For all of the attention paid to the emergence of the Congress of the People (COPE) from prominent disenchanted members of the ANC. And for all of my assertions that a party like COPE represents a far likelier long-term challenge to the ANC than the Democratic Alliance (DA) the reality is that in my entire […]
After a chaotic 48 hours of travel, I am back from South Africa. I was a bit surprised how limited my internet access was for most of this trip despite the fact that i brought my laptop, so I did not write quite as many diary posts as I had hoped, but over the next few […]
Amazingly enough, my hotel in Cape Town has had virtually no internet connectivity for three days. It is both liberating and frightening to feel this out of touch for so long. Observations from Cape Town: Amidst all of the generally pessimistic commentary one reads about South Africa, I suppose it is not surprising that we […]
Yesterday saw me sampling the good, the bad, and the ugly of travel in South Africa. The Good: The Springbok game was all I could have hoped for. The Lions came out storming, compensating for their sins of last week by controlling the pack and taking the fight to a Springbok squad that seemed lackluster […]
It’s game day here in South Africa as in a few hours the Springboks will take the field for their second test match against the British and Irish Lions at Pretoria’s Loftus Versfeld, home of the Blue Bulls, and which arguably represents the Afrikaner heart of Springbok pride. last night the pubs were swarming with […]
Who would have imagined that in four days at the University of South Africa’s lovely Sunnyside campus I would have no access to internet? Ahhh, South Africa, a country that at its high end has as much technological advancement as any in the world can still, on a day-to-day basis fluster and frustrate those of […]
Tomorrow I depart for a (nearly) three-week trip to South Africa. My blogging for the next few weeks will therefore involve some combination of reportage, essays, and something of a travel diary. I will try to post an essay daily, but of course this promise comes with the caveat that I need to have the […]
According to President Obama’s special envoy to Sudan, retired Air Force Maj. Gen. J. Scott Gration, the Sudanese government is no longer engaging in a “coordinated” campaign of mass murder in Darfur. This is a change from previous characterizations of the violence there as an “ongoing genocide.” I suppose it is possible to try to […]
Bafana Bafana yesterday defeated New Zealand 2-0 in a Confederations Cup match that was even more lopsided than the score suggests. The South Africans dominated in most every way imaginable, and at times looked as if they were fielding fifteen men on the pitch. The narrative still is that the hosts blew it against Iraq […]
It appears that tensions are already brewing between the Congress of South African Trade Unions (COSATU) and President Jacob Zuma. Who could have seen this coming? Other than me, and plenty of others, I mean. (Pardon the self indulgence.) COSATU feels as if it catapulted Jacob Zuma to the presidency, not only by its support […]
My editor sent me this story on rape statistics in South Africa with an apt one-word comment: “Wow.” The gist: South Africa’s Medical Research Council conducted a survey on rape in the country and by any measure, even taking into account questions about methodology, the statistics are shocking.
As the Confederations Cup heats up it is becoming more and more clear that South Africans are wildly enthusiastic, perhaps nowhere moreso than in Soweto, about their country hosting the 2010 World Cup. And why not? In sports mad South Africa football is hands-down the most popular sport, and Soweto represents the epicenter of football […]
Respected Africanist Robert Rotberg has an op-ed piece in The Boston Globe in which he reveals the tightrope that Morgan Tsvangirai has to walk in dealing with Robert Mugabe in Zimbabwe. Mugabe still controls far too much of the government, is wildly unpredictable, and has shown no inclination either to give up power or to […]
My apologies for the light posting. I am taking a little vacation with Mrs. Africa Blog for our second anniversary. I will be back in full force next week, and after that will be blogging daily from South Africa. I would suggest looking at some of the recent posts by Texas in Africa, who has […]
All of my colleagues at the various Foreign Policy Association Blogs are doing wonderful work and I hope that you are reading all of them regularly even if your main interests lie in African affairs. (And I want to thank you if your interests lie elsewhere but you came over here anyway.) In recent weeks […]