Untitled - witz cultural

353THE POLITICS OFHYPERTEXTties.] "Except for a very few exceptions, these so-called war veterans averaget8 years ofage, and unless there's a war that happened a couple ofyears agoof which the rest of Zimbabwe has never heard . . . The 'war veterans' aretransported by government vehicles to each new farm, armed and paid by thegovernment."4. "This is not the first time thatZanu PF (Robert Mugabe's ruling party) hasattempted what might be seen as an 'ethnic cleansing.' In the mid-late '80s,Mugabe unleashed his Cuban-trained 5th brigade on the Matabele peoples inthe South of the country committing genocides on a scale that rivals any inKosovo or Rwanda. Zimbabwe is made up of several different ethnic andracial groups. The Shona speaking ones are the Karanga, the Mazezuru, andthe Manica. There are also the Ndebele (Matabele), Tonga, Batoka, N'dau.Then there are the Asians, Coloureds (mixed people) and Whites. Mugabe isof the Mazezuru as are all his cabinet, all his ministers, actually anyone in hisgovernment or party of any importance."5. "Many of the people who own farms today bought them legitimately afterindependence at fair market value. Many of them are fourth generation Zimbabweanswho embraced the hand of reconciliation that Mugabe offered atindependence. Why is he choosing to take the land back now when he's hadtwenty years with willing co-operation from the British and the white farmers l "6. "60% of the population is below the age of 40, well-educated and lookingfor a future, a job, trade and industry not a subsistence small land-ho1ding."Obviously, I am not claiming that hypertext-as-paradigm can produce politicalmiracles by simply changing habits of thought dependent on falsifyingbinaries. Actual hypertext, hypertext as an information technology in theform of the World Wide Web, can at least permit individual voices to be heard'Summoning skepticism and hypefiexrual habits of mind can, however, leadus to ask, "What connections (links) are missingl What complex network ofevents percolates up through the linear political narrative we've been offeredl"Geert Lovink, who reports in his experience with Net activism in Albania,Taiwan, and India, rejects usual formulations ofthe problem of the local and global. Net activists and artists are confronted with thedilemma between the supposedly friction-free machinic globality and the experiencethat social networks, in order to be successful, need to be rooted in local structures.Internet culture pops up in places where crystals of (media) freedom have been foundbefore. At the same time the net is constantly subverting the very same local ties it