After all of the chaos, violence, indecision and intransigence it appears that Kenya may be on the way to peace. The country's newly configured Parliament has met under the country's power-sharing agreement and everyone seems to be saying and doing the right things. But what are the prospects for reconciliation? Clearly the election revealed fissures […]
I would like to welcome you all to the Foreign Policy Association's new Africa Blog. Some of you may be familiar with me from the FPA's South Africa Blog, which I have run for nearly a year now. I will serve as the senior blogger/senior editor of the Africa Blog, but we will also add […]
Recently elsewhere I wrote about the passing of George Fredrickson, emphasizing the role he played in my own intellectual development. Here is his New York Times obituary. Another leading South African historian, Stanley Trapido, who left South Africa after the Sharpevile Massacre in 1960 and became a lecturer at Oxford, also died recently. You can […]
Two interesting developments in the Zimbabwe election campaign. The first is that it appears that many of Simba Makoni's supporters are hedging their bets, quietly supporting the upstart candidate while avowing their loyalty to Zanu-PF and thus implicitly, it would seem, to Robert Mugabe. One can sympathize with the inclination — crossing Mugabe almost always […]
Two interesting developments in the Zimbabwe election campaign. The first is that it appears that many of Simba Makoni's supporters are hedging their bets, quietly supporting the upstart candidate while avowing their loyalty to Zanu-PF and thus implicitly, it would seem, to Robert Mugabe. One can sympathize with the inclination — crossing Mugabe almost always […]
South Africans, like people the world over, are beginning to take a great deal of interest in the primary campaigns taking place in the United States. According to a story on NPR (Click on the link to hear the full report.): South Africans have been consumed with crippling nationwide power outages and other issues closer […]
(Zapiro — The Mail & Guardian) The political contest in Zimbabwe continues to mystify observers. Simba Makoni's candidacy has legs, which in and of itself is a cause for surprise, and possibly excitement. A British economist, Professor Gwyn Prins of the London School of Economics, has called for South Africa to threaten to cut off […]
Simba Makoni's comments last week that “South Africa has not offered any support, and I didn't ask for it” probably reaffirmed in the minds of many people Thabo Mbeki and the rest of the South African government's unwillingness to stand up to Robert Mugabe. And yet it seems from where I sit that Mbeki must […]
Here is a quick roundup of some Africa-related news stories that have caught my eye in recent days: Despite the fact that the media lives by the age-old credo “if it bleeds it leads” with regard to crime stories, which serves to warp people's perspectives on the nature and frequency of crime, violent crime rates […]
This is not the run-up to glory that Robert Mugabe anticipated when he surprised everyone by announcing that Zimbabwe would hold elections at the end of March. Mugabe expected a coronation. He expected that the short timetable for the polling and the fact that he had cowed or crushed most all viable opposition would surely […]
France's President Nicolas Sarkozy arrived in South Africa today for a two-day visit, his first to a non-Francophone African nation. Energy will be high on the list of priorities when Thabo Mbeki and Sarkozy sit down to talk, but so too will be agreements in technology, tourism, African relations, and other areas. Mbeki's relationship with […]
Well, this cannot be good for Jacob Zuma. Schabir Shaik has admitted that he bribed the ANC president “with the intention to corrupt him.” Shaik, who has been convicted of corruption charges, is hardly an unimpeachable witness. And his testimony is not sufficient to put Zuma in a jackpot. But it hardly helps. And Zuma's […]
Malusi Gigaba, a member of the ANC's National Executive Council and the country's Deputy Minister of Home Affairs has an article in the Mail & Guardian calling for South Africans, and especially the ANC rank and file, to give Jacob Zuma a chance to be a successful party leader and presidential successor.: [Zuma's] election represents […]
Robert Mugabe turned 84 on Saturday, and the wily old tyrant was in a typically feisty mood, announcing in the face of his increasingly emboldened opposition that “There will never be regime change here … Never.” Simba Makoni, Mugabe's challenger in the March 31 election, is unbowed by Mugabe's intransigence and continues to forge ahead […]
The Mail & Guardian has a feature on Kader Asmal, who is leaving politics to take on a post at the University of the Western Cape in Bellville. Asmal's peripatetic career in opposition to the Apartheid state and in support of democracy took him to Bellville in 1994, where he lectured at UWC after he […]