Last month images from the Worldwide Developers Conference depicted that the technology industry was male dominated. Just recently a Random Hacks of Kindness (RHoK) event was held in Harare and the images too lamented on how males dominate the technology industry. Setting aside an absence of our sistas, I just loved the whole idea behind this RhoK event where the techies used existing platforms such as Ushahidi, biNu and FrontlineSMS to build software to help fight corruption.

TechZim has published a part 1 report from the RHoK team. In this report of the day one, the biNu challenge winning applications were:

- An app which allows you to submit to and read reports in an Ushahidi installation from within biNu and

- A ‘Neighborhood watch’ application which allow you to report crimes so that people are better able to avoid dangerous areas.

Other applications which came up were:
- Work Board – A biNu app which allows people/organisations to outsource skills. It’s going to kill the CV
- biNu Browser – An app which allows you to browse the web from within biNu. Think of it as ‘Opera Mini on steroids’
- Recipes – A cooking assistant for cultural food. Those who watched David Bhers presentation where he said that ‘the internet is currently in America but we can bring it to Zimbabwe’ know the value of this app for Zimbabwe
- Vota – A voter registration app for Zimbabweans. Don’t tell anyone but I’m kinda glad this app wasn’t launched sooner because then I’d have no excuse for not being a registered voter
- Lotto – A mobile lotto from within biNu that lets you bet with small amounts. In his presentation, the presenter mentioned something about there being a gambler in every one of us. Very true (IMHO)
- biNu WhatsApp – An app that lets you send messages to WhatsApp users from within biNu. I know what you are going to ask and the answer is: Yes! It actually worked
- Crime watch – A biNu app which lets you capture what crimes have happened in our area. And I mean capture as in ‘with the camera on your feature phone’
- COZW – A local news aggregator. They are trying to make the RSS news reader that comes with biNu look amateur
- Bonki – A dating application which lets you pick which of you Facebook friends you want to date and will only send you both notifications when you select each other

I found all these interesting. Looking forward to reading the second report on the next challenge carried out. Zimbabwe surely has some creative minds in the technology industry; more should be done to bring this major talent out and who knows in our next election we will register to vote online.

This morning I heard a guy say “Ah, that Chris Mutsvangwa is a hard headed fellow.” Pressed by a colleague who asked “What has Mutsvangwa done this time,” the first fellow simply continued, “Ah, he is just impossible!”

I sensed he was referring to Mutsvangwa’s performance at the SAPES Trust public meeting where the apoplectic Cde stormed out during proceedings because the audience and panelists did not take kindly to his comments that all of them should be grateful to Zanu PF for giving them anything from ministerial jobs to the freedom they presently enjoy.

The arrogance was galling.

It was classic Mutsvangwa having given the same condescending remarks live on national television during a debate on the constitution where panelists included Qhubekani Moyo (MDC-N), Jessie Majome (MDC-T), Blessing Vava and Job Sikhala.

Mutsvangwa simply dismissed them, telling them that they should be grateful to Zanu PF for giving them free university education, thank Zanu PF for ending white minority, else they would still be serfs in a white man’s world.

At the SAPES public meeting, the arrogance Mutsvangwa portrayed, and what incensed the guy I referred to above, only highlights Zanu PF’s perverted sense of entitlement and “ownership” of the country and its people.

You cannot own people as if you are some feudal lord, but then the dictatorship of Zanu PF only highlights that indeed the party is steeped in the feudalism of yore where it continues to see everyone as vassals!

How many times have you heard President Mugabe say “my people?”

I certainly ain’t anyone’s person! God’s YES’s, man’s NO!

But then good thing for the SAPES meeting that Paul Themba Nyathi was there to remind Mutsvangwa that he (Nyathi) fought for the country and he certainly ain’t Zanu PF!

There are many lessons to be drawn for Zanu PF arrogance. And these lessons are what the party itself will learn rather painfully!

Yesterday a friend made a remark that puts the coming polls into perspective.

He said surely Mugabe knows he is no longer wanted by the people of Zimbabwe, and even if he loses, he may still simply refuse to accept defeat.

I said, well, hasn’t that happened before?

And with a guy like Mutsvangwa fighting from Mugabe’s corner, we could sure still have a long way to go before we get to the Zimbabwe we want.

And again it does magnify the folly of these rushed polls, because Mutsvangwa and other so-called Zanu PF hawks seem to know they hold the four aces, and these are not hidden anymore! What arrogance.

A country whose politics makes a tradition of tragic deaths through suspicious automobile accidents can only have very little to claim as an “open society.”

Zimbabwe’s roads after independence are littered with deaths of prominent individuals who everyone knows had become a pain in the ass of the oligarchs. These were individuals expressing their version of the truth as opposed to the “official” line peddled by spin doctors and apologists of the political establishment. The dead men’s crusades would be perfectly in order in any country that is not North Korea.

That this continues to happen long after independence where Africa’s liberation struggle was short-circuited and chaos-riddled by ideological wars defined by the U.S.S.R and the U.S.A and went on to claim anyone from Patrice Lumumba to Amílcar Cabral to Thomas Sankara, to Zimbabwe’s own revolution that ate its own children from Josiah Magama Tongogara to Sydney Malunga points to a political tradition that is inimical to the very ideals the “new democrats” purport to espouse.

In Zimbabwe no accident that claims a prominent politician is an accident at all. It is just one of those things we have come to accept.

What is disturbing is that despite this, it still remains the chosen modus operandi of eliminating perceived opponents.

This cannot be belaboured here, yet the impunity is troubling.

Small wonder that many people here await the day not of healing political wounds but a day of retribution where those fingered in these acts of political assassination will have their testicles squeezed in the people’s angry court.

That Zimbabweans have an “insider” tipping prominent individuals that they are targets of assassination only makes this more disturbing because apparently there is very little or nothing these people can do to avoid what is increasingly their inevitable demise.

It’s only recently that one “powerful” Zanu PF don said of Energy Mutodi’s claim that the don wanted Mutodi killed: “If I wanted him (Mutodi) killed do you think he would still be alive?”

Please note that the deadline for this opportunity has been extend to 24th June! Check it out below:

I see there is a lot of excitement ahead of elections about worthy and unworthy candidates. This is normal in any contestation of worldviews, especially within our political space here in Zimbabwe where divergent views for some mean kung fu kicks to the head of the interlocutor with whom you don’t agree.

What I find curious is that 33 years after independence, enters into public debate the issue of “qualifications” for those aspiring for public office. It tells a more profound story that meets the eye. When did Zimbabweans realise that this is what will solve their problems?

Critics have, not surprisingly, trashed such calls as breeding some misplaced elitism in the arena of public service as they the critics imagine it.

That this country has one of the highest PhDs per capita across the African continent and has still been steered down an abyss is a no brainer.

What is curious is that while people “obsess” about qualifications, they are the same people who will tell you that the real world only responds to intelligent behavior that is not gleaned from devouring tomes whose value to human development and understanding the universe is questionable.

But that’s a criticism we hear all the time, and it reads like that old aphorism that people who say money isn’t everything are usually people who don’t have the money themselves!

Money is everything, some have retorted, and if we are to conflate the two, money and education, another logical fallacy quoted elsewhere becomes relevant: that a rich man can never be wrong, and therefore you have no reason taking a poor fellow’s opinions seriously!

That is how Zimbabweans have tended to develop their own knowledge systems in the cruel world of the 21st century, but it remains to be seen if the real world has been successfully manipulated by the literati so to speak to make it a better place.

And of course this being Zimbabwe where there is always emphasis to push one’s chest out and claim one academic degree or another, some have said anyone who speaks ill of “educated leaders” wants the country to be led by dunces.

And that tells you the level of “education” the people in this debate have! Isn’t it ironic?

I have to agree with Zimbabwe’s Deputy Chief Justice Malaba, who has said that the Constitutional Court’s ruling that elections in Zimbabwe must be held by 31 July “defied logic.”

As the Guardian points out, Malaba critiqued the ruling for contradictorily both censuring Mugabe for being in breach of his constitutional responsibilities “and at the same time authorising him to continue acting unlawfully” by proclaiming a July date.

And this is exactly the problem. Never mind larger issues like media reform, or the tricky question of redefining just what Zimbabweans are voting for in terms of proportional representation, a new addition with the new Constitution. As David Coltart helpfully spelt out to the Daily News, there are a number of basic steps that have to happen on the way to an election date. All of this means that Mugabe can’t, actually, declare today that an election will be held on or before 31 July – It’s too late for that. So how does Zimbabwe’s Constitutional Court set an arbitrary date by which an election must be held – knowing that this will force illegal actions – and thereby violating the rights not only of the disenfranchised voters who brought the legal petition in the first place, but all of Zimbabwe’s other voters?

We asked some of our subscribers whether elections before 31 July could be free and fair, and they were sceptical:

• These elections won’t be free and fair
• No to July 31 election. Not enough time for reforms
• It’s a plan from Zanu PF and its allies not to hold credible elections. It’s risky coz the issue of reforms aren’t ripe.

“Zimbabwe’s authorities cannot expect to create a rights-respecting environment ahead of elections in the context of repression, harassment, and intimidation of civil society activists,” Human Rights Watch’s Tiseke Kasambala said in March.

Personally, it’s hard not to feel like this is playing right into Mugabe’s hands. He gets to “declare” elections without critical reforms because not doing so would be in violation of “the independence of the judiciary.” Meanwhile, the fact that actually having the election before 31 July would, at this stage, require a violation of some of the steps which, legally, have to happen before an election? Well, when did this government ever let the law stop them from doing what they want?

In short, it’s just not possible to have legal elections by the 31st of July, never mind free and fair ones, or credible ones.  Oh yeah – When did that ever stop them either?