There is some apparent good news for the South African economy. Business confidence appears to be up marginally since June. Just what impact this will have on the economy at large is far from clear. Nonetheless, since the economic elites outside of government tend to be those who are most pessimistic about South Africa, this […]
The controversy over the role of the elite special investigations unit known as the Scorpions has festered in South Africa since almost the inception of that organization. Because of the way in which the Scorpions have been kept separate from the regular police services there has been considerable tension between the SAPS and the new […]
Optimists aver that a power sharing agreement might be close in Zimbabwe. I will believe it when I see it. Michael Georgy asks and answers a series of questions speculating about what's next. I hope that the participants can reach an agreement, but the questions that Georgy and no one else has answered are what is […]
On the 10th anniversary of the embassy bombings in Kenya, the government has vowed greater vigilance on the issue of terrorism. Radical Islamist terrorism is likely to be an increasing factor in East African life in the foreseeable future, and it is wise for Kenya to take the issue more seriously, though this heightened awareness […]
The potentially bad news is that there has been a coup in Mauritania. In the country's capital, Nouakchott, General Mohammad al-Abdul Aziz, the head of the presidential guard, and General Mohammad al-Ghazwani, the army chief-of-staff, both of whom had recently been fired have taken control of the presidential palace. Officers seized President Sidi Mohamed Ould […]
The Christian Science Monitor has embarked on a vitally important four-part series on how Kenya stepped back from the brink of catastrophe in the wake of its hotly contested elections in January. The country, which appeared to be a shining example of the successes of liberal democracy in Africa, found itself on the precipice when […]
Zimbabwe ordinarily does not much register on the cultural radar in the United States. But just to show how worthless Zimbabwe's surrency has become, The Washington Post's travel section this week wrote the following: These days, however, frequent-flier miles are looking a lot like Zimbabwean dollars. The currency is being devalued with spirit-crushing regularity. There's […]
Two stories from IRIN underscore one of the big public health issues in Africa today. Maternal and infant mortality is not just a problem in Congo-Brazzaville and Ghana, though those two countries are attempting, as are so many sub-Saharan African countries, to get to grips with the reality that the birth of a child is […]
Jacob Zuma would like to have the corruption charges against him thrown out. Barring that, he hopes that a policy of delay will buy him time to find a way out of his crisis. He knows that in some circles among his allies and among those who have not taken sides there is a hope […]
Well before 9/11 the terrorist bombings in Niarobi and Dar es Salaam gave indications as to the severity of the threat that the then obscure organization al Qaeda posed to the west and its allies. One of the masterminds behind those attacks, Fazul Abdullah, has proven elusive. But Kenyan authorities have arrested members of a […]
Morgan Tsvangirai is walking a delicate balance for very high stakes in Zimbabwe. While trying, ultimately, to unseat President Robert Mugabe (and let there be no mistake that this has been his goal all along, with the negotiations for power sharing merely a stopping point and not an acceptable final resolution) he also has to […]
Jacob Zuma desperately wants to avoid the corruption charges that he faces. The talk when I was in South Africa was that the charges would be thrown out, less on the merits than out of a sense of expediency. At the same time, Zuma needs the charges either to go away or to be weakened to […]
Popular from Press
