As a followup to the story about South African mercenaries training members of Guinea’s ruthless junta: The South African government has begun investigations into the matter. Meanwhile the story gets more complicated, and perhaps alarming, as it seems that among the mercenaries is at least one former high-ranking member of the South African Police Services […]
Three stories brought to you by The Archival Platform, an innovative new approach to archives, memory, history and archival-related information and advocacy in South Africa, based at the University of Cape Town. All three stories are related to Southern African heritage sites: The Nelson Mandela Museum in Mthata (formerly Umtata), in South Africa’s Eastern Cape […]
I don’t usually find myself taking Julius Malema’s side, mostly because of style rather than substance, but I think he and I are on the same page on this one. Can we all just stay here in Reasonable Land for a little while and that acknowledge that as bad, foolish, harmful, and shameful as Thabo […]
In a recent Boston Globe op-ed piece HDS Greenway makes the argument that democracy might not be for everybody. Africa only gets peripheral mention in this particular version of a fairly common argument that is probably true as far as it goes. But the problem I always have with these sorts of contrarian exercises is: […]
Is Mali ripe for radical Islamist terrorist exploitation? That is certainly the fear of many in the US and Britain, as well as in Mali itself. A group known as “al-Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb” has been active in Algeria, and the fear is that the organization plans to expand outward toward Mali. Andrew Harding […]
I don’t want to say that the controversy over the vuvuzela at South African football games can be reduced merely to race. But the calls for the banning of the ubiquitous horns from next year’s World Cup shows a remarkable sense of cultural blinders. The latest demand that South Africans yield their own sporting quirk […]
It isn’t easy being a continental superpower. This is a lesson that South Africa learns on a regular basis. By most measures, South Africa is the most powerful country in Africa, which begs the question of what it means to be the most powerful country in Africa. Culturally and economically the country’s influence is pretty […]
For at least the time being the tensions within the ANC’s tripartite alliance over the establishment of the National Planning Commission (NPC) appear to have been assuaged. ANC secretary general Gwede Mantashe assures us that all is well, and to prove it he had beside him at his announcement two nodding figureheads, one each from […]
It seems that South African mercenaries have been involved in the training of Guinea’s junta, at the head of which is Moussa Dadis Camara, who took power after a coup in December and which was responsible for the deaths of more than 150 anti-Camara protesters last month. Images of Executive Outcomes and others among Apartheid […]
By most accounts Jacob Zuma is quite popular and is doing a good job — a much better job, it must be admitted, than many of his detractors expected when he took office back in May. But the biggest issue surrounding Zuma — let’s call it his tendency toward putting himself into situations where malfeasance […]
Here are stories that should keep you busy as you head into a November weekend. If you are reading this from the US, Europe or elsewhere in the northern hemisphere, winter is fast approaching. If you are reading from Africa or the southern hemisphere, winter seems like a distant concept. Either way, enjoy. Commentary as […]
In a wide-ranging series of lectures Open Society Institute chairman and founder George Soros has been trying to place the global financial crisis in some larger context. In one recent speech he said: And China needs to become a more open society in order to be acceptable to the rest of the world. The rest […]
The Editors of The New Republic have weighed in on US envoy to the Sudan, Scott Gration. Their verdict: “Scott Gration is an embarrassment.” Ouch.
Political instability tends to emanate outward. In Guinea, for example, clearly the country’s political crisis begins in Conakry with a tale of political power struggles and infighting that soon turned toward violence and ultimately massacres. But radiating from those high-level clashes are consequences that batter an already suffering populace. The political strife augments and exacerbates […]