Since the introduction of the Internet in Zimbabwe a lot of people have started to embrace social media as a means to share information and to socialize. In countries in the Middle East social media was mainly used to cover the Arab spring protests where citizen journalists, only armed with a camera phone and Internet connection, managed to cover the events. Recently in Zimbabwe the press has been awash with stories of poor service delivery. The most recent and painful one being of a child who was seriously burnt by naked ZESA cables, the child eventually died. The good thing about citizen journalism is its done by citizens reporting on issues relating to their day to day lives and one can it do it without incurring any costs. Since an informed citizenry is a basic principal of self-governance, citizen journalists are the people who report from the ground and this makes their stories more credible than most of the profit driven articles we now read from the established media houses.

Chen Guangcheng, whose given name means “Light, Truth,” has become a powerful symbol of a common man standing up to the state. The following collection of Chen images, many widely circulated online, vividly illustrates the powerful emotional reaction his situation elicited from many Chinese netizens. Despite widespread censorship, Chinese Internet users are skilled at evading the controls and expressing themselves with creativity and humor. Since Chen was released from prison and placed under de facto house in 2010, numerous cartoons, drawings, photographs, and other images created by supporters have helped bring his story from rural Shandong province to millions of people in China and around the world.  (Source: Foreign Policy Magazine)

Check out the funky slide show that includes a spoof of Nike.

I was really pleased to see the Parliamentary Monitoring Trust (Zimbabwe) telling it like it is … their focus in their recently published Parliamentary Monitor is on Members of Parliament who don’t attend Parliamentary sittings.

According to the PMTZ, Heneri Dzinotyiwei, MDC-T, Budiriro hasn’t shown his face at 26 sittings. Whilst Jonathan Moyo, Zanu PF, Tsholotsho North has been missing for 31 and Jameson Timba, MDC-T, Mount Pleasant has been absent for 29 sittings.

Are there legitimate reasons for this high level of non-attendance? Where do ordinary Zimbabweans access information like this which will help them make informed decisions when an election comes around? It’s important that we vote according to performance. When ordinary people don’t do their jobs properly they get fired. Let’s fire MPs that renege on their duties.

Here’s an excerpt from the PMTZ’s bulletin:

Then as chance would have it, my mom attended a wedding in Harare and she came back complaining that she had seen very big houses. “And why would people build such big houses, covering this whole yard,” she said waving across our big rural yard. She then said that she had been told that politicians lived there. “This has made me realise that we vote them so that they become rich. As such, I will not vote again. I will get into the ballot box to spoil my vote. I will mark 3 times, I know how to do it as we were taught to vote.” The reasoning in my mom’s argument was an eye opener. The intellectuals may continue to argue it is going to be difficult to get that vote out. Maybe the two intellectuals were wrong. They may have been arguing in the abstract. But for my mother, it was a resolution she could have made. We may have apathy. Or more spoiled ballots. The two may be a result of lack of voter education. But using my mom’s argument, the spoilt papers are not out of ignorance but a protest.

Subscribe to the electronic version of the Parliamentary Monitor by emailing: pmtzimbabwe [at] gmail [dot] com

Four headlines on the front page of The Herald over Workers Day caught my eye:

- RBZ retrenchees stage demo
- Ethanol plant to lay off 4,500
- Infighting in labour unions blights Workers Day
- May Day a damp squib

Certainly, Workers Day has lost some of its luster. But surely this is less because of infighting in the labour unions, and more because soaring unemployment (of which RBZ and the ethanol plant are just two examples) has made being a worker – and particularly of being a worker in a formal sector job in which you are accessible to organising in the way trade unions have traditionally operated – an impossibility for the vast majority of Zimbabweans?

If you don’t catch the media’s attention then your protest is bound to go unrecorded … here two guys demonstrate outside the North Gauteng High Court. In case you were wondering … they don’t like the idea of the government introducing e-tolls.

Photo courtesy of Taurai Maduna/Eyewitness News