Western governments and aid agencies are still skeptical of Zimbabwe, not least because Robert Mugabe is still involved in the country’s coalition government. Meanwhile Mugabe and his once-unfathomable partner in that new government, Morgan Tsvangirai, desperately want those western governments and agencies to give Zimbabwe much-needed aid and to end sacntions. Neither of these positions is irrational. […]
A plaster on someone’s finger is usually hardly worthy of notice, never mind the source of an entire nation’s attention. Yet the recent appearance of a band-aid on Ugandan President Yoweri Museveni’s right index finger has set off a furious round of concern, speculation, and posturing. Is it the symptom of some sort of infection? […]
So it is official. Jacob Zuma is off the hook, as the National Prosecuting Authority (NPA) confirmed the rumors that had been swirling for several days by dropping the charges against the African National Congress (and likely future South African) president. (See the full text of the NPA decision here.) Presumably, then, this long and […]
File Under: Color Me Unsurprised. Sudan’s National Electoral Commission has announced that this year’s scheduled presidential and parliamentary elections, mandated by 2005’s Comprehensive Peace Agreements, have been postponed until 2010. Sudan has not had a general election since 1986. Khartoum’s thugs have no interest in giving up power or even in having to have that power […]
Well, that didn’t take long. The Niger Delta’s largest rebel group, the Movement for the Emancipation of the Niger Delta (MEND), took a cursory look at Nigerian President Umaru Yar’Adua’s amnesty offer for those rebels willing to forswear violence and basically said “thanks, but no thanks,” dismissing the offer as “unrealistic.”
Because of South Africa’s tortured racial past, we should never underestimate the power that race and ethnicity play in the country’s politics. But South African society, and indeed, African societies generally, should not be reduced to squabbles over “tribalism,” a simplistic reductionism that journalists in particular find seductive. When “tribalism”and ethnicity seem to be the […]
As an FYI, I have added Global News Blog Headlines’ Africa page to the blogroll. Check with them often for up-to-date news and information.
South African sports fans might be the most reactive in the world. Nowhere does national pride (what some might call arrogance) swell so much after a national team win in any of the major team sports. Nowhere does the angst overtake so quickly after one of the teams suffers defeat. Bafana Bafana’s thrilling recent victory […]
The National Prosecuting Authority decision to drop the corruption charges against Jacob Zuma is not quite yet a done deal, though signs still point to Zuma pulling yet another Houdiniesque escape. The pending charges or the decision to drop them have long represented politics by other means, deeply dividing the country and the NPA, and no matter what […]
Nigerian President Umaru Musa Yar’Adua has promised amnesty to those Niger Delta rebels who are willing to lay down arms and stop attacking oil industry installations and personnel. It remains to be seen whether this is a generous act of reconciliation or a desperate trial balloon. What is clear is that the status quo simply cannot prevail.
South Africa is the only African member of the G-20. The Council on Foreign Relations has capsule synopses of each country’s agenda. Here is South Africa’s.
One of the keys to Zimbabwe’s hopes for future success is re-developing the country’s infrastructure. And yet as this IRIN report (which focuses on the cholera epidemic but the larger point holds for the country’s political situation) shows, it is difficult even to come to grips with just how bad the infrastructure has gotten in […]
This Sunday’s New York Times Book Review features focuses on two books on Africa. The Times’ East African correspondent Jeffrey Gettelman reviews the respected Africanist Gerard Prunier’s book Africa’s World War: Congo, the Rwandan Genocide, and the Making of a Continental Catastrophe. And the Times’ former South Africa correspondent Suzanne Daley takes a look at Mark Givisser’s A Legacy of […]
At Global Post Finbarr O’Reilly finds that beneath the horrors of life in the Democratic Republic of Congo there is real humanity, which he sees revealed in women’s hairstyles. I have to admit, I’m not sure if I find this touching and revelatory, sort of creepy and exploitative, or reductive like the tabloid magazines you find […]
