The week in blogs: From Zimbabwe to Egypt

Zimbabwean civic action group, Sokwanele - (http://www.sokwanele.com/) reminds us that the “crisis” facing Zimbabwe today is not one single issue but many. There is a severe crisis in the economy for instance, as in manufacturing, as in agriculture, in education, health care and so on. In fact just about every sector of the national life is plunged into deep crisis right now.

Health is of particular concern and while the main focus here has been on AIDS, there are in fact other health issues that have been neglected such as Sleeping Sickness spread by the tsetse fly.
This is a slow, wasting illness characterized by fever and inflammation of the lymph nodes, leading to profound lethargy that frequently ends in death; in other words, a most unpleasant way to die. However it is not just a case of “sleeping sickness as sleeping is the sickness”.

Egyptian blogger, Baheyya – Baheyya (http://baheyya.blogspot.com/) has a last word on the re-election of Mubarak - YOU ARE NOT WANTED – YOUR TIME IS UP.
“A decrepit regime faces off with a society in movement. Egyptian society is debating, organising, learning, mobilising, demanding, manoeuvring, grumbling, watching, transforming, and of course, sulking”.

Jewels in the Jungle - Jewels in the Jungle (http://jewelsnthejungle.blogspot.com) reports on diamond mining in the DRC via a photo essay in this months Foreign Policy magazine.

“A Trail of Diamonds” by photographer Kadir van Lohuizen who followed the trail of the diamond trade around the world. This trail is dirty, oft-times violent and bloody, and littered with the destroyed lives of marginalized and victimized children, young people, and adults from Africa to India who work as underpaid labourers and unpaid slaves in the mining, cutting, and polishing of billions of dollars ($$$) worth of diamonds every year.

Telegraphic Congolais - Telegraphic Congolais (http://kivu.blogspot.com/) is the only blog I know reporting from the DRC (periodically at least). Unfortunately it has not been regularly updated so its not clear who the author is (journalist, activist or both or neither). In his latest post he mentions the Goma film project which is producing a documentary “Heal My People”.

The film “documents the lives of rape survivors in the Congo as they work with medical staff and counsellors to regain their health and dignity. Documentaries like this require extreme sensitivity and one hopes that the voices of the women are presented without distortion and from an Afrocentric perspective.

Finally Mzansi Afrika - Mzanis Afrika (http://mzansiafrika.typepad.com/mzansi_afrika/) has a report on how AIDS is causing a dramatic increase in school dropouts.

“According to the report (HRW) millions of children in southern and eastern Africa are dropping out of school as a direct result of the HIV/AIDS pandemic. “Other experts on this issue have made the obvious observation that the effect of Aids in the classroom will have long term consequences by dampening economic growth across the continent. One of the solutions that springs to mind would be for government to provide special grants to orphaned children who can't afford uniforms and school fees”.