What would you ask world leaders?

Earlier this year the Davos Conversation opened up the dialogue between world leaders and the public using the Internet. Now the World Economic Forum (WEF) is doing the same thing in the run-up to its meeting in Cape Town in June.

Interested parties and persons can engage the WEF by submitting their thoughts via its website and on the video-sharing site YouTube. "Are there any top issues that you think should be discussed in Cape Town? Are there any serious questions you would like to pose to our leadership? Do you have any thoughts and suggestions to recommend to the leaders?" asks an introductory video posted on YouTube.

On the final day of the actual summit, which runs from June 13 to 15, a selection of these submissions will addressed by world leaders in an hour-long session convened specifically for this purpose. Their answers will be recorded and posted on YouTube for public access.

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Politicians on the "tube"

Remember the last American Presidential campaign and how Howard Dean built up his numbers by harnessing the powers of the internet? He did something that wasn’t supposed to work in politics – he gave up control to a bunch of bloggers and young voters.

David Weinberger, his online campaign manager explains: “The thing I think the Dean campaign got right was recognizing that... brand does not emanate from the center. Advertising does and marketing does, but actual awareness of and enthusiasm about a so-called brand comes from the market,"

“If you want to build a social network quickly, the only way to do it is by giving up some measure of control. Control throttles growth," he says. "So they very purposefully and explicitly gave up some control, a remarkable degree of control, over their message in order to allow the supporters to find one another" he said.

Well what does that mean for us here in South Africa with our Presidential succession race looming at the end of the year?

Does it not really touch us at all because we aren’t so internet-connected yet?

Or is it that the African National Congress still regards itself more of a liberation movement than a political party?

Maybe it is because the grassroots support – where the majority of votes comes from, after all, lie in the ANC branches? So, I guess we just leave it to the mainstream media to wildly speculate while the ANC does its own thing as it always has.

It would be nice if a few names were put up and people who declared themselves eligible for the position could post a channel with videos of a few topics and we, the voters could interact with them, ask questions. There are plenty of us who truly believe in people centered governance.

Reuters reported on 1 March that top White House candidates have unveiled their own YouTube video channels, pushing the 18-month-old Web video-sharing site even farther into the U.S. political mainstream.

They can post a video in which they speak on a given issue while members of the public will be able post a video response or questions for the candidate.

Politicians have the final say about what appears on their channels, but they still may be unable to prevent being caught up in what became known last year as the "macaca" phenomenon.

Republican Senator George Allen of Virginia, lost a closely fought election after getting some unwanted publicity when a video showed up on YouTube of him calling a rival's staffer "macaca" -- an African monkey and sometimes a racial slur. The rival's staffer was of Indian origin.

Jordan Hoffner, YouTube director of content partnerships, said candidates might get the most benefit from their channels by being as open as possible.

Some of the politicians you can watch and interact with are Hilary Clinton, Barak Obama, and Rudi Giuliani.