I don’t know about you but I find the letters page one of the most interesting parts of any newspaper. This week there was a great letter in the Zimbabwe Independent from someone in Harare (they preferred to remain anonymous) commenting on the Zimbabwe Government’s intention to place members of the Central Intelligence Organisation (CIO) in Internet Cafes to spy on freelance journalists accused of publishing bad stories about Zimbabwe. The writer tells us two things:

- that freelance journalists wouldn’t actually be that daft to use a public space to publish their articles, instead they’d more likely use a friend’s computer and Internet connection

- its rumoured that online news sites like Zimonline actually receive their stories from state scribes who write their articles on state time and using the state’s resources like computers and connectivity

Of course there’s also the issue of goonpower – are there enough of them to trawl all the Internet Cafes of the country on the lookout for wanna be cyber-agitators? We think not.

And anyway, the word will out! One way or another. And to remind us of this just recently we published an amazing poem by Nabil Janabi, an Iraqi poet, on Kubatana.net. It’s called ‘Those words I said’ and you can read it here. Below is a small excerpt

But despite all the rulers, despite their power,
All the radar and missiles that cover the
Poem’s sky,
The word will continue to fly
All over the world.
No power can ban it or stop it
From landing at any airport
For the word is a bird
That needs no entry visa
For freedom
For democracy.

This entry was posted on November 20th, 2006 at 1:14 pm by Bev Clark and is filed under Uncategorized. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.