soccer action returns with Ghana taking on Uruguay at Soccer City.

I’m wearing a t’shirt with the map of Africa and I feel like a Black Star!!!!

SW Radio Africa recently interviewed Tony Reeler head of the Research and Advocacy Unit (RAU) about the Zimbabwean crisis and what will resolve it. Read more here and below is an excerpt:

GONDA: And what are the main concerns of the people on the ground, especially the people that participated in the survey?

REELER: Well we asked them a very interesting question. We asked them what is the way forward? And we gave them a choice of – what are the three most important things for you to solve the problems with Zimbabwe? And that came back in rank order, three things. They said Number One – an end to violence, Number Two – free and fair elections and Number Three – democracy and those are very important things coming from ordinary citizens because that’s what has continuously emerged from the Afro-barometer surveys over the last five or six years – is they show that Zimbabweans have a very acute understanding of what democracy is, its manifestations and that they also have a very acute understanding that they don’t have a democracy.

So what you can see is Zimbabweans want a solution, they want a solution in a particular way, they want elections that are non-violent that restore democracy essentially. I think they also said there has been some improvement due to the inclusive government and the Global Political Agreement and they saw some improvements in health and a few improvements in education but they also saw many areas in which there was no improvement whatsoever. What we are hearing from discussions within communities are people who are deeply concerned about whether this Global Political Agreement and the inclusive government is working and people who are very concerned that there is a resolution to this crisis. And I think what people are saying is they understand quite clearly that the solution to a political crisis will be an election. That’s the Zimbabwean perspective. In other countries what used to happen was that you used to have military coups or rebellions as we’ve had to do to get rid of white colonial power here but Zimbabweans are saying they put their faith in an electoral process. That’s what they hope will resolve the crisis and clearly what that means is, is that people’s votes translate into the reality they expect and the majority of people, when they vote, expect a particular outcome, that they will in fact elect the party of their choice.