"....ERIC Schmidt, chief executive officer of Google, the world's most popular Internet search engine, has predicted the advent in five years' time of revolutionary new computer software that will -- hopefully -- make politicians think twice about what they say....
The existence of the online world had given ordinary people the power to challenge governments, the media and business.
My first reaction upon reading about this development was to feel deprived because Zimbabwe has neither the infrastructure nor the requisite levels of computer literacy to make it feasible for voters in all parts of the country to go online.
But then again, I soon realised that this new software was redundant in this country. Zimbabwean politicians have become so brazen about telling what legendary British statesman and orator, Winston Churchill, termed "terminological inexactitudes" that what the people in this country need is a device that would help them to recognise the rare occasions, if there are still any, when they are not being taken for a ride....
( here he mentions the health reforms, which weren't implemented, and the land reform, which benefitted only the rich cronies of the government)...
The point is that in those countries where government officials still accept that the electorate has the right to scrutinise, question and challenge their utterances and actions, a minister would not have the cheek to invoke a previously unknown legal dispensation to justify sweeping such a serious matter under the carpet. If Mpofu belonged to a government that still cared about the rights of the people, he would have known he would be challenged to say why the icala kaliboli concept cannot apply to all Zimbabweans suspected of breaking the law....
Friday, October 13, 2006
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