I am currently developing a Ward 7 (Harare City Council – Strathaven, Avondale, Alex Park, Gun Hill) directory, so people who live here can also buy and play here. It’s about building community, getting to know your neighbours. I walk from shop to church to police station to school to sports club to next shop, and get the contact details for public consumption.

I am amazed at how many places, mainly shops, but even a hospital; do not want to give out information.

“What do you want to know for?”
“Why should we tell you?”
“We can’t give that information out”
“What will you do with it?”

Is this the legacy of thirty years of democracy? That Zimbabweans are so mistrustful that they will not tell the public what the phone number of their shop is? Do they believe ‘Big Brother’ is watching them with CCTVs, Internet devices, etc? Is there some conspiracy I am unknowingly a part of by gathering their (not even private) information?

Or do Zimbabweans simply mistrust their government (unity or otherwise), and have such fear of the ‘authorities’. Most public establishments have a posted on the sign board outside on the street – which is why I have gone in to talk to them – but they are afraid to let anyone take any details. Has the government grown so far away from the people … a favourite phrase from so many liberation speeches of the 50s and 60s, (from Lincoln’s Gettysburg Address)? We want a “government, of the people, by the people, and for the people”. And what have we got? A government of elites, by elites, for elites; we have ‘Representatives’ that do not drive or walk the same streets, do not buy in the same shops, do not have children in the same schools, do not see the same doctors, as us.

Or do I look like a Nigerian spammer? Is it just me they don’t trust? Why is there such fear, belligerence, refusal, denial, and hostility, towards giving the community information that will make them find you, come into your shop, and buy something?

Protests in Turkey are getting a lot of press attention and social media coverage. With images like these showing inspiring acts of defiance and public courage, it is not hard to know why.

I found this article, about why Taksim is not Tahrir – but how “social media fuelled protests” still have a certain style, very useful. Amongst other things, Zeynep Tufekci writes, social media style protests share these eight characteristics:

• Lack of organized, institutional leadership
• A feeling of lack of institutional outlet
• Non-activist participation
• Breaking of pluralistic ignorance
• Organized around a “no” not a “go”
• External Attention
• Social Media as Structuring the Narrative
• Not Easily Steerable Towards Strategic Political Action

Tufekci points out that, in part because of these characteristics, social media style protests won’t topple governments by themselves. But they do provide important opportunities to signal dissent, and to show those who might be dissatisfied with certain elements of government that they are not alone.

Obert Hodzi thinks that the African Union @ 50 is a dream deferred and that the ‘old boys club’ needs a serious overhaul. Here you go:

The African Union has long been accused of being an ‘Old Boys Club’ with neither political will nor a genuine drive to see a reformed Africa. With virtually all African countries being members one would expect nothing short of a vibrant organization capable of stamping its authority when it comes to promoting good governance principles, human rights obligations and purging the scourge of impunity across the continent. 50 years on, Africa stills gruels under various forms of oppression and lack of accountability.

The recent stampede by African leaders to condemn the International Criminal Court (ICC) for ‘race hunting’ in Africa and the clamor to let go Kenyatta, Ruto and Al Bashir is just but one of the many barometers to gauge African Union’s commitment to good governance, transparency and rule of law. It is not just, Al Bashir and Kenyatta but also its response to the Zimbabwean, Swazi, eastern Democratic Republic of Congo and Madagascan crises of governance and general disregard to good governance and human rights obligations that worries many. Mugabe, the President of Zimbabwe, after the much condemned June, 28, 2008 election in his country is on record for saying of African Union members: “We have never interfered in their domestic affairs. Never ever. And now we want a country which wants to point a finger at us and say ‘you have done wrong’. I want to see that finger and see whether it’s clean or dirty”. With the exception of a few leaders like Ian Khama of Botswana no one responded to Mugabe’s challenge. Who then can respond to Al Bashir or Kenyatta? Who among African leaders is clean enough to lay a finger on the two and many others, let alone execute the International Criminal Court’s warrant of arrest against them?

Truth be told, there seem to be no ‘African solution to African problems’ nor is the ‘African Renaissance’ rhetoric anything more than a dream. History proves it. Over a decade after its inception, the African Court on People’s and Human Rights has heard only a few cases; the African Peer Review Mechanism has only had a few volunteers while the New Partnership for Africa’s Development, which aimed at fostering good governance principles and economic liberalization in Africa was dismissed by many as a western initiative. Today, the ICC faces the same old demon; the African Union continues to urge its member states not to cooperate with the ICC first on Al Bashir’s case and now on Kenyatta’s. The enthusiasm with which African countries like South Africa have heeded that call begs a lot of questions: To what extent are African leaders willing to overlook grave human rights atrocities to protect their fellows? Can the AU be trusted with the mandate of ensuring and enforcing accountability, good governance and human rights across the continent? Could Africans afford a good night’s sleep unless the AU is transformed by the renewal of its member states’ leaders? Are any of the African leaders’ conscience clean enough to formulate policies to purge impunity enjoyed by most of them, and are their hands clean enough to execute those policies without fear or favor?

It is this multitude of questions that confronts us today. Possibly it is high time that African leaders are taken to task, both on a national and continental level. It is imperative that the civil society and dreamers of a better governed Africa take their governments to task regarding some of the decisions they make at the AU. It is high time Civil Society Organizations start campaigning for reforms in the AU bearing in mind that unless the AU transforms from an ‘old Boys’ Club’, Africans will continue to suffer at the hands of oppressive leaders who enjoy unquestioned impunity and no reprimand from the continental body.

A report today says Zanu PF “recently acquired 550 vehicles, – an assortment of single and double cab 4X4 vehicles Toyota Hilux, Nissan NP300, Ford Ranger and Mazda BT50s valued at USD14$million.” All this from a party supposedly broke? And was it not only this month that we read that cops had impounded MDC-T bikes on allegations that the motorbikes “were smuggled into the country?” SMH

Groupon Inc former CEO was fired on 1 March 2013 and he said, “After four and a half intense and wonderful years as CEO of Groupon, I’ve decided that I’d like to spend more time with my family. Just kidding – I was fired today. If you’re wondering why… you haven’t been paying attention, from controversial metrics in our S1 to our material weakness to two quarters of missing our own expectations and a stock price that’s hovering around one quarter of our listing price, the events of the last year and a half speak for themselves. As CEO, I am accountable.” This is what he wrote in a memo to the people of Groupon. What attracted me here is that he wrote in the most candid way that most of us struggle to do.

On 11 October 2010 Newsday published a story entitled ‘perpetrators apologise for political violence. In Matebeleland South, Zanu Pf member Makheyi Ncube lifted up his hands in front of the whole community and confessed his involvement in the 2008 election violence and the people were appeased by the humility he showed. Here is a man who did not choose the finger pointing solution but rather went head on with the problem in question. 2008 stands out as a very bad year in the history of Zimbabwe and I am surprised that there is no political party which has stood up to accept not even a single wrong.

Zimbabwe lost more than 300 hundred lives to political violence. Sometimes I get so angry to the extent that I feel that I have to be alone at a secluded place because some of the stories we had prior to the June 27 elections were so painful. Zimbabwean politics has in the past three decades lacked men of valour who not only think of today but uphold a quality of forecast and goal. If an honourable man apologises, he will only look stupid today but he knows the value of time and process of healing. In five years time when he starts preaching peace and campaigning again for re-election, it is easy for the people to see the sincerity in his talk because he is a man who sets a precedent of standing for the truth rather than justifying evil behaviour.

I am not a politician by profession myself but the bible that I read in John 8 vs 32 says to both me and the politicians that, ‘And you shall know the truth and the truth shall set you free’. If a politician knows the overwhelming evidence that his supporter killed someone (truth), what more soothing (free) would he need in his campaign camp than this?

I think a man who does not accept his own failures is just but an ignorant liar and should never be taken seriously because if he falters, the next thing is that he wants to craft a patch to make it an excuse to cover his own junk. Only noble and patient men do the honourable thing to accept their flaws. In Shona people say, ‘munhu anomira patsvina dzake’ (a man stands with his own dirt). The moment you try to justify your wrong doings, you will force other innocent people to step in and deal with your dirt.

While millions have “religiously” embraced social media with the kind of enthusiasm perhaps not seen since the invention of the Gutenberg press, this has, predictably perhaps, come at a price.

Well, for that little thing called social etiquette, which is set to have knock on advertising traffic on these portals.

Citizens of social media spaces have lapped up on the anonymity offered here where you can create user accounts under various aliases and post all manner of both palatable and unpalatable stuff.

And raw bigotry, sexual, or otherwise, has been just but one bane to afflict these spaces where disparaging “sexual jokes” and what some are calling Facebook Rape, has become “normal.” Talk about the well-worn phrase “normalizing the abnormal.”

And this is stuff usually not uttered in any other setting but has with increasing audacity found its way into these very public spaces called social media.

Facebook is now being lobbied to act and this is something FB cannot ignore.

Its advertisers are being targeted by lobbyists, and for a company with over 1 billion users, and as it is agreed that with such numbers, social networks can indeed make a lot of moolah, Facebook can only but pay attention.

Called the the #FBrape campaign’s strategy it seeks to “hold Facebook accountable for the misogynistic content of its users by pressuring advertisers.”

And misogynistic content sure abounds, and for Ndebele and Shona readers, this is all too familiar and we all know how raw vulgarity spoken or written in our own languages can be.

Yet for some this call to “block” offensive posts can very easily be seen by advocates of free speech as militating against the very ideals of such platforms, namely that there is no censorship.

The twist of course being that the average individual lives by moral codes that would be universally applicable, and this is apparently not so considering the #Facebook rape campaign that has been launched: Facebook rape is cool for some.

It is in essence a call for FB to closely look at its content policy without infringing on individual rights, yet I still find it contradictory that some still see it as a “human right” to freely express themselves on “your” wall using all sorts of “unprintable” stuff!

It is the same freedom they demand that should tell them to respect other people’s space, no?

It would be interesting to see how seriously these issues are taken in a developing country like ours where one can go to any FB page and be met by shocking stuff written in our vernacular dialects.

And remembering that ours is a land where all sorts of homophobic expression is hailed where you can label anyone you don’t not agree with and this supposedly being the ultimate insult thanks to our dear leader.

It’s a space to watch as advertising traffic also targets Zimbabwean users.

It would be quite an undertaking for people whose first language is not English to have a lobby at that scale as seen by the #Facebook rape campaign.

But then Facebook, has already made “promises to train its content moderators (and an entire planet of actual users) to flag and remove violent content.”

Despite such things as “blocking abusive user” some comments can still be found on some pages administered by Zimbabweans, and a case in point could well be the one launched after Big Brother housemates were announced with a page created to vote out Zimbabwe’s female rep.

It is the kind of language that Women, Action, & the Media (WAM!) who set up the #FBrape campaign want blocked from the site, but has become part of an acceptable lexicon despite what is seen by many as the unapologetic chauvinism that accompanies it. It is curious that some of the comments have been attributed to female followers of Big Brother! Solidarity, no?

Facebook has already made a commitment to keep vigilant, however admitting that “these are complicated challenges and raise complex issues. Our recent experience reminds us that we can’t answer them alone.”

And by that they mean these questions will be answered with the help of rapists who prowl the FB looking for victims!

Are we men yet?