Book Reviews 109
reduction:lessonsfrom sub-Saharan Africa. Both papers have elaborate discussions
on Structural Adjustment Programmes and how these have turned out to be
"poverty-generating" rather than "poverty alleviating."
This collection of papers is a very important study in the subject of poverty and
poverty alleviation in South Africa specifically, and in the southern Africa region
in general. The issues discussed have been well-handled and it will add a worth of
background information to future studies on the subject. However, its handling of
the RDP as the main strategy for the alleviation of poverty in South Africa has
rendered the whole work rather short-sighted. Poverty is a long-standing problem
in southern Africa, and it is high time studies of combating it came with long-tenn
and sustainable strategies which will not only be seen to alleviate poverty, but also
lessen tremendously the dependence of the poor countries on donor agencies.
Reviewed by Bright Nkhata. SAPES Trust. POBox MPIll, Mount Pleasant.
Harare.
Panos Media Briefing No 16 (October 1995) TheIntemet and the South: Superhighway
or Dirt-track?, Panos Institute, 9 White Lion Street, London Nl 9PD,
UK, Fax: 071-278-0345, email: panoslondon@gn.apc.org
In September last year I was privileged to be able to "listen in"-on one of the earliest
"global network academies" - a Virtual Seminar in Global Political Economy. The
GPE as it is known, was initiated by a Canadian professor now resident in the
United States, and linked students and staff in universities in those two countries
as well as such widely dispersed locations as Britain, Mexico, Brazil, Japan - and
Zimbabwe. The second GPE dealt with Global Cities and Social Movements: an
explorationof theories and cases, presumably looking toward this year's Habitat
II Conference. Through the Internet participants were able to acquire readings,
organise tutorial groups and also enter into a wider debate with the whole GPE
seminar.
Web Review (October 13-26, 1995) Special Issue on the Digital Academy,
called this Virtual Seminar the "most ambitious of these experiments ... and the
most significant in the long term....the first step towards a university without
walls."
Two months later I had to unsubscribe.
Why withdraw from such a truly ground-breaking experiment? Firstly, I was
unable to subscribe to the full seminar, as my institution cannot afford to pay the
fees for access to the Internet (we use the "NGO" Email system, ESANET) ( 1).
(1) For a description of this system, see SAROC's review of this Panos Briefmg
dated 9 April 1996.
110 Book Reviews
I therefore missed much of the debate and the detail of the lessons, and almost all
of the readings: these were only accessible from a Web site. Our accounts
department wa<;also beginning to complain about the sudden rise in our Email bills:
supposedly only the cost of a local telephone call, the messages received from the
GPE cost significantly more. And then there were what I might tenn "cultural"
factors. Staff at our college did not participate, despite the fact that one of the
subjects taught here is urbanisation. This I attribute to resistance to the technology.
Another "cultural" factor was that the actual content of that part of the wider debate
which I was able to access (though not the lectures themselves) was very
"Northern" biased, and "personal."
Last week I received a letter from the IDRC (an organisation that is much
concerned with infonnation) infonning me that one of its publications will
henceforward only be available on theWarId Wide Web. I have been denied access
to a useful source of infonnation because I do not have the technology.
On the other hand, through the limited "conferences" available to me through
Emaill have been informed of various issues before they emerge in the media, and
of others - particularly human rights issues - which are never mentioned in the
more "official" news channels. One recent example of this is the issue of the young
woman from Togo who had sought refuge in the United States in order to avoid
undergoing genilal mutilation. Pressure groups used Email to circulate the address
to write to for letters and faxes protesting her extradition, and she was finally
granted asylum. Another example of the "liberating" force of the Internet is the
concern demonstrated through this medium over the Chiapas uprising in Mexico.
Il would seem that the Internet will not empower on a regional level. South
Africa currently rates No 16 in terms of worldwide registered Internet hosts. In
southern Africa, like the transport routes, so do the Email routes all have to pass
through South Africa. The old structures are not dismantled by the new technologies.
The above are illustrations of some of the points raised in the Panos Briefing,
which reinforced and helped focus my somewhat subjective "non" experience with
the Internet from the point of view of users from the South.
The Briefing, one of a series" designed to foster informed debate on issues of
environment and development" is not so much a paper or an argument, but a list
of points, a sort of "did you know?" about the Internet. Ildoes not setout to prove
that the Internet is either a superhighway or a dirt track, but to provide infonnation.
IIgives a brief history of the Internet, first conceived of by the Rand Corporation
- a right-wing US think tank and no friend of humankind. Il explains in simple
terms the how and why (why has it spread so fast?), and it gives some very quotable
quotes, such as Thabo Mbeki's "half of humanity has never made a telephone
call." Mention is made of all the most salient issues, including AT & T's plan to
Book Reviews 111
"surround" Africa with fibre-optic cable - an issue which has given rise to a great
deal of debate: the "pro" (not mentioned in this Briefing) being that this would give
Mricaaccess to telephones and significantly decrease that proportion of humanity
which has never made a call. One thing which is not quite made clear in the Briefing
is the difference between the Net (or the Web) and Email: throughout the repon
Email is sometimes mentioned, sometimes the Internet, without adequately
distinguishing between the two, even at the end of the Briefing under "your
Internet guide." Even SARDC in its own review of the Briefmg does not clarify
this distinction for the lay person.
Ultimately it will be the policy-makers' will or resistance to technology which
will make it more widely available. The Internet is there, it has only to be made
accessible. Governments can facilitate the spread of information, as in Zimbabwe's
AIDS education campaign, or it can obstruct, as in the issue of cellular
phones. Part of the problem is the phenomenon widely observed in Africa of the
higher echelons of management, those who make the policy decisions, being the
least familiar with the technology - often to the extent of being resistant to iL If
development is conditional on transforming the economy to a "knowledge-based"
one, as in the OECD countries, then such factors will hold Africa back, and the
Internet will be no Superhighway but will remain a plaything of the elite academic
class.
Reviewed by Anne Derges. School of Social Work. P Bag 66022. Kopje. Harare.
In Search of Hope for Zimbabwe's Farm Workers, Dcde Esi Amanor- Wilks &
Contributors, Dateline Southern Africa and Panos, London 1995, 70 pp.
"Management only bothers with us when they want something done or
when we make noise over something. They do not care less how we survi ve."
Amanor-Wilks and contributors chronicle the lives of farm workers living and
working on Zimbabwe's mostly white-owned commercial farms and the unacceptable
conditions they continue to endure. The wri ters' honest pcns outl ine the di sm at
lives of about 1.8 million commercial farm workers and their children who provide
cheap labour to 4,500 white commercial farmers who own and control 12 million
hectares or 70% of Zimbabwe's land.
The book relates the hardships farm labourers experienced during the era of
colonial rule, moves through their hopes and aspirations for a better life in the
liberation struggle and independence phase until the prescnt time. Nine main
chapters of text broken with boxes of oral testimony which give voice to fann
workers, present research based on past and currcntlegal provisions. the political
situation and historical background to show how farm labourers experience life.