Habeni Primary school is in Zululand, and has recently acquired a
computer lab. Courtesy of Kelsey
Wood and Wizzy Digital
Courier, it also has Internet.
Education
In Africa, children walk to school. In South Africa, where I am
based, schools and clinics are the only large buildings in the rural
areas, and are thus easily spotted with their long roofs. The minimum
requirement for a school are rooms, teachers, blackboards, and students.
I have come across many schools that have no more than those basics.
In 1999 I visited Khekhekhe with
Graham, to negotiate a price for National Geographic to do a piece on
him. I wrote up that encounter at
the time. Khekhekhe held a ceremony on the 23rd of Feb every year - which
he called the First Fruits ceremony. It seemed really to be a time for
the old Mthethwa Sangomas to get together, Khekhekhe to show his
prowess with snakes, and some beasts to die for the table.
I recently
had a genetic analysis done to determine my ancestry -
courtesy Ancestry24, theMedical
Research Council, the National Health Laboratory Services and
WITS University. It was a free test, and it came with an informative
booklet to explain the results.
Through the African Institute for Mathematical
Sciences I was given an opportunity to
participate in a free Genealogical DNA
test to
trace my ancestry. They can do two tests for men, and one test for women.
The tests trace you back through your mothers-mothers-mother or your
fathers-fathers-father to the most recent ancestor with a non-coding DNA
mutation.
I have watched the election crisis in Kenya unfold from the beginning,
and am angry at the lack of concern the leaders have for the people they
claim to represent.
Some background - I was born in Kenya, in Nakuru, went to school in
Molo,and then again to school at Kenton College, Nairobi, until I was 12
years old. I have a little swahili - enough to get me around, and tell a
couple of jokes.
The Polokwane conference was a triumph of process, and a disaster for
results. Much negotiation remains to be done during the last 18 months of
Mbeki’s presidency.
Winston Churchill famously said
No one pretends that democracy is perfect or all-wise. Indeed, it
has been said that democracy is the worst form of government except all
those other forms that have been tried from time to time.
Democracy was the winner at Polokwane, but democracy requires
a well-informed and responsible electorate. However, unruly behaviour and
obvious partisan campaigning was the order of the day.
A traditional Zulu wedding is a step back in time, with cellphone cameras
in strapped next to leopardskin loincloths. The ancestors are remembered,
and the age-old tradion of Lobola is observed.
I am spending christmas in Eshowe with
my friend Graham Chennells. A friend Karen from Muizenberg is here also,
on her own mission to complete her Sangoma
training, staying with a local
minister from a Zionist church as a Twasa - a trainee, for a month or
two.
All the indications are
that Jacob Zuma will
be elected as ANC president at the 52nd annual ANC conference in
Polokwane from December
16 through December 20.
Much effort has been put into consulting the grass roots of the party,
and the result is in - the majority of ANC branches around the country
want Zuma to lead the party. This might have been as much to do with the
lack of other candidates - rank and file members were informed of the
process, but many were unfamiliar with many of the names put forward. As
a result, it has shaped up tobe a two horse race - between a
lame-duck
president and .. err .. the other guy.
The next president of South
Africa will be chosen this December at the December ANC conference in
Limpopo. This is a tiny subset of the electorate that make this important
decision.
There have been three Presidential
terms
since the beginning of majority rule in South Africa. The Constitution
of South
Africa
limits each president to two terms - the first term was Nelson
Mandela, who
stepped down after his first term to hand the reins over to Thabo
Mbeki, his deputy
during the first term.
Wikipedia has started its regular fund drive with a video from the
founder, Jimmy Wales. He starts by
expounding the knowledge-for-everyone mantra of wikipedia, and in
particular promoting wikipedias in third world languages like Swahili.
The video finishes up with clips of people around the world talking
about wikipedia, how it has benefited them, and how they contribute,
including people typing articles in on cellphones ..
There is a clip of me, at Lavender Hill Secondary school (at a
township close to Muizenberg more renowned for its gangs) talking about
my placement of a complete copy of wikipedia down at schools that have no
daytime internet access, and also the Lab administrator Shanaaz talking
about her wish for more content on the Afrikaans
wikipedia.
As an update on the Wizzy project, a fair
bit has been happening.
In partnership with Inkululeko
Technologies and Amobia Wireless
Access, Wizzy is providing its email
solution for a number of schools provisioned by Inkululeko and Amobia.
Inkululeko are the spinoff from the
Shuttleworth Foundation and
their efforts to put computer labs down in South African schools, and
Amobia are a local Wireless ISP.
The labs that Inkululeko put down are Thin
Client labs, using old, recycled
computers in front ofthe learners coupled to a large Linux server that
runs the applications and fileserver. Wizzy provides a local mailserver
installation, a squirrelmail
IMAP client useable from a browser, and UUCP connectivity to the main
mail server hosted by Amobia. Authentication is provided by LDAP.