Stories floating around that are worth your time: Timothy Kustusch has a feature for GlobalPost on the usually-overlooked conflict in Western Sahara. He thinks it might get worse before it gets any better. New York Times East Africa correspondent Jeffrey Gettleman has a travel feature on Uganda. Travel pieces on Africa tend toward fetishization — […]
There is a fine, indeed possibly indiscernible, line between neo-imperialism and investment. Exhibit A? The Chinese, not known for being concerned about niceties such as human rights when self-interest is involved, are teaming up with Great Britain on what they purport to be a benign investment program.. According to The Guardian: China has embarked on […]
The kids are not alright. At least not at the University of South Africa (UNISA), where students, appropriating a phrase from the 1980s anti-apartheid struggle, are promising to make UNISA “ungovernable” in a campaign to drive out university vice-chancellor Barney Pityana. The students claim that Pityana is incompetent, unresponsive to the needs of students and […]
As usual, we are getting some fairly mixed messages on Zimbabwe. Prime Minister Morgan Tsvangirai continues to put a positive spin on the situation for reasons that I have pointed out before (namely that he has few options, that he knows Robert Mugabe may not be a legitimate president but the facts on the ground […]
Stories that came across the desktop today: Africa’s longest serving leader, Gabon’s President Omar Bongo Ondimba, is in a Spanish hospital and is apparently in “a very bad condition” due to what some reports are calling intestinal cancer. Given that Ondimba has been a dynastic ruler in the oil-rich (for the few) but impoverished (for […]
At his blog, Matthew Yglesias makes a point in a post, “Geopolitics and Democracy,” that, while not explicitly about Africa, has quite clear ramifications for the way that we think about and describe the political context in African nation states. I am going to quote him in full because 1) the post is pretty salient […]
This might be a bit too insiderish, but here goes: At his blog Easily Distracted, Swarthmore College Africanist has a post exploring “What’s Distinctive About Africanist Historiography.” Burke is a thoughtful and serious thinker and his remarks are very much worth considering. I am, however, always wary of “distinctiveness” arguments, which strike me as one […]
The votes from an election with massive turnout are still being counted in Malawi’s too close to call (but apparently getting closer to resolution) national elections. While there are already some disputes over the tallies, there is a distinct likelihood that women could find themselves with greater representation at the highest ranks of Malawi’s politics […]
I recently returned from a few days in Oxford, and as a consequence some stories have piled up that I otherwise might have given greater attention to but that at least warrant links: The Nigerian government is pretty serious about cracking down on the militants in the Niger Delta. Expect a response. This is not […]
Well, Helen Zille, you wanted power. You wanted to challenge the ANC, to show that there is a better way, and that the Democratic Alliance could pave that way forward in South African politics. By gaining control of the Western Cape (and strengthening your slot as the official opposition to the ANC) you got what […]
Stories that caught my eye today: It seems that a number of white South African expats are joining the far-right British National Party. I am not certain if this says good things about the state of the racist white right in South Africa or merely confirms bad things about the British far right. Speaking of […]
With a hat tip to Texas in Africa, which has fast become one of my favorite Africa-themed blogs (possibly in part because of my own Texas-to-Africa links), comes Development Daily’s “A Comparative Taxonomy of African Cliches.” Because of the generalized nature of the post, most anyone who writes about Africa is occasionally guilty of some […]
Young people in South Africa think Barack Obama is cool, but they think Nelson Mandela is even cooler. Sounds about right to me.
Lesotho stands on the brink of serious political crisis. The tiny mountain kingdom never really moved forward after the country’s deeply controversial elections in 2007. A recent assassination attempt on Prime Minister Pakalitha Mosisili in which armed gunmen invaded Mosisili’s home only to be confronted with state soldiers who killed four f the invaders indicates […]
The Nigerian film industry, which has taken on the derivative nickname of “Nollywood,” has just passed the United States and now ranks second only to India’s Bollywood in terms of number of films produced per year. I am not even going to begin to pretend that I had any idea about nigeria’s cinematic accomplishments.