BILL UNPAID: GOVERNMENT SILENCED

The Swaziland Government website has been closed down – because it can’t pay its bill.

The problem is, of course, that the government’s gross mismanagement of the economy means there is practically no money left to pay any bills.

Hardly a day goes by without more news seeping out of Swaziland about unpaid bills and services shutting down.

This time the government hasn’t paid E100,000 to Real Image Internet, which runs the site, so being good capitalists, Real Image pulled the plug. It is also thought the company is angry that the Swaziland Government has placed a newspaper advertisement inviting proposals for redesigning the website and hosting its site.

The website contains information about government ministries and departments and is meant to be the centre of the government’s ‘information technology’ drive. The idea is that the government gets its own propaganda out into cyberspace to counter all the truths that are being told about the human rights abuses in the kingdom, ruled by King Mswati III, sub-Saharan Africa’s last absolute monarch.

The Times Sunday, an independent newspaper in Swaziland, reports today (12 December 2010) that Real Image has been trying to get its bill paid for the past four months.

The newspaper reports it has been established that after the publication of the advert, attempts were made by Real Image to get its money. It is estimated the new website could cost about E500,000 but government was failing to pay the debt of E100,000.

A government source told the Times Sunday, ‘I do not know how the winning bid will be paid as there is no money and the new project will not cost less than E500,000. We wanted to pay Real Image but we don’t have the money.’

Prodemocracy progressives will be laughing their socks off at the news of the website’s closure. There were plans to hack into the site and block it in retaliation for the government’s censorship of the PUDEMO website. But now they won’t have to do anything because the Swazi Government is so incompetent it has silenced it itself.

See also

MORE GOVERNMENT HEALTH CUTS

http://swazimedia.blogspot.com/2010/12/more-government-health-cuts.html

COME CLEAN ON WEB CENSORSHIP

The Swaziland Government has denied any involvement with the banning of access to the PUDEMO internet site, despite independent expert evidence that a block has been set up.

As I reported yesterday (1 December 2010), it is impossible to access the site in Swaziland and you can’t search for PUDEMO on Google. Complete access to PUDEMO is available outside the kingdom.

Nelsiwe Shongwe, Swazi Minister of Information, Communications and Technology, denied knowing anything about the censorship.

She told the Times of Swaziland, the kingdom’s only independent daily newspaper, that the problem was a ‘glitch’ or ‘malfunction’ in the network and ‘it is still not clear why this is happening.’

If Shongwe is telling the truth then that means normal service to the PUDEMO website will be resumed almost immediately.

We shall, of course, soon find out. But PUDEMO says the access has been blocked for a week now.

However, as things stand there is reason to doubt the minister’s account.

An investigation by an independent Internet expert reveals that the PUDEMO site is being blocked by software called Packeteer PacketSharper. This is the type of software that a company might use to block its employees from accessing sites such as Facebook.

This means that someone in Swaziland has put up the block. The finger was pointed at Real Image Internet, ‘Swaziland's Leading Internet Service Provider’ , but Managing Director Ali Resting said he knows nothing about the blocking of PUDEMO’s website.

Also in the frame is Swaziland Post and Telecommunications (SPTC), the government-owned monopoly telephone landline service in Swaziland.

The expert says that the blocking of the PUDEMO site cannot be a ‘glitch’. The expert Googled ‘PUDEMO and then five random words out of the dictionary and then PUDEMO again. Obviously the “glitch” only occurred when Googling PUDEMO.

‘I also showed that if [you] went to a site that allows you to hide what you are looking for or at, you can see PUDEMO and Google it very easily - therefore it is a deliberate and successful attempt to stop Swazis from going there.’

The expert also searched for PUDEMO through the Bing, Altavista, and Yahoo search engines and also got the denial of service.

Significantly, when the expert typed ‘PUDEM Swaziland’ into the computer the spelling correction software guessed correctly and showed all the information that a PUDEMO search would have.

Someone in Swaziland, where censorship of the local media is rife, needs to come clean about this. Internet censorship is in breach of all international internet protocols and the global community needs to bring Swaziland to account.

WEB CENSORSHIP IN SWAZILAND

Censorship in Swaziland seems to have taken a new twist today (1 December 2010) with the revelation that the website of PUDEMO, the main opposition group in the kingdom, has been closed down.

Also, all attempts to use Google within Swaziland to search for PUDEMO draw error messages.

It is now impossible to get on the PUDEMO website if you are inside Swaziland, but it is still available outside in the free world.

But the censor has a sense of humour, because instead of delivering you to the PUDEMO (the People’s United Democratic Front) website, it takes you to the Swazi parastatal, Swaziland Posts and Telecommunications.

The PUDEMO site is reportedly hosted by Real Image Internet which describes itself as ‘Swaziland's Leading Internet Service Provider’. Real Image headed by Ali Resting ali@realnet.co.sz has a number of contracts with the Swaziland Government for internet services, including the Swaziland Tourist Authority (STA).