The first Software Freedom Day will be held in South Africa on August 28th. Linux user groups, companies, organisations and individuals from around South Africa will get together to celebrate free and open source software in numerous events to be held throughout the country. The day aims to increase awareness about free software and it is hoped it will become an annual event.

Following the success of SANGONeT's Thetha initiative, the network is planning its sixth provincial forum on the ICT challenges facing the CSO sector. It will be held on Monday 16th August in the KwaZulu-Natal province. Participants will be introduced to various inputs from government, business and CSOs, highlighting various ICT policy and development issues. For more information please contact Refilwe Rakhibane at SANGONeT by e-mail:

Kenya's new Minister of Information and Communication, Hon. Raphael Tuju, has announced his support for the liberalisation and advancement of ICT policy in Kenya. Speaking after a week-long ICT policy advocacy workshop in Nairobi the minister noted that "In Kenya, I do realise that we have problems with our telephony connectivity and the snail’s pace in connectivity, as well as the high costs of international calls". The workshop, organised by the Association for Progressive Communications, brought together a range of stakeholders from a total of eight African countries.

The Nigerian Minister of State for Education, Hajia Bintu Ibrahim Musa, has expressed worry that African countries are lagging behind in Information and Communications Technology (ICT) when compared to other continents of the world. She said unless the continent addressed this issue, its drive towards the attainment of Education for All (EFA) and the Millennium Development goals in Education will remain unrealistic.

The Media Council of Zambia (MECOZ), a self-regulatory media council, was officially launched at a press briefing held at the Pamodzi Hotel in Lusaka, according to the Media Institute of Southern Africa (Misa). MECOZ, which is the brainchild of the Misa's Zambia Chapter and the Press Association of Zambia (PAZA), has taken almost four years to be established.

Madiambal Diagne, publication director of the independent Senegalese daily Le Quotidien, was granted a provisional release on July 26 after being held for more than two weeks in prison. Diagne was jailed on July 9 in connection with articles published in Le Quotidien about alleged fraud in the customs service and alleged government interference in the judiciary. The criminal charges against him remain: publishing secret documents; publishing false information; and committing acts likely to cause public unrest.

On 21 July 2004, Uja Emmanuel, a correspondent for "The Sun" newspaper in Makurdi, the capital of Benue state, in north central Nigeria, was assaulted and his camera and tape recorder were destroyed by police officers. Emmanuel was assaulted when he went to investigate the alleged abduction of journalist Johnson Babajide and his subsequent detention by police. Babajide, a "Nigerian Tribune" newspaper correspondent, was alleged to have been abducted earlier in the day by individuals believed to be acting on orders of the state government.

In a letter to the Ethiopian government six free expression organisations (ARTICLE 19, Media Institute of Southern Africa, Media Foundation of West Africa, Media Rights Agenda, the Committee to Protect Journalists and the International Federation of Journalists) reiterated their concerns over the recent draft Proclamation to Provide for the Freedom of the Press (Draft Proclamation) in Ethiopia. “The Draft Proclamation in its present form contains some improvements on previous drafts, but there are still some serious problems with the law, including: restriction on who may practice journalism; government-controlled licensing and registration systems; and harsh sanctions for violations of the law, including up to five years imprisonment.”

PlusNews has launched a new service, "Hayden's Diary", a personal account of living with HIV by journalist Hayden Horner. Each week Hayden explores - with courage and feeling - his experiences as a young HIV-positive South African, in the hope that his frankness will encourage others to speak openly about the disease. The journal is not an emailed service but is available on the website http://www.plusnews.org/HDiaryEntry.asp

This will be the second edition of this training course after a very encouraging first experience in April 2002 in Tarrafal, Cabo Verde. The course will enable key youth multipliers in Africa and in Europe to share strategies to increase co-operation in youth work and to strengthen youth participation in civil society.

Reporters Without Borders (RSF) has published its 2004 report on obstacles to the free flow of information on the Web. The French organisation has noted that government attitudes towards the Internet have become more rigid both in countries where the media is muzzled but, in a new development, in countries with a strong democratic tradition. The report makes mention of a number of sub-Saharan countries where there are obstacles to digital freedom and in particular to Zimbabwe, one of the few African countries to have passed legislation specifically regulating online activities.

Professor Adrian Sargeant's inaugural lecture at the University of the West of England will explore the latest research to be conducted on fundraising. It will showcase the material and suggest how fundraisers can use this knowledge to improve their professional practice. The event is on the 16th September 2004 and is organised by the Institute of Fundraising.

"The danger with race as a definitive prism is that one becomes primarily and even wholly fixated on remnants of racism to the exclusion of all else. In the case of Zimbabwe, it is to the exclusion of the indignity visited upon fellow blacks which, were it being done by whites, we should certainly be up in arms over. We have internalised race and racism, something that Fanon predicted, just as he predicted that the consolidation of urban middle-class interest could see black leaders become as abusive of their citizens as the colonialists were."

Participants in the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) Seminar on “Promoting an Independent and Pluralistic African Press”, held in Windhoek, Namibia, from 29 April to 3 May 1991, declared: “Consistent with article 19 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, the establishment, maintenance and fostering of an independent, pluralistic and free press is essential to the development and maintenance of democracy in a nation and for economic development.”

This “Windhoek Declaration” marked a highlight in the so-called second wave (of democratisation) on the continent. Ironically, it was also at Windhoek - almost thirteen years later (end of February 2004) - when Zimbabwe's Minister of State for Information and Publicity signed a co-operation agreement with his Namibian counterpart on closer collaboration, including a planned joint weekly newspaper on regional issues.

In an in-depth interview offered to the local state-funded newspaper “New Era” (5 March 2004), he praised the Presidents of both countries “as two leaders that have remained steadfast, committed, not only as nationalists but also as Pan-Africanists, and as global leaders”. He urged both countries to pursue the common task of “doing justice to the kind of solidarity that was born during the liberation struggle, and which must be upheld today and in future”.

He further identified the following common challenges: “We are here to cement these historic bonds and ties, and look at the new challenges that we are facing, as we in particular begin to consolidate the economic objectives of our liberation struggle, and identifying the critical role of information, information not only in terms of the press, the print media, but also the electronic media and other multimedia platforms that are new, that are being used and that are accessible to these generations that may be prone to losing the bigger picture of the essential story.”

The Honourable Minister was not always using such language. As a Zimbabwean scholar still abroad he stated at a Conference on Robben Island as late as February 1999 that “it would be a mistake to justify the struggles for national liberation purely on the basis of the need to remove the white minority regimes from power and to replace them with black majority regimes that did not respect or subscribe to fundamental principles of democracy and human rights (…) ruling personalities have hijacked the movement and are doing totally unacceptable things in the name of national liberation. Being here at Robben Island for the first time, I am immensely pained by the fact that some people who suffered here left this place only to turn their whole countries into Robben Islands.”

Only three years later, in March 2002, he - now in a ministerial rank - praised the results of the Presidential elections in his country as an impressive sign “that Zimbabweans have come of age that they do not believe in change from something to nothing. They do not believe in moving from independence and sovereignty to new colonialism, they do not believe in the discourse of human rights to deepen inequality.”

Rhetoric of such calibre has earned Jonathan Moyo the label 'Goebbels of Africa'. This is certainly too demagogic itself, given the historically unique dimensions of German holocaust to which the Nazi propaganda minister relates and associates with. But name calling of this kind documents the degree of polarisation and level of dissent in the Zimbabwean society today. The current clamp down on the independent media in Zimbabwe is certainly neither exclusively nor decisively the result of a personal vendetta by a previously progressive scholar.

Jonathan Moyo is just one - though admittedly due to his track record notably exotic - example of relatively high profile calibre representatives of a post-colonial establishment seeking own gains by populist rhetoric covering up their selfish motives. They have become part and parcel of a set of deep-rooted anachronistic values within a system of liberation movements in power. After seizing legitimate political control over the state, these turned their liberation politics under the disguise of pseudo-revolutionary slogans into oppressive tools. Their “talk left, act right” seeks to cover the true motive to consolidate the occupied political commanding heights of society against all odds preferably forever - at the expense of the public interest they claim to represent in the light of deteriorating socio-economic conditions of living for the once colonised and now hardly liberated (and even less emancipated) majority.

Sadly enough, it was the same Jonathan Moyo, who at an early stage of the sobering post-colonial realities in Zimbabwe offered courageous and sensible analytical insights into these processes. While being a Lecturer at the Department of Political and Administrative Studies of the University of Zimbabwe, he presented thought provoking and painful reflections on the liberation war (chimurenga) with all its dubious ambiguity.

Read this from a paper in late 1992: “There can hardly be any doubt that the armed struggle in Zimbabwe was a pivotal means to the goal of defeating oppressive and intransigent elements of colonialism and racism. However, as it often is the case with protracted social processes of a conflict with two sides, the armed struggle in this country had a deep socio-psychological impact on its targets as well as on its perpetrators. (…) For the most part, the armed struggle in this country lacked a guiding moral ethic beyond the savagery of primitive war and was thus amenable to manipulation by the violence of unscrupulous nationalist politicians and military commanders who personalized the liberation war for their own selfish ends. (…) This resulted in a culture of fear driven by values of violence perpetrated in the name of nationalism and socialism.”

Nowadays, the erstwhile critical scholar represents the same mindset he had questioned. According to a news report by the Media Institute of Southern Africa (MISA), he used a press conference on 30 April 2004 in Bulawayo to threaten, “there was enough space in Zimbabwe's prisons for journalists caught dealing with foreign media houses”. As “terrorists of the pen” they would be targeted next. The report quotes the Minister as saying: “President Mugabe has said our main enemy is the financial sector but the enemy is media who use the pen to lie about this country. Such reporters are terrorists and the position on how to deal with terrorists is to subject them to the laws of Zimbabwe.” This is tantamount to paranoia and indicative for the recent efforts to censor even private communication.

As the mere distribution of and access to information can be damaging to the security interest of those represented by the Minister, the next onslaught is directed against the private ISPs (Internet Service Providers). The state owned telephone-company announced early June 2004 that ISPs had to enter new contracts stipulating that they as service providers prevent or report to the authorities anti-national activities and malicious correspondence via their telephone lines. If they fail to do so, they will be liable, i.e. penalised.

This follows earlier appalling interferences resulting in the closing of independent newspapers and the imprisonment or expelling of journalists on a systematic scale. The government and its executive branches are eager to emphasise that this repression is in compliance with the existing (and for such purposes enacted) laws and hence fully within “legality” (which, of course, is a far cry from legitimacy). This simply shows that the “rule of law” can apply in the absence of any justice. It is the strategy of the ban that constitutes the rule of law. It does not even spare government friendly media productions and displays the intolerant, all-controlling nature of the system.

One prominent example is the banning of the live broadcasted television production “Talk to the Nation” in mid-2001, which was sponsored by the National Development Association (NDA). The explanatory statement by an official of the Zimbabwe Broadcasting Corporation (ZBC) is a remarkable example for the “innocence” of a totalitarian mindset: “Live productions can be tricky and dangerous. The setting of the NDA productions was professionally done but maybe the production should not have been broadcast live. You do not know what someone will come and say and there is no way of controlling it.”

Along such an understanding, media operating independently or beyond direct control of government were increasingly hampered and closed down, as the prominent example of the Daily News showed. On an alleged breach of a legal clause under the notorious Access to Information and Protection of Privacy Act (AIPPA), the Media and Information Commission (MIC) has now in June 2004 closed The Tribune for at least one year. Its publisher, himself a former ZANU-PF MP, was reportedly suspended earlier on by the ruling party for “disrespecting” ZANU-PF top structures as he had denounced AIPPA in his maiden address to parliament.

It therefore does not come as a surprise that the latest annual overview on the state of media freedom in the Southern African region by the Media Institute of Southern Africa - issued on the World Press Freedom Day (26 April) - records more than half of all 188 media freedom and freedom of expression violations in 2003 among the ten monitored countries in Zimbabwe alone.

International agencies committed to the freedom of press and the professional ethics of independent journalism are in agreement that the situation in Zimbabwe is intolerable. It prompted the Annual General Assembly of the International Press Institute (IPI) on 18 May 2004 in Warsaw to adopt the unanimous decision “to retain Zimbabwe's name on the 'watchlist' of nations that are seriously eroding media freedom”. And the Board of the World Association of Newspapers (WAN) condemned at its 57th World Newspaper Congress in Istanbul early June 2004 the “attempts to silence independent media”. At a meeting in Windhoek during early June 2004 a total of 24 newspaper editors from eight countries in Southern Africa organised in The Council of the Southern African Editors' Forum (SAEF) suspended its Zimbabwean wing.

The narrowing down of the post-colonial discourse to a mystification of the liberation movement in power as the exclusive home to national identity and belonging finds a corresponding expression in the increased monopolisation of the public sphere and expressed opinion.

Amanda Hammer and Brian Raftopoulos, co-editors of a recent volume on “Zimbabwe's Unfinished Business” summarised this in their introduction as “efforts to control or destroy the independent media and to silence all alternative versions of history and the present, whether expressed in schools, in churches, on sports fields, in food and fuel queues, at trade union or rate payers' meetings, in opposition party offices or at foreign embassies.”

Such desperate initiatives to enhance control signal at the same time a lack of true support among the population, who otherwise could be allowed to speak out freely. The repression of public opinion beyond the official government propaganda is therefore an indication of the ruthless last fight for survival of a regime, which has lost its original credibility and legitimacy to an extent that it has to be afraid of allowing a basic and fundamental principle of human rights - the freedom of expression.

* Dr Henning Melber is Research Director at The Nordic Africa Institute in Uppsala/Sweden and has been Director of The Namibian Economic Policy Research Unit (NEPRU) between 1992 and 2000. Before studying Political Science and Sociology he was trained as journalist (1971/72) and sacked from the local German newspaper in Windhoek (1972) for disputes over political and professional-ethical reasons. He joined SWAPO of Namibia in 1974. This is the shortened introduction to the forthcoming “Media, Public Discourse and Political Contestation in Zimbabwe”, published in the “Current African Issues” series with The Nordic Africa Institute.

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A recent report by the think tank Panos has warned that the growth of mobile phones has been concentrated in urban areas and is creating a widening communication gap between rural and urban communities. The report argues that Universal Access must not slip off government agendas and that service provision must not be left to the market alone, which perceives there to be little profit in spreading the networks to thinly populated rural areas. As one example, the report cites the situation in Malawi in which the teledensity is one in 200 on average for the whole country, but taking out the four major towns, this figure rises to one in 1,250. Other countries covered by the report are Uganda, Senegal, Burkina Faso and Zambia.

Some 6,692 children are out of the education system, in Chongoroi District, 156 kilometres away from the town, due to lack of schools and classrooms in the region. According to a source, the District needs 37 primary schools, adding that only 3,535 pupils out of the over 10,000 enrolled at the present academic year are attending classes.

SchoolNet Africa has published a report covering a range of school networking activities taking place across Africa. The 'mkusanyiko' or collection, provides an overview of school networking initiatives under way at national, African and International levels, as at January 2004. In addition, it provides a synopsis of ICT and education programmes of donor and development agencies working in Africa.

Despite efforts to improve sexual and reproductive health across Africa, a new study has shown that over four million women undergo unsafe abortions each year and 34,000 of them die as a result. In a recently released report, Ipas, an international women's health NGO, noted that 10 years after a landmark UN population conference in Cairo, Egypt, women in Africa continued to face "elevated risks" of dying from pregnancy-related causes, with unsafe abortion posing a particularly dangerous threat.

Press coverage of asylum issues in the UK can be linked to racist attacks and street harassment, say academics. They say they found "clear evidence" that negative, unbalanced or inaccurate reporting in newspapers was likely to "promote fear and tension" between people of different backgrounds in London. Overall, asylum seekers were most likely to encounter hostility linked to negative reporting if they lived in poor areas where locals believed they may be competing for decent housing.

Farouk Chothia and Ange Ngu Thomas, two BBC journalists who were detained last week by Cameroonian soldiers in the disputed Bakassi peninsula and accused of spying, were released without charge on Friday, July 16, according to the BBC and international news reports. Chothia, a producer and South African national based in London, and Thomas, a reporter based in the southwestern Cameroonian city of Douala, were arrested by Cameroonian soldiers on Sunday, July 11.