Your faithful scribe is almost but not quite back home and thus to something resembling normalcy. Full-scale blogging should resume next week. In the meantime, here are some Africa-related links:
In Zimbabwe the Interception of Communications Bill only awaits Robert Mugabe's signature. My guess is he's thrilled to do so, helping seal Zimbabwe's totalitarian status. Meanwhile MacDonald Dzirutwe avers in the Mail & Guardian that Mugabe's newest get-tough economic policies are likely to represent only a short-term palliative with deleterious long-range effects.
It is now Congo-Brazzaville's opportunity to hold elections that raise all sorts of questions about probity, organizational skills, effectiveness, and the like.
In the category of “this comes as news to whom, exactly?” we must place a refugees International report that asserts that Sudan's rape laws are making the human rights catastrophe in Darfur worse. I do not aim my sarcasm at Refugees International, but rather at a crisis that is so far gone that such obvious accounts still qualify as being significantly newsworthy.
In Accra we might soon find out if we are closer to seeing the emergence of a United States of Africa. Just five years after its inception as a new and better organization of African states, the African Union (AU) debates tightening their confederation even more.
In South Africa:
Petrol prices continue to pose problems, with recent price drops in some areas accompanied by price hikes in others.
As the ANC meets to debate future directions, the party's succession battle accelerates, with a question that has been a subtext for some time now rising to the fore — does the party leader of necessity have to be the political standard bearer? Meanwhile, Thabo Mbeki has not so subtly hinted to the South African Communist Party (SACP) that it might be time for the comrades to steer their own separate course. I have argued for years that the only serious challenge to the ANC will come from the left, not the right, from black politicians, not disenchanted whites. Apparently Mbeki is willing to accelerate the process.
The mass action strikes are finally over. A South African cabinet minister and a prominent labour leader weigh in on their meaning.
Finally, the Springboks have had their luggage pilfered. Is this another angle for the South African crime epidemic? Not exactly. The thefts appear to have occurred in Australia, where the South African ruggers are preparing for the next part of their Tri-Nations away leg.
