You just have to ask yourself if any national project will ever escape the opprobrium of political interference. Now we read that the the feared spooks are taking over the Zimbabwe national census as Zanu PF proxies. Small wonder then some people have no problem giving false information to enumerators or simply telling off the enumerators like they would do to ZBC license inspectors. All this because members of the public think the CIO feeds this into data some database to monitor their political activities! People believe these things, and it is thanks to reports that the not-so-secret agents are doing the bidding of Zanu PF in the counting project for nefarious purposes. And who will be surprised if the census findings are disputed as we have seen in the past?

The battle to control the Internet rages on as some countries push to have Internet governance fall under the United Nations (UN). Countries like Russia, China and India are at the forefront to have the UN granted the mandate to run the Internet. The United States of America is currently enjoying the dominance in running the Internet space through bodies like ICANN (Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers) which co-ordinates codes and numbering systems and deciding on new Internet addresses. The US feels the current Internet regulations are working effectively and any proposals for change will create  “greater regulatory burdens on the international telecom sector”.

My friend was recently stopped at a police roadblock in Harare. The police officer requested to see her license, which she showed him. She said he went on to check the motor vehicle license disk whilst still examining the driver’s license. And when he got back to the driver’s window he requested to see the fire extinguisher and other safety accessories. She opened the boot where her fire extinguisher, two reflective triangles, reflective vest, spare wheel, jack and the wheel spanner were. To her surprise the police officer told her to hang the reflective vest on the driver’s seat.  And yes she was so shocked. It’s true that most motorists in the city have their reflective vests hung on the driver’s seat but is it mandatory for one to do so? When she shared the story I was equally shocked but for a while I thought she was joking until she convinced me that it happened. I thought that this was Zimbabwe police’s ‘latest’ line in trying to find fault with motorists.

This morning I overheard a proud parent showing another her young son’s penmanship homework. She was thrilled with how tidy his writing was – and how he stayed inside the lines.

I want to be the parent who’s thrilled when her daughter writes outside the lines. Surely that’s where progress is made in this world – by people who don’t stay inside the confines we prescribe for them?

Okay. So maybe it’s the same world over. But I found the headlines from this weekend’s papers particularly depressing:

• Go to hell, Tsvangirai tells Generals (The Standard)
• Mugabe wants deadlock on constitution (The Standard)
• Armed forces averted coup, says Shiri (The Herald – Talking not about any specific or recent coup, but about a coup that might have been in the era of the rapidly collapsing Zim Dollar)
• COPAC Management Committee exposed (The Sunday Mail)

Is this really as pathetic as our politics is? Or is it just as good as our local press can do?