The calls for Robert Mugabe's ouster are increasing in both frequency and intensity. The European Union, the Western media (for example The Washington Post), and Kenya's Prime Minister Raila Odinga have all recently made it clear that it is time for Mugabe to go, preferably voluntarily, but increasingly there are calls for the use of […]
Provisional results from the elections in Ghana are trickling in slowly, and the presidential race in particular appears to be incredibly close. In the early accounting, the opposition candidate, John Evans Atta-Mills of the National Democratic Party, has a slight lead on the New Patriotic Party (NPP) and its candidate, Dr. Nana Akufo-Addo. Let us […]
A couple of days ago I wrote about the ongoing problem of piracy in the Gulf of Aden and implied that attacking passenger liners would be a sure way to grab international attention by drawing the label of “terrorism.” this was not meant to imply, however, that such piracy actually qualifies as terrorism. I think […]
Give Robert Mugabe credit for chutzpah if nothing else. Zimbabwe's President-by-declaration has announced that new elections will be called if a power-sharing agreement is not reached in the next two years. This generous, indeed absurd, timetable will of course allow talks to languish and thus will keep Mugabe right where he insists that he belongs, […]
Ghanaians are preparing to go to the polls this weekend in what should be a closely contested and vitally important election. The African Studies Centre at Leiden has a useful dossier providing an overview of the election and International Foundation for Electoral Systems (IFES) has put together election guides for both the presidential and parliamentary […]
The much-maligned Scorpions have uncovered what should prove to be pretty explosive details on the corruption surrounding the arms deals. Now that Pandora's Box is open, one wonders just how damaging this could be to the ANC. Is this another Muldergate? Worse? Under ordinary circumstances the ANC would seem likely, as the only game in […]
In a blistering op-ed piece in The Zimbabwe Times Clapperton Mavhunga wonders whether the recent clashes between police and military are not merely a diversion from the real issues.
The African Elections Database is an invaluable resource (and a dangerously seductive time-waster). I would strongly encourage you to bookmark it, and I am adding it to the (still under construction) blogroll.
In The Washington Post Peter Fromuth advocates taking a new approach to piracy and abandoning a strategy that he argues has been largely the same for two-thousand years.
The fighting in the Democratic Republic of Congo appears to have achieved a brief, tentative interregnum. But The Mail & Guardian argues that the calm is deceptive. Meanwhile there are fears that Rwanda is helping to stir trouble in its vast neighbor's eastern provinces, right in Rwanda's own backyard.
Recent polling data indicates that South Africans simply have no real sense of who Kgalema Motlanthe is or what he stands for. This is exactly as Jacob Zuma would like it, as a cipher as placeholder in the office of the president only strengthens Zuma's claim on the position. The Congress of the People is […]
Ghana is gearing up for a presidential and parliamentary election this weekend. The West African country that became the first to break the shackles of colonialism is now seen as one of Africa's success stories. With oil riches on the way by 2010 the stakes are high. Can Ghana avoid the so-called oil curse and […]
A spokesman for the South African government has indicated that the antagonists in Zimbabwe are close to achieving a power-sharing agreement. If this is the case (and I, for one, am hopeful but am not holding my breath) it seems likely that the current cholera emergency coupled with the instability brought about as the result […]
Archbishop Desmond Tutu and former South African president FW de Klerk have written to President Kgalema Motlanthe requesting that he set up an independent commission of inquiry to investigate the arms deal that has so shaped and warped the current South African political climate. It is hard to imagine what rationale Motlanthe or the ANC […]
Anna Husarska, senior policy adviser at the International Rescue Committee, looks at the Congo crisis in a column in The Guardian and wonders what it will take to broker peace in the most deadly conflict since World War II. Her suggestions, while incontestable, are also somewhat underwhelming: Keep international attention focused on the conflict in […]