Well, so much for all of that palaver about the 2009 Springboks being the best team in South Africa’s storied rugby history. The Springboks are certainly the best team in the world, but the desultory performance this past weekend that led to a thrashing at the hands of the Australians has given the All Blacks […]
This weekend what is being described as a “top-level delegation” from the European Union will be visiting Zimbabwe. After their visit the group will determine their future course of action with regard to providing economic aid and other support for the state and its coalition government. My plea to these visitors: Do not let the […]
Puns are the lowest form of humor. Which explains why you and I cannot get enough of them. England’s 5-1 thrashing of Croatia yesterday propelled them to the World Cup in South Africa. This caused the zany editors at The Guardian’s daily tea time email The Fiver to go on a rampage of South Africa-related […]
A number of stories piling up in the tabs on my Mac: United States envoy Scott Gratius is in Sudan to try to hold together the fragile peace that runs the risk of shattering in the country’s South. He will also visit Darfur. But unless he has a mandate to coerce, flatter, cajole, or otherwise […]
The unlit but smoldering poweder keg in South Africa is the poor. The end of the Apartheid years represented a nearly incomprehensible transition in South African history and was surely one of the high points in the often grim history of the 20th century. But while the African National Congress has done much for many, […]
At least in part at the behest of Zimbabwean Prime Minister (and longtime antagonist of President Robert Mugabe) Morgan Tsvangirai, the Southern African Development Community (SADC) met today to discuss encouraging the Western powers to end sanctions against Zim. Already the International Monetary Fund (IMF) has provided Zimbabwe a $510-million loan, its first loan to the […]
Not only are things in Africa not as bad as many think, but it runs the possibility of becoming the world’s breadbasket. [Hat Tip for both.]
In the latest New Republic historian Christine Stansell has a lengthy essay using Rwanda to draw some conclusions on post-conflict envronments. The article is fine. But if you’ll forgive a little territorialism, what in the hell is Christine Stansell doing writing on Africa in such a prominent forum? Stansell is a fine historian of American […]
Here is a deluge of tidbits to catapult you into your weekend. If you are reading this from the United States, have a wonderful Labor Day weekend. Eat a hot dog and drink beer while wallowing in college football and baseball pennant races. (If you are in South Africa, have some boerewors, keep the beer, […]
You would be forgiven for wondering if things are improving in Zimbabwe or not. My inclination is to believe that with Jacob Zuma’s tougher stand on Robert Mugabe and with continued pressure from NGO’s and other outsiders things have improved and will continue to do so. But that improvement is tenuous and incremental. More importantly, […]
Here are a bunch of stories to start off your week: David Smith of The Mail & Guardian argues that District 9 represents the first in what we can expect to be a stream of post-Apartheid movies. Because of my own interest both in the negotiation process that led to the end of Apartheid and […]
Jendayi Frazer, who currently teaches at Carnegie Mellon and who was assistant Secretary of State for African Affairs from 2005-2009 has an op-ed in The Wall Street Journal laying out “Four Ways to Help Africa.” I’ll briefly address each in turn: 1) Place Eritrea on the list of state sponsors of terrorism. Eritrea does indeed […]
I’m swamped with meetings and classes and meetings and appointments and meetings and so the last few days have seen me get buried with a whole host of stories and links I’ve wanted to write about but have instead let pile up in my Firefox tabs, surely to ill effect of my computer’s memory and […]
I had planned to write a somewhat-lengthy post about the death of Ted Kennedy and his role in the anti-apartheid debate in the United States, including his 1985 trip to South Africa, but Texas in Africa beat me to the punch with a post pretty close to what I’d have written. I will only add […]
(Belated Happy Birthday! This was my 1000th post for the FPA Africa Blog!) Even as Jacob Zuma plans to head to Zimbabwe to try to channel negotiations and perhaps play the role of peacemaker the dynamic north of the Limpopo might be set to change radically — and not, as many might assume, for the […]