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.