What a bizarre turn of events! The Marikana miners’ case took yet another twist as media reports that all charges against the 270 South African miners arrested for murder following their clash with the South African police two weeks ago were dropped this week. Initially, after having 34 of their colleagues killed and many more […]
[Eugene Terre’Blanche against the backdrop of an AWB flag, From The Guardian via Google Images] I hope you will all forgive my recent break from blogging. But I am back and plan to resume regular posting starting now. Obviously a great deal has transpired across the continent in recent weeks. And nowhere has seen fissures […]
After recently covering Ethiopia (here and here), I thought I’d stay in Africa for this article. I want to look at two nations with a wide space between them in terms of geography, culture, political ideology and democracy (i.e., government) itself. Basically, they’re as far apart from each other as you can be in Africa, […]
Council of Foreign Relations senior fellow Ambassador John Campbell recently released a policy innovation memorandum entitled, “Zimbabwe: An Opportunity for Closer U.S.-South Africa Relations.” It is heartening to see analysts writing on topics they perceive as beneficial to closer relations between the United States and South Africa. Campbell, a former U.S. Ambassador to Nigeria, makes […]
Today Nelson Mandela has turned 94. Mandela is staying out of the public eye, but that has not kept people from Qunu, Mandela’s home village in the Eastern Cape, to President Obama in Washington, to children around South Africa, and the world from issuing their praises of the great, but increasingly frail, leader of the […]
It’s been a busy few days since my return from South Africa, and I still have much about which I want to write. At the risk of self indulgence, I’ve made a couple of media appearances in recent days. The Colombian news magazine Semana wrote a story on the state of contemporary Africa in which […]
United Nations Organization Stabilization Mission in the Democratic Republic of the Congo (MONUSCO) peacekeepers have been busy assisting the Congolese brigades over the past week in the fight against rebels known as M23 based in Bunagana. This comes at a crucial time, as the provincial capital of Goma, a military stronghold, may be overrun. This […]
[Human Sciences Building, University of Pretoria] I am now in Pretoria where I will be participating in the biennial conference of the Historical Association of South Africa (HASA) on 6-7 July. Tomorrow (Friday, 6 July) I will be presenting a paper at 11:30 titled “Combating Hardships: Bus Boycotts in South Africa, 1953-1954, and international implications.” […]
And so the African National Congress (ANC) survived its National Policy Conference in Midrand. They may have spent upwards of 40 million rands, and toward the end a few punches were thrown by angry delegates. But what are a few fisticuffs among friends? But this is the thing to remember, always: Talk of a one-party […]
The power brokers of the African National Congress are holding their 2012 National Policy Conference in Midrand this week. This could prove to be a vital few days in the life of the Zuma administration as this week’s gathering is fraught with text and subtexts and sub-subtexts. Putatively the goal of the week is simply […]
I’m back in South Africa. Most years when I come back I start off and sometimes finish in Melville, in Johannesburg. It’s an area with which I’m intimately familiar, and it gives me a comfortable place to settle in, re-adjust, and recover from jet lag. I’ve been coming to South Africa and traveling internationally regularly […]
Very early tomorrow morning I head to South Africa for my first trip there in nearly a year. I’ll be there for three weeks and will be upping my frequency and volume of posting. But in the meantime, here is a deluge of stories that have been piling up in my tabs: At The Atlantic […]
[South Africa Tours and Travel] Man, it’s not easy to coach at the highest level of South African sport. Bafana Bafana is a mess. In the national team’s first two qualifying matches for the 2014 World Cup, they drew with Ethiopia–a team everyone thought South Africa would handle easily– and Botswana–a team that actually was […]
It is perhaps not surprising that South African rugby included the highest number of black Springboks in match rosters during former coach Peter de Villiers’ tenure. The recently released de Villiers was, after all, the first non-white Springbok coach (and yes, I hate defining him against what he was not, but that’s the history […]
South Africa will be hosting the African Cup of Nations, the biennial African football competition that will be changing from even to odd-numbered years in 2013. In many ways this is probably good news — South Africa has the best infrastructure in terms of stadiums and roads, it has the media facilities and the wherewithal […]