When the 31 July election date was first announced, the majority of our SMS subscriber expressed their shock and disbelief, and believed that Prime Minister Morgan Tsvangirai was right to state that this date was illegal and unconstitutional.

As a follow up, we let these subscribers know about yesterday’s Constitutional Court decision keeping the Harmonised Election date at 31 July. They were largely unimpressed with the Court’s lack of independence, and concerned about the way this move has undermined the election’s legitimacy before it’s even been held.

In their own words:

• That’s undemocratic for the court to make such a cruel decision
• There must be some hidden agenda from those who are dictating the election dates
• But why, but who, but which, but what.  Are we back to 2000?
• It shows how unconstitutional this constitutional court is, its a matter to be decided by three parties in govnt as SADC said.
• Very sad only God knows
• Zimbabweans should decide on that date whom they wanted to be the President
• This is part of a rigging strategy as many people are still to get registered and necessary reforms are yet to be implemented.
• Let Mugabe run his usual solitary race!
• Sadc should help us this time zanu pf wants to rig elections free and fair elections Tsvangirai will win a landslide victory
• Kubatana! If elect day has been declared then election campaign material should b brought to the ground 4 da campaign teams
• We’re headed for the ugliest electoral fraud in recorded history, mark my words.
• This is ridiculous. How come Zim lets bob get away with everything? Enough.
• Says who? With no free broadcasting, the same old gang playing the same old tricks in ZEC, ZNA, CIO & ZRP/BSAP, no money & violence increasing daily even within ZANU? It’s time to call their bluff

The us of cell phone technology is increasing in Zimbabwe with nine in every ten people having access to a mobile phone. Making calls, receiving and sending text messages are some of the major uses of mobile phones. In a sample size of 1200 adults who took part in a survey conducted by Mass Public Opinion Institute (MPOI) in October 2012, nearly 24% of people have access to the Internet and they access the Internet using mobile phones. Of those interviewed 21% use the Internet for social media and 16% use it to get news.

Radio is still the leading source of information, and among the radio stations in Zimbabwe, the Zimbabwe Broadcasting Corporation’s radio stations ranked as the most common source of information for public, political and current affairs in the country.

People in Zimbabwe place a lot of trust in information coming from schools and religious leaders both in urban and rural areas. But very few have trust in councils and government representatives as sources of information. Since its inception in 2009, the Joint Monitoring and Implementation Committee remains unknown to about 62% of the people who took part in the survey, and in areas like Matebeleland North and South people had problems accessing JOMIC.

An overwhelming response from people who took part in the National Census show that almost every household was covered in the census as the country’s ten provinces scored above 90% in visits to households during the census.

As the nation prepares for elections 59% of young people interviewed are affiliated to a certain political party and Mashonaland Central recorded the highest number of youths who are active in party politics whilst Bulawayo youth have less interest as shown by a low figure of 36%.

However fear of political intimidation during election campaigns is still high and many young people are uncomfortable talking about politics. 71% think that in the event of political violence being perpetrated by any political party, reporting it to the police is the most effective way of dealing with the situation. 56% believe the police have the influence to stop violence.

A high percentage of young people interviewed strongly agree that women should have the same opportunities as men in getting elected to political office and of those who agree, 71 % also believe that women should have equal rights and should be treated the same as men.

On democracy and one party rule many youths denounce autocracy, 75 % disapprove of military rule and a majority believe open and regular elections should be used to choose leaders. A democracy with problems is how young people view Zimbabwe but youths are optimistic that five years from now the economy will be better with improved living conditions.

Yesterday, Zimbabwe’s Constitutional Court confirmed 31 July as the polling date for the country’s Harmonised Election. The Court’s decision was unanimous, and rejected all applications which had been pushing for an extension of the election date.

The election date case was being heard by the Constitutional Court because it was their decision of 31 May which created the 31 July deadline, which Mugabe responded to on 13 June, in the first place.

The push for the election date extension was motivated by several factors, including:

• The llegal act by President Mugabe which used the Presidential Powers Act to change the electoral laws
• The fact that the election date required nomination court to be held before the voters roll had closed, which is unprocedural
• The fact that the Global Political Agreement stated that election dates should be decided in consultation, not declared unilaterally as Mugabe did

However, as frustrating as yesterday’s decision is, it is not surprising. The government had several ways around the original Constitutional Court ruling. Amongst other things, the actual ruling says the President should proclaim the election “as soon as possible,” and  that it “should be” (note: not must be) held no later than 31 July. As Veritas points out, the President should have relied on the principle Lex non cogit ad impossibilia [the law does not require one to do the impossible].

Unfortunately, the President went ahead to declare an illegal and unconstitutional election date, and the Constitutional Court has confirmed that this date holds.

Last week, Zimbabwe’s political parties submitted their candidates at Nomination Court, though only the MDC led by Welshman Ncube has made its candidate list publicly available so far. Zanu PF and MDC-T are planning to launch their party manifestos this weekend.

So much for Morgan Tsvangirai’s promise that he “will not accept a situation where Zimbabweans will yet again be railroaded and frog-marched to another illegitimate election.” That is exactly where Zimbabwe is headed on 31 July.

No Laughing Matter? : Humor And Protest Arts
Deadline: 30 July 2013

The University of Zimbabwe and Savanna Trust invites you to submit your abstracts for conference presentations on the 24th and 25th of October 2013 in Harare, Zimbabwe.

In both popular and academic imagination, protest arts have been generally associated with ‘angry’ and ‘gloomy’ ‘subversive’ images. Consequently limited attention has been paid to the use of humour in protest arts. The possibilities, complexities and limitations of humour in protest arts deserve serious recognition. Several questions can be raised in this regard.  Why in the first place do artists and the public include humour in their protest arts?  Is humour compatible with radical transformative protest arts?  What are the aesthetic and ideological implications of deploying humour in protest arts?  How have state actors, elites and the general public responded to humour in protest arts?

Sub-Themes
-Aesthetic quality, humour and protest arts
-Ideological possibilities/complications of humour in protest arts, (eg gender, class, race, ethnicity disability political identity etc)
-The reception of humour in protest arts
-Humour, ethics and morality
-Writing/performing humour in protest arts
-Media/technology, humour and protest arts v    Protest music and humour
-Humour in protest marches and demonstrations
-Humour in protest and graffiti
-Popular jokes and/as protest arts

Submit your abstracts in not more than 350 words to: kchikonzo [at] arts [dot] uz [dot] ac [dot] zw and copy paifst [at] gmail [dot] com

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.