Just a couple of random thoughts on Zimbabwe: 1) It appears that the country is on the verge of getting a new independent newspaper after an absence of five years. This is, obviously, a good thing. 2) Although I agree with Tendai Biti, Zim’s Finance minister, that the country needs foreign investment, coming across as […]
As a general rule I would have argued that Africa’s best art and film festival takes place in Grahamstown, South Africa each July. GlobalPost makes the case that Africa’s best film festival takes place in Ouagadougou, in Burkina Faso, calling it Africa’s Cannes.
Dissident troops have moved into Madagascar’s capital city, Antananarivo. Given the role that the military is beginning to play in the country’s crisis, the emergence of an oppositional force within the military seems to me to spell potential disaster. At the heart of the current crisis is the ongoing power struggle between President Marc Ravalomanana […]
Jacob Zuma is confident that South Africa will have peaceful elections. I see no reason to doubt him. South Africa has a political culture of liberal democracy and post-Apartheid elections have always gone off largely without a hitch. There is much instability in contemporary South Africa, but I see no reason to fear that this […]
As a general rule, when the military has to intervene in domestic politics, it does not bode well for the country both for the present and for the future. That is the case in Madagascar.
It looks like one of the battle lines that will be drawn between the African National Congress (ANC) and the Congress of the People (COPE) in the upcoming election will be their takes on Bleck Economic Empowerment (BEE) which is at the heart of South Africa’s private sector affirmative action mandates. COPE has argued that […]
At The New York Times Lydia Polgreen presents an article about recent events in Guinea-Bissau, positing that the political murders of the democratically elected president, Joao Bernardo Vieira, and the chief of the armed forces, General Batista Tagme Na Waie may actually prove good for the country going forward. She may be right, but these […]
Madagascar’s Defense Minister, Mamy Ranaivoniarivo, has resigned under duress after a group of the country’s soldiers confronted him in his office. President Marc Ravalomanana has made a plea for the end of the chaos that has beset his country. But large swaths of the country, including the military, supports opposition leader Andry Rajoelina, indicating that […]
Kenya’s capital has been paralyzed after protests on the part of students at the University of Nairobi in the wake of a police shooting of one of their colleagues, Godwin Otago, last Thursday. It is easy to associate any kind of upheaval in Kenya with the violence that followed the elections at the end of […]
New polling data indicates that large numbers of South Africans have a generally pessimistic view of the country right now. Of more immediate political concern, however, is that a huge percentage simply does not trust Jacob Zuma and believes that the prosecution of him should continue. With an election just around the corner, this level […]
This Mail & Guardian feature on education in Tanzania looks at the realities behind the government’s rosy assertions. The article concludes that education in the east African country represents “a series of near-misses.”
It is nearly impossible to tell what to make of the mysterious and tragic death of Susan Tsvangirai. The wife of Zimbabwe’s newly installed Prime Minister and leader of the Movement for Democratic Change (MDC) party that has provided the primary political opposition to Robert Mugabe died in a car crash on Friday. The car in […]
If you are following affairs in Darfur, you would be wise to bookmark the Social Science Research Council’s “Making Sense of Darfur” Blog. Including contributions from Alex de Waal, Julie Flint, and several other important observers of events in Darfur and across Sudan, “Making Sense of Darfur” is really a must-consult reseource. De Waal is far […]
The Congress of the People’s (COPE’s) newly chosen presidential candidate Mvume Dandala on Wednesday made his first public speech since receiving the party’s nomination. And already one of the biggest issues he has had to address is whether he is a compromise candidate who was picked because of a leadership struggle between the party’s president, […]
So the International Criminal Court has come down with an indictment of Sudan’s President Omar Hassan al-Bashir for human rights violations. He is the first sitting head of state ever to be so charged. Now what? Will the indictment help Darfur’s suffering masses or those overlooked victims of Khartoum stretching across the vastness of Sudan? […]