Finland’s Deputy Minister of Agriculture and Forestry Dr Jaana Husu-Kallio expresses the hope that Water Affairs Minister Lindiwe Sisulu will go to Helsinki to ink the deal which has been delayed by the COVID lockdown.

Finland has launched a programme entitled WASH that involves governments, research organisations and civil society in ensuring access to clean water and sanitization -particularly for women and girls.

It is part of the Scandinavian country’s bid to win a three-year term on the United Nations Human Rights Council when elections are held in October

Ambassador Anne Lammila told the delegates participating in Pretoria and Helsinki that 2,2 billion people around the world lack access to safe drinking water and 4,2 billion lack safely managed sanitation services.

“The impact on child mortality rates is devastating with more than 297 000 under five whondhe annually from diarrhea diseases due to poor sanitation, poor hygiene or unsafe drinking water,” she says.

Dr Dhesigen Naidoo of the Water Research Commission says loss of earning globally from woman and children being excluded from the economy for health reasons amounts to $100 billion a year.

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Is access to the internet a right or a privilege? The same question might be asked of international travel.

Governments are able to control both of these. Embarrassed at denying access to them by political foes, they justify their repressive action by saying the ability to get onto the internet or  to cross borders is a privilege.

Last year, the United Nations Human Rights Council passed a resolution promoting and protecting the right of users to get online.

It urged countries to enshrine this in their local law.

No fewer than 11 African countries responded, as it were, by instructing the providers to switch off the internet.

The companies refuse to talk about this, save to say that their licensing agreements stipulate governments’ right to order them to close down access.

The governments have  learned the lesson from the Arab Spring five years ago where demonstrations were directed by the internet.

The protestors turned out in droves having been summoned by what they had learned online.

And that was years before the more efficient and infinitely wider-reaching Twitter, Facebook and WhatsApp we know today.

The real game changer, of course, is social media. That simply cannot be silenced.

It is very foolish of  governments to think they control things simply by making pc and smartphone screen’s go blank.

Yayha Jammeh shut down the internet before the election he lost in December last year.

Thanks to decisive action by the Economic Community of West African States it did not stop him being forced to accept defeat and go into exile.

Currently, the Cameroon has instructed the service providers to cut off the internet to 20% of the country where English-speaking citizens complain they are being bullied and marginalized by the French-speaking majority.

Activists are angry with the telephone companies, who are the internet service providers, for complying with government directives

They say being a service provider  about more than profit and providing faster internet.

I get a sense of deja vu here, going back to South African newspapers during the apartheid era.

The anti-apartheid lobby argued that by succumbing to Pretoria’s repressive media laws we were playing into the hands of the repressive regime.

The idealists then and their contemporaries today have difficulty in accepting that operating in the mainstream media is a business.

That is necessarily accompanied by a raft of responsibilities.

Above all, it requires staying alive to do what businesses do: make a profit for owners and shareholders.

True we did have to comply with many of the laws. One editor likened his job at the time to walking blindfolded through a minefield.

But we should be given some credit for ingenuity.

By coming out daily, we were able to drive a coach and horses through some of the more repressive measures  imposed by the apartheid regime and in so doing play a significant role in bringing down the evil system.

Surely we should allow today’s internet service providers similar space.

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