Vavi’s Illicit Sex Scandal – Ethical?

Zwelinzima Vavi. Secretary General of Cosatu.

This man is no stranger to bad press. That considered, he is no different from many other South African politicians in that respect. However, Vavi’s “sex scandal” has been debated as to whether or not it was ethical. In my opinion, to question the ethics is unnecessary. It is outlined in Cosatu’s code-of-conduct policy that (as with any other place of work) sex within the workplace, whether it is part of an illicit affair or an established relationship, is to be considered inexcusable, unethical, and warranting investigation and disciplinary action against the perpetrator(s).

As such, with the above information, one can conclude that Vavi’s actions were not ethical. Despite this, people still seem to be debating the ethics of this scandal. I believe that understanding Vavi’s motivations, the reasons behind why he did what he did, will provide a greater understanding of the situation, as well as backtracking through the events that lead to the publicity explosion surrounding Vavi at the moment. Likewise, looking at Vavi’s sex scandal from a political standpoint will provide another angle of analysis and further understanding.

Moses Melini, SABC Radio News Senior Reporter, posted an opinion article on the SABC News website in which he wrote (referring to Vavi’s wife):

“He probably tried to rationalize his behavior. Hell, it was probably her fault. Pregnancy had messed with her hormones, and she hadn’t been treating him right. In fact, she’d also lost her sex appeal, and his libido was demanding more. The other woman understood him better. She didn’t complain that he wasn’t helping out with the daily chores. She didn’t nag or demand attention.”

This perspective considers his conduct in a more personal and family oriented direction. This is my preferred approach to the Vavi scandal, but in no way do I condone his actions by any stretch of morality.

Political Science studies suggest that high-ranking political officials generally do not have their personal lives separated from their public profiles as well-known leaders of society. Vavi’s sex scandal, because of its direct relation to his working for Cosatu as Secretary General, it can not be separated from his public image anyway. Regardless, even if it was a completely private affair, unrelated to his employment, it would have still brought him under scrutiny. This, much like President Zuma’s “shower scandal” before he succeeded the presidency. Many have speculated that this was used to discredit Jacob Zuma, make him unpopular, and lose him the presidency.

In an IOL News article by Poloko Tau and Baldwin Ndaba, titled “Sex scandal used ‘to get rid of Vavi’”, the writers state that Vavi had been victim to numerous previous attempts to remove him from his post as Cosatu Secretary General. They say this was through the use of corruption charges and disciplinary investigations in the hope that they would lead to Vavi’s censure, suspension and total removal from Cosatu. If one follows this train of thought, one can surmise that this ‘plot’ to use scandalous stories to discredit Vavi has been going on for some time.

Taking a step slightly backward in time to the rape case against Vavi shortly after his marriage, this is one he completely denied. Furthermore, his ‘victim’ retracted her accusations against him and he was effectively let off the hook without too much damage or too much hype in the media. His recent scandal however, is one he did admit to having done, merely days before his twins were born. Many say this amounts to him shooting himself in the foot through his admission. He is now suspended and the scandal has slightly quietened down in the news.

Either way, there is still not argument as to whether or not his actions were ethical, because as I am sure anyone will agree, his actions were in direct contravention of what is written in Cosatu Code-Of-Conduct policy as downright unethical.

He has no excuse.

The Digital Divide and ‘ePolitics’

Mobile technology and internet is an inexorable force that is, at this point, completely unavoidable to those who have access by default. What I mean when I say ‘by default’ is that those who live in urban areas, whether they have internet access or not, cannot avoid it completely. They have access simply because they live within a geographic location that, by its level or infrastructural and technological development, will create access to mobile technology for them in various ways and means. However, this is not within the scope of this text. What I aim to discuss here is the effects of the Digital Divide on eDemocracy and eGovernment.

The Digital Divide

The following image graphically explains the Digital Divide:

(http://wireless.ictp.trieste.it/simulator/img/world.jpg) This world map bar graph shows the level of internet access as per country, and we can clearly deduce from it that the global superpowers (Europe, US, Australia and Far-East Asia) have most internet accessibility. The rest of the world is generally at a similar level with the exception of Africa, parts of the Middle-East and India. 60% of the top ten are European nations and 30% are Far-East Asia. The bottom five countries are all African nations. Most of Africa seems to dominate the bottom of the accessibility list with the exception of South Africa, Namibia, Botswana, Nigeria and Ethiopia. The Digital Divide is the difference between those who have access to internet media and those who don’t. This is a comparison that can be levelled on a global level, continental level, national level or community level. In South Africa, the Digital Divide extends between those living in rural areas, suburban areas and urban areas. Those in the urban areas generally have internet access on demand, those in suburban areas are similarly enabled, and those in rural areas (the bulk of South Africa’s population) are generally left without.

eDemocracy and eGovernment

“Establishing a clear and comprehensive definition of eDemocracy is a difficult task. It is a term of two components; ‘e’, which signifies the online component, and ‘democracy’, which refers to a theory and system of governance. While this may, at first glance, appear to be an obvious statement to make, it in fact underpins the complexity of the concept. eDemocracy is a relatively new notion and remains somewhat fluid due to its fundamental relationship with technology and the internet – fields that are themselves ever-changing, and somewhat unpredictably so. Any outline of precisely what constitutes the ‘e’ of eDemocracy is thus at risk of obsolescence within a short time-frame.” (http://edemocracy.weebly.com/what-is-edemocracy.html)

Rachel Silcock (p. 88) describes eGovernment as the “use of technology to enhance the access to and delivery of government services to benefit citizens, business partners and employees… has the power to create a new mode of public service where all public organisations deliver a modernised, integrated and seamless service for their citizens.”

Conclusion

With the above aspects considered, I conclude that the effects of the Digital Divide on eGovernement and eDemocracy in South Africa are limiting service provision and delivery of technological services, as well as the ability for people to speak and give feedback to their government through the internet medium is limited. Until regular, affordable and reliable access to new technologies is provided to those is rural areas, this will continue to be a hurdle for the South African government. Contrariwise, those with access are already actively giving internet media based feedback to their government, usually involving issues such as eToll and internet censorship. This is evidence that ePolitics is a growing phenomenon and cannot be ignored.

References

• Digital Divide World Map image source  http://wireless.ictp.trieste.it/simulator/img/world.jpg
• What Is eDemocracy? [Author Unknown]. [Date Unknown] Accessed: 22 April 2013. Available: http://edemocracy.weebly.com/what-is-edemocracy.html

 

Network Society

 

“Mobile and wireless technology will spread the network society to the most remote places and the deepest pores of the world” (van Dijk, 2006:59)

               

The truth in the statement above is as I illustrate in giving an account of a personal experience with the inexorable spread of mobile technology to even the most remote places of the world.

 

Sometime during 2010 I was sitting in my tent camped out somewhere in the Bubye Valley hunting conservancy near Beitbridge in my home country Zimbabwe. I had my laptop powered by an inverter juiced by a truck battery and connected to the internet through a crude little application that hacked my satellite phone to allow me internet access. I had just come from posting a status update on Facebook about a rather eventful afternoon of hunting when I saw on my news feed a picture someone had posted. It was of an extremely rural looking old grandma with a laptop on a stool in front of her and a mobile connect card hanging precariously out of one of the laptop’s USB ports. She had a thatch roof mud hut behind her and a crowd of extremely dusty children shoulder surfing around her with smiles much bigger than was natural. The caption read “Facebook yasvika!” which is Shona for “Facebook has arrived. I dismissed this as an orchestrated image that was not real in any way considering just how troublesome it was for me to log on all the way out in the middle of nowhere. As it turns out, that image may well have been completely accurate because on my return to the Quiet Waters game reserve in Esigodini (my base at the time) I found that many of the staff there did indeed have internet access as well as Facebook profiles, email addresses, Twitter accounts and so on. I was taken aback by this almost sudden realisation of the unavoidability of mobile technology and the omnipresence of the internet. Van Dijk was absolutely right.

 

To illustrate this spread of mobile technology:

 

http://www.wonderlol.com/the-future-is-better-than-you-think_7599.html

The network society itself is, in fact, a society where the key social structures and activities are organized around electronically processed information networks. It’s about social networks which process and manage information and are using micro-electronic based technologies. (Prof. Manuel Castells, 2001)

 

The above image is a very clear expression of the reach of mobile technology at present. This is network society. And without the technological advances that have allowed the internet to be anywhere and everywhere anytime and all the time, this massive spread would not have been possible in even half the time it happened in, and it is still happening. With mobile phones getting “smarter” as well as the sudden rise of tablet PCs coupled with the power of wireless internet connectivity, this inexorable spread will continue, seeking out the most remote corners of civilisation, bringing with it the realisation that the world is not as vast as anyone once thought anymore. Mobile devices and internet upload have allowed skills such as photography to be explored by just about anyone, and Instagram has truly exploded that potential with people becoming Internet celebrities for their photography. Likewise, YouTube has made people famous and this was all made possible because of mobile devices. Ray William Johnson, owner of the YouTube channel Equals Three (=3) is the first example that comes to mind about YouTube global fame. His YouTube channel has over 8.1 million subscribers, myself included, and has accumulated over 2.2 billion video views.

 

 Facebook seems to be completely dominating some people’s social lives and Twitter is starting to look like the only place where people can put up needless trivialities and irrelevant information about their lives. But without seeming one-sided about the usefulness of these social networks, I must point out that they are all now major contributors to the global economy and this is an obvious fact to just about anyone with two brain cells to rub together. If anyone has been watching the news over the past couple of years, they would realise the massive role that Facebook, Twitter, and YouTube had to play in the Arab Uprisings and the silent revolutions of Eastern Europe. Not to mention the fact that Facebook has been a major tool in the campaigns of leaders around the world looking to get voted into power. Twitter has been extremely useful in the industrial sectors of the world. Twitter’s purpose of providing concise and current information in all but a line of text has allowed businesses and institutions everywhere to make announcements to the world as events happen. Want to know when Porsche will be launching the new 918 supercar? Consult Twitter. YouTube was the one with all the interesting footage during the Egyptian Revolution. News agencies seemed only to have a very wide angle view of a monument square of some kind with a massive crowd in it while YouTube submissions (though not as good quality) were where the real news was being taken from. It was the perspective of the people on the ground and suddenly the world was not confined to watch a newscaster talking monotonously and pointing into a background of civilian violence and somewhat picturesque building fires. YouTube videos became the news and news agencies became the opinionated discussion forums about the news.

 

VoIP, or voice over internet protocol, is the new “phone call” as it were. It has almost eliminated the need for phone to phone calling in favour of applications like Skype which exist on computers and mobile devices, as well as applications exclusively for mobile phones, tablets, and hand-held game systems such as Talkbox, Voxer, Viber, Octro Talk and many others. These applications are also intercommunicable meaning that someone can call using Skype and the receiver will answer on their phone using Viber, for example. People’s cell phone bills are now far less when added the fact that instant messaging applications, most notably WhatsApp, MXit, BBM and the rest too numerous to list, have also lessened people’s spending on cell phone credits, airtime top-ups, and contract bills altogether. It is now much much cheaper to stay connected.

 

At this point in time, with technology progressing faster than I can process in one day or describe in one sitting, I am forced to wonder what the next stage of mobile technology will be when the cell phone, the tablet and the laptop are no longer enough, and what that will mean for both the global network society and the entire world as we know them. There are plans in effect already but describing them is not within the current scope of this essay. Speculations abound however, ours is a world where reality will show you something you thought could only be imagined, and reality will do so within your lifetime. Ours is a reality where science fiction is fast becoming science fact.

 

Any sufficiently advanced technology is indiscernible from magic.

~Arthur C. Clarke

 

References

 Prof. M. Castells, Identity and Change in the Network Society – Conversation with Manuel Castells, Availlable: http://globetrotter.berkeley.edu/people/Castells/castells-con4.html Acessed: 7 April 2013

• Image source: http://www.wonderlol.com/the-future-is-better-than-you-think_7599.html