Greetings from the University of Keele in the North Midlands of England. I will be spending the next month here as a visiting fellow at the David Bruce Cetre for American Studies. I am still very much settling in. It is, however, always nice to be back in the UK. I find that the UK […]
The Foreign Policy Association has published Part II of my analysis of the South African elections. (For Part I, go here.) For an interesting (though I would argue imperfect and perhaps even reductionist) take on why the Congress of the People fell short, see this piece in The New Republic. NB: I will spent the next […]
Has the Speaker of Kenya’s Parliament come up with a temporary palliative to the proximate cause of tension between President Mwai Kibaki and Prime Minister Raila Odinga? Speaker Kenneth Marende has stepped in as temporary chair of the House Business Committee in Parliament, a disputed post that has been the source of tensions between Kibaki and […]
Is it racist to oppose the African National Congress? Of course not. And the very question can reveal a deep-seeded, self-serving cynicism on the part of those who would levy such an accusation. At the same time, there is one reality that makes that cynicism practicable: While it is not racist to oppose the ANC it […]
Zimbabwe’s coalition government has approved an ambitious profram of privatization. One of the first tests of that policy will be the sale of NetOne, Zimbabwe’s state-owned cell phone service provider. If private investment provides any gauge whatsoever about the belief that Zimbabwe is on the right course, the fact that private companies are clamoring to […]
Anyone who was hoping for the wounds in Kenya’s coalition government to heal over time might be in for a rude awakening. While there have been moments when it looked as if an uneasy peace might hold, rhetoric in the last few days indicates that tensions might be re-mounting in Nairobi. Prime Minister Raila Odinga, of […]
The International Monetary Fund is predicting what most of us have suspected: That the Global economic crisis is going to have a negative impact on African growth, which, the constant flow of horrible news from the continent notwithstanding, has actually been reasonably impressive. The news is not apocolyptic, however. While growth in 2008 was more […]
The results are in. I will be following up my preview of the South African elections with an analysis of the outcomes later this week, but here is the shorthand view each party should take away from an election that saw massive voter turnout: The African National Congress: (Almost 11.7 million votes, 65.9%) Still the […]
A pretty good case can be made for the eastern districts of the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC) being the most anarchic and unstable in the world. Perhaps Somalia can stake a similar claim, and stretches along the Pakistan-Afghanistan border, but the list of contenders is, in any case, a roster of wretchedness. Rwanda shares part […]
Welcome to the new, much more visually striking Africa Blog. The FPA Blogs have all undergone an upgrade. Forgive us for any glitches in the next few days as we move forward, but we believe this will provide a better, more easily navigable, experience for both readers and bloggers. The vote counting continues in South Africa. […]
Forgive the silence of late. I spent several days in England for a conference and am just now re-emerging. Tomorrow South Africans go to the polls for the fourth time in the democratic era. The Foreign Policy Association has my preview of the election, which is part one of a two-part feature, the second of […]
In an article in The Christian Science Monitor Jean-Marc Gorelick posits that African farmers do not need bailouts, and that their priority is not aid. Rather, the problem with agriculture in Africa is that too many farmers are vulnerable to greedy middle men and to a system stacked against them. A sample: Because the farmers […]
South African golf legend Gary Player has bid farewell to the Masters, at least as an active player. The three-time winner (1961, 1974, 1978) has logged the equivalent of a year’s time (52 years, a week per year) at the hallowed course at Augusta National.
Call me a cynic, but I am always skeptical of national elections: In which the winner emerges with 90% of the vote (and the largest opposition tally is below 5%); that are marred by violence and intimidation; in which most opposition leaders withdraw, stay away, or question the validity of the enterprise; that take place after […]
Joseph Lelyveld is a respected ournalist, editor at The New York Times, and that paper’s one-time southern Africa correspondent based in South Africa. Nonetheless, I’m not sure I entirely embrace the argument expressed in the title of his (otherwise fine) New York Review of Books essay on Mark Gevisser’s A Legacy of Liberation: Thabo Mbeki and the Future […]