Elections are coming up in South Africa in a few weeks' time. This time it's going to be tough for me to decide who to vote for. At present I'm one of those 'undecided' people that the pollsters always worry about. Mid-last year, I was seriously considering not voting. I didn't want to vote for the ANC as I don't want Jacob Zuma to be president, but there also wasn't any other party I wanted to vote for.  But since last year, things have changed quite a bit.

I need to write this while it's all fresh. What a day! This morning I woke up and turned on the TV, to see John McCain giving his speech conceding defeat on the US presidentlal election. I must say, what a gracious speech it was. If nothing else, McCain is a good loser. Then about 20 minutes later, I watched Barack Obama's victory speech. I don't think of myself as particularly sentimental, but I couldn't stop a few tears from rolling down my cheeks.

The Southern African Legal Assistance Network (SALAN) welcomes the stance taken by the Southern African Development Community (SADC)’s call for the postponement of the Zimbabwean Presidential run-off elections scheduled for Friday 27th June 2008, which have been characterized by widespread violence, forcing MDC Presidential candidate Morgan Tsvangirai to announce his withdrawal from the race.

 "it probably would not have been free and fair"

I am becoming disillusioned with democracy. Elected leaders, all around the world, seem to be getting worse and worse. In London they've just elected Boris Johnson, a bigoted buffoon, as mayor. In Italy, Silvio Berlusconi was recently re-elected as prime minister. This is a man who is notoriously corrupt, and who in his previous terms in power ran the government like his private business empire.

I was quite disturbed to read two opinion pieces in the SA Sunday papers, on Zimbabwe, where the authors were basically defending Mugabe. The thing is, these writers have some valid points to make - but they go on to draw unjustifiable conclusions.

I was perhaps too sweeping when I said yesterday that it is not in the personality of Zimbabweans to take to the streets. Women of Zimbabwe Arise (WOZA) have made brave peaceful protests as have the National Constitutional Assembly (NCA), lawyers and the Zimbabwe Congress of Trade Unions (ZCTU), Crisis in Zimbabwe etc. They have all been met with brutal attacks by police.

Zimbabweans spend all their time at the moment talking in open and helpless disbelief that the elections are being stolen from them.

I sit here at my desk at GALZ, on Wednesday 2nd April, refreshing the
home page of www.Kubatana.net every few minutes hoping to see something
more from the final results of the 2008 harmonised elections. I haven't
been able to work for two days and I have never watched so much ZTV in
my life, most of which has been jive dancing and dated documentaries. I
saw one about saving a sick dolphin, another about the filming of a
rare species of baboon and a beginners class for djembe drummers. I
watched one on Zimbabwean sculpture three times - and I'd already seen
it before!