HACkers blog

Last week, shocking revelations concerning the activities of ANC Youth League Spokesperson Nyiko Floyd Shivambu came to the fore. According to a letter published in various news outlets, a complaint was laid by 19 political journalists with the secretary-general of the ANC, against Shivambu. This complaint letter detailed attempts by Shivambu to leak a dossier to certain journalists, purporting to expose the money-laundering practices of Dumisane Lubisi, a journalist at City Press. The letter also detailed the intimidation that followed when these journalists refused to publish these revelations.

We condemn in the strongest possible terms the reprisals against journalists by Shivambu. His actions constitute a blatant attack on media freedom and a grave infringement on constitutional rights. It is a disturbing step towards dictatorial rule in South Africa.

We call on the ANC and the ANC Youth League to distance themselves from the actions of Shivambu. The media have, time and again, been a vital democratic safeguard by exposing the actions of individuals who have abused their positions of power for personal and political gain.

The press have played a vital role in the liberation struggle, operating under difficult and often dangerous conditions to document some of the most crucial moments in the struggle against apartheid. It is therefore distressing to note that certain people within the ruling party are willing to maliciously target journalists by invading their privacy and threatening their colleagues in a bid to silence them in their legitimate work.

We also note the breathtaking hubris displayed by Shivambu and ANC Youth League President Julius Malema in their response to the letter of complaint. Shivambu and Malema clearly have no respect for the media and the rights afforded to the media by the Constitution of South Africa. Such a response serves only to reinforce the position that the motive for leaking the so-called dossier was not a legitimate concern, but an insolent effort to intimidate and bully a journalist who had exposed embarrassing information about the youth league president.

We urge the ANC as a whole to reaffirm its commitment to media freedom and other constitutional rights we enjoy as a country.

Workplace bullying is something many of us have lived through, but a convenient myth allows people to assume that academics are colleagial towards one another, except when it comes to finding parking space in University Avenue or the last chocolate croissant at Kwencha.

But even academics can be subject to bullying - as this account illustrates.  While the "victim" is clearly not blameless, as her attitude demonstrates, the increasing powerlessness she feels as the situation worsens is familiar to anyone who experienced harassment in the workplace. 

Policies are usually unambivalent on such matters, but facts seldom are. How behaviour is intended and how it is received can differ substantively, and when comments are made - and heard - context is critical. Power dynamics - inherent, background or internalised - matter. Often, it is simply easier to leave a toxic situation than to invoke justice.

With the academics having finally accepted their status as employees of the University and not colleagues, even they are now unionised and covered by the protection of the Act. If you feel you are being bullied in the workplace, speak to your union. 

There is something disturbingly familiar about David Cameron, the Tory leader widely tipped to win the forthcoming UK elections. It's not just that he's virtually indistinguishable from Nick Clegg, the leader of the Liberal Democrats widely tipped to face a life of obscurity before and after the election - so that any coverage of "the three main parties" sears a Cameronesque image onto the brain in stereo. It's this nasty lurking feeling that I've lived through this before.

Much was made in last night's "Cameron Uncovered" of his being modelled on Tony Blair, only with an equine wife instead of a shrew, but it was another Tony he reminded me of. Is there anybody out there who still remembers Tony Leon?

Like Cameron (an old Etonian), Leon was privately schooled (at Kearsney College), and both went on to local eilte universities (Cameron to Oxford, Leon to Wits). Both built political careers on their "fresh, youthful" demeanour, and both have flirted very briefly with new media to reinforce an image of coolth (Webcameron in Cameron's case, and a podcast in Leon's). Politically their positioning has been identical - centre-right, though trying to emphasise the "centre" and smuggle the "right" aspect in clothed in affability. Both achieved notoriety as leaders of the opposition, building their political profiles through throwing stones at government policy rather than through having any solid, viable policies of their own. And both are most famous for airbrushed election posters - Cameron and Leon both attempting to laugh it off when confronted on it. 

It's even possible that they met - they shared an opposition to sanctions against apartheid South Africa,  both representing "business-and-wealth"-favouring parties, and Cameron accepted an invitation to apartheid SA under the Botha regime which was cosying up to foreign delegates, though they would not have had the opportunity to compare notes on dealing with Iron Ladies, as Leon's successor, modelled on Cameron's antecedent, had not yet risen to notoriety back then. 

Does this make Cameron a chihuahua too?

One of my research interests is how our behaviour gets nudged along in certain ways by technology - and the wonderful world of social networking is replete with opportunities. Some of you may have heard about the recent BBC series on the "Virtual Revolution" - if you can find a UK-based IP proxy, take a look, as the website has some wonderful interviews and other material. The almost-computer generated host (Dr Aleks, whose PhD was about 5 minutes old when they did the credits) feeds the usual paranoia about "digital footprints" that, apocryphally, the young and drunken leave behind to trash any future prospects they may have of landing a grown-up job in anything except advertising, but aside from that it does surface the debate around "the cost of free" and many of the issues that are obvious to those of us who use these media, but may perhaps not be to those who tut-tut about them from behind their white-knuckled grip on the Daily Express / Cape Argus / <insert reactionary read of your choice here>.

Along with my explorations about digital identity, one of the topics I've devoted a few thousand words to is the issue of private vs public in the digital realm. With all the echoes of the 70s assertions that the personal was political and the political was personal, the private has become public as the public assails the private. And the canon of TMI - "Too Much Information" - resounds. 

Despite the increased level of sophistication introduced into Facebook's privacy settings, it is still all too easy to have one's sensibilities assailed by a deluge of information concerning one's "friends" - who may be anything from friends to acquaintances to total randoms - because they either don't know how to stop broadcasting their every neural event, can't be arsed to, or have fallen prey to one of those noisy apps like "Farmville" which are designed to shrink your social circle to the emotionally onanistic - leaving one prey to the temptation to click the "hide" button on their newsfeed. 

While hiding the noise from some long-dead 70s group's fan page is a no-brainer, deciding to pull the plug on the newsfeed of a real, live friend is an act laden with a little more symbolic weight. Is it the same as, say, tuning out their off-key singing in the shower, or the mutterings they make to no one in particular while they're cooking in the kitchen? Or is it more analogous to blocking their emails, ignoring their phone calls and returning their letters - unopened - to sender? Admittedly, "friends" who send groupmails photocopied into cards at christmas time probably don't deserve the descriptor, and similarly "friends" who broadcast their Mafia Wars status continually through the day deserve to have their real status update ("been dumped by LTL - am about to slit my wrists - goodbye cruel world") ignored inamongst the tsunami of appspam... but then, is there any point in retaining their nominal "friendship" other than appearing just marginally better networked than Bob in Accounts who has three fewer "friends" than you do?