thoughts.
After somehow being on the Afrigreater winners list, I have just ordered my Springleap tshirt – pictured right. I’m pretty stoked 
– it’s an awesome prize for a competition like this.
Today the Pretoria High Court ruled that South African Expats should be allowed to vote and that laws preventing them from doing so are unconstitutional. Of course those laws are – a quick check of the Bill of Rights shows us this:
Every adult citizen has the right to vote in elections for any legislative body established in terms of the Constitution
So with that settled one has to wonder if this will happen this election. The FF+ has moved to delay the election for time to confirm all of this and I’m sure that the practicalities of all of this will be easily worked out in time.
The ‘nightmare’
However what was most surprising was the Electoral Institute of Southern Africa (never heard of them before actually) suggesting that the ruling is impractical and costly. So here is your rebuttal of Mr Pitso’s concerns, nicely bulleted for easy reading.
Naturally the closing date of the voters roll will have to be changed to register all these new votes – but that should not be a serious concern: a month or so extra to provide citizens with their right isn’t too much to ask.
The real issue is the setting up of new voting stations. South Africans are already eligible to vote overseas under certain (very restrictive) conditions, so voting stations are already open in our Embassies. Expanding these is unlikely to put a huge strain on resources, considering all the processes already exist.
While the IEC letting South African’s know about their new-found right to vote would be nice, few would expect them to advertise to the British public that the few South Africans amongst them can now vote. As long as the right is provided for, let the political parties alert voters.
Well that’s why we have voter registration, so the IEC knows that. Simple.
See first point, already happens.
Estimates put the number of potentially eligable voters overseas at 2 million. Obviously we cannot expect that number to take part, but this new development is sure to change the dynamics of the next election. All for the better of course.
During the US Presidential Elections (I think it was during the primary season) I remember a web app which allowed the user to specify their political views and they were then helped in finding the candidates which best mirror those views.
My plan is to make something similar for these elections, matching users to the parties. Of course I need to work out what the most pressing issues are and research the different party lines – the latter will be easy, but compiling a list of the issues is tricky. I’ve started bellow – please do comment and suggest additions.
I understood that the ANC had already lined up a candidate to become the next head of the NPA – but I didn’t know that the same person was once a member of Jacob Zuma’s legal team.
Hopefully things will not go that far; it seems like Parliament will rubber-stamp Pikoli’s fireing, but if my following of the excellent Constitutionally Speaking blog has suggested anything then this whole fiasco is challengable in court – and let’s hope someone does challenge it.
I always have in my mind using holidays for getting personal projects finished up, but somehow I’m never quite as productive as I plan to be.
So this holiday I’ve managed to win something (still wondering how the prizes work – Springleap shirts are cool, oh well 
), develop the new Sailing360 almost to completion (I hope to complete it this week) and start up a new blog – www.startupland.co.za
Someone commented that it is a bit Techcrunchish – which it is, I know. Reason for existence: no one seems to be tracking all our startups and other social web news locally. Result: I thought I’d give it a try. We’ll see how that one goes.
Besides all this I’ve got the feeling this year will be interesting – most so with the Confederations Cup and 2010 so soon. This year should see everything everyone has been working on come out for the rest of us to see – and regardless of your normal opinions of the sport, it and everything which comes with it is going to be great.
The website of the ‘South African Representative to the Palestinian National Authority’ (closest thing to an embassy they are allowed, I guess) has a link to the ‘Letter from the leader of the African National Congress’ – linking to the ANC home page. Clearly this is no mislink to an actual letter, as Arhive.org tells us it’s been there for at least a year – and even if it was it would be unacceptable for a national representative to promote a single party like that.
I’ve fired off an email to the address listed on the website and copied in a few political parties. Hopefully others will do the same to highlight how much we don’t like this.
One of the leading stories on the Mail and Guardian’s website is “Security Council stint a milestone for SA, says gov” and the entire article is a regurgitation of why the Department of Foreign Affairs thinks it did a good job – with absolutely no rebuttal of this pathetic claim.
The perfect rebuttal of this, saving me a bit of time, is found at MorrocoBoard.com – the most damning bit being the following:
The South African delegation voted against resolution on human rights in Myanmar and a British proposal for a briefing on the situation in Zimbabwe, while pushing for similar resolutions against other members of the UN. The South African “undiplomatic” reign over the UNSC was decidedly divisive and non inclusive throwing another blow to the hope of millions of Africans to see their conferences addressed and their voices heard.
If that isn’t enough, our prevention of UN action in Zimbabwe and our assistance in blocking the resolutions on Myanmar, just help to further show what a disaster our time in the powerful chamber has been. Our delegation even voted against a resolution condeming rape as a weapon of war – as the aptly title post South Africa: Supporting Oppression and Torture Abroad shows. (althought to be honest I struggled to find verification of this – but still).
I’m not a huge fan of our government, but generally I am pretty positive about South Africa – yet this is one of this things, when I think about, I believe is disgraceful. I’m not the only one – but I’m surprised I can’t find more bloggers making a deal about this.
I don’t know if it is just me, but I really do think that local news sources just don’t get it right. While parading new media sources such as video, their websites are still badly structured, suffer from a lack of constant new content and, most annoying of all, all have the same content from the news agencies. Anyone else feel the same?
My browsing of the news each day consists of a visit to the Mail & Guardian, The Times and the BBC. Later in the day I generally visit the New York Times, Time.com and the Wall Street Journal. I also occasionally drop by IOL and News24.
Perhaps I’m complaining too much – but I do feel that the international sites have better content and also importantly don’t rehash the same background information each time they do a follow up story. Guess I just have to live with it.
From Andréia on Flickr, licensed by CC Attribution 2.0 Generic
The New York Timses has a great summary of the mess that is the Australian internet censorship proposal.What interested me most is the following:
But ethics professor Clive Hamilton, in a column on the popular Australian Web site Crikey.com, scoffed at what he called ”Net libertarians,” who believe freedom of speech is more important than limiting what children can access online.
”The Internet has dramatically changed what children can see,” said the professor at Charles Sturt University in Canberra, noting that ”a few extra clicks of a mouse” could open sites with photos or videos of extreme or violent sex. ”Opponents of ISP filters simply refuse to acknowledge or trivialize the extent of the social problem.”
So I went to find the said article – and here it is. He makes an interesting point about double standards – but not a particularly good one. Centralised control of internet content is different from the rating of movies shown in a cinema. That’s all there really is to it – and this Internet Libertarian desperately hopes that nothing like this ever comes near our shores.
