random thoughts -ho thiba senqu ka matsoho

Today, Monday 12, March, at one of Maseru's surburbs and growing business districts the electricity cut-off at about 7:00am. This is probably the sixth time in the last two months that we have a power outage. Every time there is an outage the traffic lights up the road are also affected, just as they were today. Incredibly there were three police officers manning a "speed trap" 30 meters from the lights who did not care that motorists were not obeying the 4-way stop rule just thirty metres behind them. It seems that their job is not so much the maintenance of law and order, but rather the stuffing of pockets, whether the state's or thiers. The maintenance of "order" has become peripheral.

On, a different note, rumours that the government of the day wants to shutdown topix.net continue to circulate. I have tried to apply myself to whether government has grounds to do so, I am convinced that they do, however, I can not see how they would effect the ban. There are three ways to effect a ban on an Internet site:

• get the owner of the site to take it down
• get the owner of the site to restrict access to certain classes of IP address (ie, those registered to Lesotho entities)
  
• compel ISP that are licensed by you (i.e. licensed by the LTA) to block the offending sites

Of the above, it would appear that only the third option is viable, however, it is not practical since, we can still use proxies which most ISP's do not block to get to the said site. Censorship and territoriality in the Internet age is quite interesting indeed.

Why I think government has grounds to block topix.net: simple the forum has been used to undermine the constitutional rights of some Basotho. I will dwell on the strongest case only, Chapter 4 for the constitution states the rights of all Basotho, among the rights stated there is the "right to respect for private and family life". The forum has been particularly harsh on the assistant minister of home affairs, to the extent that I would claim that her constitutional rights have been violated. Regardless, of how much we may believe that her appointment makes her a public figure, we don't automatically gain the right to disrespect her, particularly to make allegations about issues that are not only in the past but are completely unrelated to the discharge of her duties.