Shashe

I've just watched the BBC documentary about killings of women and children accused of being Boko Haram by the Cameroon army. I find it hard to believe that the authorities did not recognise the culprits as their own soldiers, prior to the BBC carrying out their investigations. The clarity of the video makes nonsense of any denials of culpability of the Cameroon army. So the question now is: Can the world expect any real investigation and punishment of the culprits from the same authorities who failed even to acknowledge the identity of the criminal soldiers on the video? I don't think so. In my view the only authority that can objectively put on trial those responsible for the horrendous crimes is the International Criminal Court (ICC). Those uniformed criminals wearing the Cameroon army uniform should be sent to the ICC to answer for their crimes. African countries should not have the bar set any lower than European or Asian countries when it comes to war crimes, crimes agai...

If it is true that government has reneged on the use of electronic voting machines (EVMs) during next year's general elections, and if it is true that there are no contractual obligations that will "force" government to re-adopt EVM use once the hurdle of voter registration has been passed, then all that amounts to very welcome news indeed. The alternative would have been, (to use P.W. Botha's words) "too ghastly to contemplate! Most of us have heard how an IBM computer by name of Big Blue defeated the World Chess Champion Gary Kasparov in a chess game. When he walked into that room, Gary Kasparov knew, but did not care that Big Blue was "hackable". He didn't care whether or not Big Blue was connected to any other computer remotely. He knew that whatever entity Big Blue might have been connected to, or networked with, that entity simply became part of Big Blue anyway. So as far as Gary Kasparov was concerned, he was facing a "standalone...