The situation in Zimbabwe has become very oppressive - not universally, but in isolated areas - an indication perhaps of the opposition re-engaging in the high density areas for the impending presidential (and possibly parliamentary) elections next year.

This time round though, it would appear that some of the opposition activists have decided to use violence themselves. Although understandable, it is worrying to consider the consequences of their actions which have not been particularly disciplined or well thought out. The police and army here are bad at the best of times - now with the "justification" of avenging their own injured we could expect to see even more aggravated assault.

APC member SANGONeT features in this report titled South Africa: Rescue Attempt On Poorly Performing Telecentres. Says the Johannesburg-datelined report in Business Day, which is South Africa's major business-oriented daily: "Dozens of telecentres set up to take telecommunications services to rural areas have been an absolute waste of time and money, says an organisation trying to salvage them. Of 133 telecentres set up by the Universal Service Agency (USA), many are underused, entirely dysfunctional or have turned into private businesses benefiting the people appointed to run them. Now a three-year project is under way to revive some of the centres and assess which should be written off. This report quotes SANGONeT executive-director David Barnard as saying: ""There are some fairly critical views about the impact telecentres have had and to a large extent those criticisms are valid. Real questions have been raised about their relevance and whether millions of rands have been pumped into a big black hole with little to show for it." Says the report: "Sangonet, a body that helps development agencies use IT in the communities they serve, is driving the telecentre overhaul."

The latest edition of Source: APC">ICT

Open Access in the context

Greetings! Lauren writing from the AMARC 9 World Assembly in Amman,Jordan. It has been a privilege to be present here among the global and regional AMARC family and the many local community radio activists and journalists. I wish to share very good news from the Community Radio sector of India....

Via the IGF Community Site one can find links to some events coming up (at the time of writing) at Athens, Greece. An anti-spam toolkit, a content creation workshop, another legal aspects workshop, an overview of diversity, yet another on human rights and the internet, workshop on IP-network development..... don't we need solutions real fast?

Soenke Zehle wrote late on Oct 30: "I just added the official and unofficial Internet Governance Forum (IGF) is a forum for multi-stakeholder policy dialogue on how the internet is run. It was set up at the end of 2005 by the United Nations Secretary-General following a resolution made by governments at the World Summit on the Information Society (WSIS).

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Source: APC">IGF-Community feeds to the list of incom sources... seems that http:/ igf2006.intgovforum.org has emerged as meta-site for the IGF in Athens."

Geert Lovink shot back on via this Incom-L discussion: "Thanks, Soenke. I wonder how many of us are in Athens right now. Are people blogging there? I read some articles about the summit on BytesForAll and was wondering if participants there were as pessimistic as this BBC guy Bill Thompson."

Actually, here are the unofficial and official "blogs" for the IGF. But it's happening so fast, it's probably going to be difficult to keep track! And one can just imagine what the "mainstream media" -- with their "space constraints" and filters -- are going to be saying! Anyway, isn't talking about media flows and control all old hat, and a 70s thing?

Is this a shift of power? Is it just a form of tokenism? Does it work? Will it really involve the diversity of people across the globe? Kieren McCarthy posted to the Governance Style information: Use lower case unless referring specifically to the original LISTSERV application.

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