So, you know that referendum that allowed South Sudan to go its own way? And you know how Khartoum said that it would not intervene to prevent the separation? Well, Omar al-Bashir’s government might have meant it, but they sure were not going to yield the contested terrain of oil-rich Abyei. And so earlier this […]
“This conference cannot close without adopting a single African Charter. We cannot leave here without having created a single African organization…. If we fail in this, we will have shirked our responsibility to Africa and to the peoples we lead.” So said Ethiopia’s Emperor Haile Selassie at a Pan-African summit in 1963 at which the […]
In the highest ever voter turnout, South Africans firmly put the governing African National Congress in charge of the nation’s municipalities, taking 61.95%) of the vote nationally. Did the delivery of basic services like water, housing and jobs influence the way people voted on Wednesday May 18, 2011? Of course it is difficult to tell, […]
Freedom Riders has kept me unbelievably busy (and the paperback for Freedom’s Main Line is out soon!), as has a perhaps ill-advised (from a time-use vantage point) Maymester class that I am teaching right now. So I’ve let my Firefox tabs overload with stories that I thought I’d be able to cover in full. Instead […]
Three stories from Zimbabwe caught my eye in the last few days: A new “twinning” program will pair black farmers with Chinese agricultural investors in verdant Mashonaland East. There are a few points here to consider. The first is that white farmers who have lost their land do not seem pleased. but the program is […]
Don’t Forget, you can see me on The American Experience: Freedom Riders on PBS tonight. It’s on at 9 Eastern, 8 central in most markets. As they say, check your local listings for the original broadcast and re-showings. Freedom’s Main Line is out in paperback soon. Order your copy now! You should also check out […]
“The First Grader,” a new movie that is making its way into select theaters (read: New York and Los Angeles) , tells the story of Kimani Ng’ang’a Maruge, an illiterate Kenyan who enrolled in primary school at the age of 84. I’m always wary of intentionally “uplifting” tales, and The New York Times’ review is […]
Sometimes someone writes something so crazy, so god-awful, so devoid of logic and sloppy and factually remiss that it stands as a testament of grandeur of an almost platonic form of awfulness. This post from The Mail & Guardian’s “Thought Leader” is such a piece.
The other Africa that you hardly see or hear in the news…a modern Africa with burgeoning middle class. They are entrepreneurs, aspiring minds, and achievement-oriented professionals. Follow the link: http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-africa-13332507
Every so often I just like to remind my readers how vast Africa is (and thus how difficult, indeed absurd, it is to think about it as a single unit or phenomenon or place). The True Size of Africa:
Mahmood Mamdani, the director of the Makerere Institute of Social Research in Uganda and a prominent voice in African studies, recently gave a talk in which he compared the recent uprisings across North Africa, the “Walk to Work” protests in Uganda, and the Soweto Uprisings. While the argument may not sustain scrutiny as a historical […]
The decision of South Africa’s Democratic Alliance (DA) leaders in Midvaal, an Afrikaner-heavy constituency south of Gauteng, to take down a statue of Apartheid-era driving force and Prime Minister Hendrick Verwoerd reveals the party’s biggest dilemma. The DA is best qualified as a center-right party that stands in clear opposition to the African National Congress […]
In what has to qualify as a career high-water mark, on yesterday’s Oprah honoring the 50th anniversary of the Freedom Rides, yours truly got a bit of face time. They showed clips from the Freedom Riders documentary (out on The American Experience on PBS on May 16) and used one of the clips in which […]
Are Museveni’s sins less despicable than Mugabe’s or Kaddafi’s? Yoweri Museveni’s violent response to mass protests in Uganda – sparked by rising food and fuel prices –-is just one of many such traits found in most dictators in the world (if not in Africa). Media reports suggest that Museveni will stop at nothing but a […]
I’ve been loading up on content this evening in part because I’ll be heading out of town for about ten days tomorrow. First I head to Chicago where on Friday (April 29) I’ll be chairing a panel, sitting on another, and participating in an author’s event for the Freedom Riders 50th Anniversary event this weekend. […]