There is no doubt about it – generation X and Y is firmly rooted online, especially with the advent of mobile phones with internet browsing capabilities. The battle of politics has always been to get the right information to the right people, right on time.

This shift can be seen very well in the current American presidential race, where voters could watch live debates between the candidates online – with the added functionality that viewers could discuss points and pose question between each other directly online.

In South Africa, the electronic political race has had a very slow start, with sms technology leading the way during the current political changes taking place in SA. There were also reports of sms campaigns doing the rounds, calling for certain politicians to be ousted from Government and to start a new political party.

Back in the day, one particular South African politician was quite innovative when it came to technology and actually installed a webcam in her office so that supporters can see her at work. Most South African political parties have an online email newsletter and some even runs a blog.

However, a quick search on the youth’s loved facebook, shows that the Democratic Alliance has quite a prominent and active community on facebook, with the DA’s seemingly official facebook group having a couple of thousand members. The ANC on the other hand does not seem to have any presence on facebook, since search results on “anc” merely brings up anti-ANC groups.

The younger generation lives, loves and laughs online and for political parties to be underrepresented online is quite a folly. In fact, br!ghtshark would venture to even say it is quite dismissive of the youth, to ignore their world smacks of ignorance and is very telling in the way which modern politics engages with the youth – possibly a reason for the political apathy under the youth.

So, for the not-so-tach-savvy-politician, is a guide to the most cutting edge ways on which to engage with the youth:

Facebook – the de-facto standard when it comes to networking (what is the art of politics other than networking in its oldest form) and crucial to start as a platform from which to engage with the youth. Incidentally, it is no longer only the youth that hangs out on facebook – more and more baby boomers are entering the facebook-fray. The DA has quite an impressive headstart on facebook, available here.

Twitter – a so-called “micro-blogging” platform, which allows for the distribution of instant “thoughts” to subscribers of the politician, so supporters can instantly keep track of where the politician is doing or thinking. The Americans have an excellent example at http://election.twitter.com/ where people can debate online and choose the follow the antics of their respective candidates online.

Youtube – The streaming video site has a function called “channels”, where politicians can go and post a series of video clips online, all kept neatly together in their channel. Youtube has even gone so far to set up a special website for their presidential election, called youchoose, where politicians can answer questions from voters directly online.

MySpace – This popular social network can also be very well used to start interacting with myspace users. The good thing with myspace is that politicians can customize their myspace pages, with voting boxes, video and photo-sharing functionality and even accept donations directly online. The American presidential race page on myspace, called myspace impact, shows exactly what can be done.

Good old blogs – a little bit more traditional, but can be used to easily and effectively spread the words, thoughts and ideas directly to the desktops of e-citizens all around.

Any other suggestions by my readers?

Over time there have been a lot of noise in the “Zuma-case” commentary, from some arrogant uneducated peeps, to some other inciting cartoonists who caused quite an uproar, to “the-guy-sitting-next-to-me-on-the-plane-on-Friday”.

The history to the case is quite long and involved, with numerous applications all over the world…

During all of this time, a large number of commentators where very, nay extremely, negative and sometimes even downright dismissive about the impartiality and reliability of the courts’ integrity. Some these comments included that if the court doesn’t find in Zuma’s favour, there will be mass picketing (YCL’s Mashilo) or that there will be people willing to kill for Zuma (ANCYL’s Malema).

In essence, a number of Zuma’s staunch supporters went out from the premise that the judiciary cannot be trusted to give the “correct” judgment.

Finally, on Friday past, Nicholson J, handed down his judgment in Zuma’s application in having the NPA’s prosecution scrapped because of policital interference in the advancement of the prosecution. Zuma (and his supporters) were vindicated and the prosecution of Zuma was striked.

What br!ghtshark fails to understand is how these supporters of Zuma, whom were all so disbelieving of the indepedence of the judiciary, can now so easily and triumphantly claim this judgment as a “victory” to be celebrated. If the judiciary was as unreliable as Zuma’s supporters made it out to be, this same logic should be applied to the final “victorius” judgment handed down by Nicholson J and should this judgment be viewed with much circumspect, but that is probably the illogical game of politicians and their antics.

The rather inelegantly named Prohibition of Mercenary Activities and Regulation of Certain Activities in Country (sic) of Armed Conflict Act No. 27 of 2006 (“the Act”) was published in the Government Gazette of 16 November 2007, but will only come in to operation on a later date to be determined by the President by proclamation in the Gazette.

It repeals the Regulation of Foreign Military Assistance Act No. 15 of 1998 (which led to the dissolution of the notorious Executive Outcomes company), and seeks principally to do the following:

- to prohibit mercenary activity;

- to regulate the provision of assistance or service of a military-related nature in a country of armed conflict;

- to regulate the enlistment of South African citizens or permanent residents in other armed forces;

- to regulate the provision of humanitarian aid in a country of armed conflict;

- to provide for extra-territorial jurisdiction for the courts of the Republic with regard to certain offences.

From the above it is clear that the ambit of the act is rather wide, and that it goes much further than just criminalizing mercenary activities, but it is certainly in response to the turbulent international climate. While there are no accurate statistics available, it is generally believed that as many as several thousand South Africans are currently employed as security contractors or private military personnel in Iraq alone. The Iraq Coalition Casualty Counter (www.icasualties.org) statistics show that at least twenty one South Africans employed as security contractors have been killed in Iraq during the period from 31 January 2003 to 28 August 2007.

While the Act prohibits direct or indirect mercenary activities (participation in an armed conflict as a combatant for private gain) outright, it stipulates that no South African may directly or indirectly provide any assistance or render any service to a party to an armed conflict without consent of the National Conventional Arms Committee.

Similarly, no South African may enlist with any armed force (other than the SANDF) without the committee’s authorisation. Ironically however, this authorization may be revoked as soon as the person to whom the authority was granted takes place in an armed conflict while enlisted with any other armed force.

Even the provision of humanitarian assistance in an armed conflict is regulated, in that no South African humanitarian organization may provide such assistance unless such organization has been registered with the Committee for that purpose.

Perhaps the most interesting aspect of the Act is the introduction of extra-territorial jurisdiction for South African courts. The Act stipulates in peremptory language that any offence under this act committed outside the Republic by a South African citizen or resident (or company or body of persons) must be regarded as having been committed in the Republic, and the person who committed it may be tried in a South African court. Likewise, any person found in South Africa that participated in mercenary activities outside our borders against either the Republic, its citizens or residents, may be prosecuted here, as if the crime was committed in South Africa.

Another interesting clause provides that the courts may, upon the convicting any person of any offence in terms of the Act, declare “any armament, weapon, vehicle, uniform, equipment or other property or object in respect of which the offence was committed or which was used for, or in connection with the commission of the offence” to be forfeited to the State.

Since there are, for example, numerous South African citizens currently enlisted in the British armed forces, imagine for a moment the following scene as an illustration of the potentially extreme consequences of this Act: a young South African enlists with the Royal Navy, works his way into Royal Marines and is posted to 9 Assault Squadron, which is permanently-embarked on the HMS Ocean, an amphibious assault ship over 200 meters in length with a displacement of 21,578 tons, and is soon shipped off to Sierra Leone where he participates in suppressing rebel activities in a bloody civil unrest.

Even if our young soldier obtained the authorization of the Committee before enlisting with the Royal Navy, such authorization would most likely be revoked due to his involvement in an armed conflict as a member of an armed force other than the SANDF. The young sailor may now be prosecuted in Pretoria for acts performed in Freetown, and the court may declare the HMS Ocean (presumably with its fleet of helicopters) to be forfeited to the State…

The technology behind the service is quite innovative if one takes into account that government services are normally the last on the uptake of technological possibilities. As an example, it was recently reported that the Department of Justice’s IT helpdesk has to deal with complaints from users (magistrates!) that the games on the computer doesn’t work. I have myself witnessed at various courts in and around the Cape (from Bellville, Wynberg, to Kuilsrivier, to Worcester and beyond – not to mention Cape Town itself where computers are seemingly only used to produce misspelt signs to advise the public of closing times and delays) that barely a single computer is really effectively utilised in the legal process, or at all.

Unfortunately the business of lawyering involves a lot of paperwork which cannot be avoided, but a new initiative by die Department of Justice seems to be the first step to shove the justice system into the twenty-first century. Since the beginning of the year the Department of Justice has been implementing an electronic case management system in the high courts (in particular the Cape of Good Hope Provincial Division) – which will be a great help to find a case if one only has the details of one of the parties to the case. I have witnessed myself on various occasions how members of the public had become greatly frustrated, and understandably so, when trying to obtain copies of their divorce or rehabilitation orders and being shown the court rolls of the past years – having to manually to manually page through the well-worn books.

The fact that SARS had managed to convince a good 600 000 tax payers to utilise the e-filing system (who doesn’t value the extra 3 months to submit one’s returns) shows how utilising technological innovation in the public domain can improve service delivery. Another obvious benefit is the costs savings (no manual capturing of tax returns and no standing in queues to hand in returns) to society in general.

The only negative thing one can say about the e-filing system is that it is a shame that it is the tax-collection system that is so well-organised… one would ideally wish that home affairs is well organised and the tax system disorganised, but so is life.

From the article it seems obvious that the DG is more interested in rhetoric than actually tackling SA’s bandwidth situation.

The full interview can (and should be!) be read at:

http://www.sundaytimes.co.za/PrintEdition/BusinessTimes/Article.aspx?id=565001.