I’ve been following TechZim’s coverage of issues surrounding the registration of a .co.zw domain. The process is unnecessarily laborious and complicated and it opens up those who would register a Zimbabwean domain to exploitation by ISPs, who in many cases bundle their comparatively expensive hosting products with the domain registration. As a result a number of businesses and web portals register generic Top Level Domains (.com, .net. info etc). It is not possible to overstate the importance of hosting Zimbabwean business and content on the .co.zw domain space. That space is a national resource, and belongs to all Zimbabweans.

In an interview, founding editor of TechZim Limbikani Makani had this to say:

The big problem is that it’s all unclear. No one knows, and the few people that do know are the ISPs that do the registration. The truth is if you go to a registrar with your paperwork, they will register you. The problem is that they don’t make this information (registration requirements) available. Either they don’t have the resources, they don’t want to or they’re afraid. Afraid that if this becomes something that just anybody can do something negative might happen, or the resource that they’ve been feeding from might disappear, or it might get into the wrong hands. Because of that they’re afraid to just let go. I think they can let go. Is it too expensive? It’s actually not. ZISPA doesn’t charge the ISPs for domain registration at all. What they charge is a membership to ZIPSA which is $30, which is nothing to a big organisation like Utande or ZELCO. Unfortunately, there is not enough information out there about domain registration. The ZIPSA website has been updated in several years. ZISPA can immediately improve that. Secondly they can make the entire process simpler. They’re not making enough of an effort to make the informatio0n available to everyone.

There is nothing worse than a leader without backbone. If Mr Tsvangirai had hoped to go down in the annals of history as a defender of freedom, protector of human rights or as his books and publishers seem to indicate: that guy who finally defeated the Moo-gah-bee regime, he should aspire to lesser goals.

BBC NEWS Africa reports: Zimbabwe’s PM Morgan Tsvangirai in gay rights U-turn. Zimbabwe’s Prime Minister Morgan Tsvangirai has reversed his position on gay rights, saying he now wants them enshrined in a new constitution. He told the BBC that gay rights were a “human right” that conservative Zimbabweans should respect.

Yet last year the very same PM of Zimbabwe, who has been described ‘as a courageous and indefatigable symbol of resistance in the face of brutal repression’ declared that he agreed with Our Dear Leader’s position on the issue, and would not support the rights of LGBTI persons being enshrined in the Constitution.

What kind of leader completely changes position on something so crucial to the lives of thousands of Zimbabweans as their right to practice their sexuality as they see fit?

There is nothing courageous about finally being a part of government and doing nothing to change the laws, then worse, joining the other side in persecuting that minority. And there is nothing admirable about using the pain and suffering of people who have been persecuted by the government that is supposed to protect them to pander to Western media.

Read the GALZ statement here

Last week several Zimbabwean media sources reported the storming of a police station in Gweru by a crowd demanding to beat up three women suspects. The women allegedly had been sexually abusing men, and were arrested when they arrived at an accident scene asking to retrieve an estimated 30 condoms from a car that was involved. Reportedly, there is no legal basis for their arrest. Zimbabwean law does not recognise the rape of a man by a woman, and possession of used condoms is not illegal. In fact their continued detention based on suspicion of raping men is a violation of their constitutional rights. The women have only admitted to being sex workers.

Media outlets have been no less prejudiced on this matter than the police. Reportage of the case cannot be called unbiased, and could be termed salacious. One online publication even trawled Facebook, and published images of one of the suspects.

Comments on the Herald’s article pages include:

Ngavapiwe life sentence with hard labor, Izvezvi tichanzwa kuti they are out on bail and then they have gone into hiding! Please protect us and our children from such vampires
No bails just kills them

Speaking at the police station in Gweru one man is quoted as saying: ‘We are shocked with what is happening in our society where men are now being sexually-abused by women. But how can they make a living through such acts?’

And that’s exactly the point of the outrage. It is not that one human being sexually violated and exploited another human being. It is that women did this to men. Of the countless rape cases reported in the media, none, not even ones involving infants have sparked such an emotional reaction.

There is still a stiffer penalty for stock theft than for rape. Judges still hand down ten-year sentences to rapists and then suspend half of it for good behaviour. Never mind that in some cases the rape is premeditated, and accompanied by aggravated assault and threats. Sometimes the women and girls who are raped are married to their attacker. Yet there is no outrage. There are no elders protesting that this is not our culture and pleading for a return to sanity and traditional values. No outraged mothers and fathers baying for the blood of those who would rob their children of their innocence.  No men demanding the safety of their wives, sisters or daughters.  No mothers declaring ‘Not my child: enough is enough!’. No women’s groups and NGOs demanding that lawmakers stop deliberating on the importation of left hand vehicles and turn their attention to this more pressing issue.

Shame.

Sometimes something touches you so deeply that finding the words to express that experience is impossible. That’s how I feel about Poetry Africa at Book Café. I would like to write about the defiance in Xapa’s performance of HIStory, the beauty of TJ Dema’s articulation of womanhood, or even the happiness we in the audience felt as Didier Awadi performed in French because of the joy we could plainly see in his face. I don’t think my words would be adequate. So I’m going to share Harare, whose performance by Chris Abani moved me to tears.

harare
chris abani

his thoughts shed tears for what his people
have lost
Chirikure Chirikure

Downtown Harare. Pavements and nice trim
islands feel like the white Africa it used to be.
Its fading beauty arrested in the late seventies
feels like Lagos in the fade of colonialism.
–
But Yvonne says: Butterflies are burning.
Here.
This is kwela.
–
In the Quill Club, black journalists hold court,
say, Bob uses this land as his
private safari. The kudus are
nearly extinct. They play pool, chafing
against the government. We could be in
The Kings Head in Finsbury Park; a cold
London night. And the locals complaining
over warm pints about the native problem.
–
The still young woman smoking
a pipe against the wall of the museum
was once a guerrilla. Says, The men here fear me.
She knows all about killing.
Also about blowing smoke rings.

This is kwela.
–
In a market adjacent the poorest township
I finger useless trinkets, displaced as any tourist.
All the while ogling valuable-in-the-West
weathered barbershops signs
that I am too afraid to ask for.
–
Everywhere people wear cosmopolitan selves
but tired, like jaded jazz singers reconciled to loss.
Hats are perched at that jaunty angle that makes you
think that all washed-out things, like Cuba, are cooler
than they are. Is this kitsch?
–
And everyone says: The trouble with Bob is…
And this is kwela.
–
In the Book Cafè, a vibrant subculture:
Art, music, and poetry are alive and well.
Rich whites slum with African: for a moment
we all believe it is possible. This. Here. Now.
–
A Rasta in Bata shoes does the twist
to a Beach Boys tune played by
a balding white man in a night club.
This is kwela.
–
The older white farmer in the five-star hotel
still calls this country Rhodesia.
Says, No offense, but you bloody Africans
can’t run anything right.
I have him removed.
–
It was not always so,
and still I have questions.
Yes. Yes. Even this
is kwela.