Two headlines about South African emigration from Independent On-Line appeared within the same week. The first: “Whites Leaving SA in Droves.” The second: “Whites Return to South Africa.” Is this schizophrenia at work? Shoddy journalism? Or, as I believe, an example of South Africans perceiving a problem and generally believing the worst even when there is contravailing […]
In the sort of sound economic reasoning that we have all come to expect from Harare, the Zimbabwean government plane to chop a bunch of zeroes off of the country's currency, thus re-denominating, though not re-valuating the plummeting Zimbabwean dollar. Beyond making math a little easier for people carrying around bricks of the country's virtually […]
Three stories caught my eye this morning, all of which fall into the category of disappointing, but not surprising. 1) The power-sharing talks over Zimbabwe have broken down over the question of what role Morgan Tsvangirai will play. The sides appear to have rather different conceptions of the role the Movement for Democratric Change leader will […]
This is a bit belated, but I wanted to share my Cape Argus Zim Op Ed from June 25 in which I lament Morgan Tsvangirai dropping out of the race and utilize an example from the American Civil Rights Movement as an example of what I worried that his departure from the race might mean.
There is a reason why economics is known as the “dismal science.” For all of the accoutrements of precision and exactitude, the reality is that much of economics is at least as much alchemy as science, and the supposed “laws” of economics are more like guidelines than immutable realities. It is thus not surprising that […]
Tony King, a professor at the University of the West of England, uses this Guardian article on the currency crisis as a springboard to what strikes me as some reasonable commentary at H-SAfrica: . . . The government is running out of paper for banknotes, and is facing the prospect of losing the software licence […]
A key rule in understanding politics is to take with a grain of salt when one party tries to define, contextualize, predict, or provide historical context for another. Another key rule is to make sure that other parties are not in a position to define yours. I thought of (read: made up) these iron-clad rules […]
Even as Kenya moves forward from the political violence that set the country alight at the beginning of the year after the fiercely contested netional elections, there are still hundreds of people who were displaced as a result of the violence living in camps around Nairobi. Chaos that takes just days or weeks to flare and abate […]
Nigeria's Niger Delta is an inflamed troublespot that does not look to have any easy solutions. Rebel groups continually sabotage the oil industry there, sometimes attacking, kidnapping, and even killing people associated with the oil industry, locals and foreigners alike. Whatever their methods, the rebels’ grievances are real. Between corruption, inefficiency, misallocation of resources, and […]
Tired of rising electricity and food prices, 25,000 members of the Congress of South African Trade Unions (COSATU) marched on Eskom's Johannesburg offices today. The march sounds as if it was almost festive, with a holiday mood prevailing among the marchers. But beneath the surface there is real anger. I heard it when I spoke […]
Anyone who has spent any substantial time in Africa is familiar with the importance of the informal economy. In South Africa, for example, there are the parking guards and gardeners and maids and cooks and people willing to wash your car or clean your windows. And then there are the street peddlars, especially in towns […]
I should be back to regular posting soon. My travels did not end with the return to the US, but I plan to be back at full posting volume in the next day or so. In the meantime, over at the FPA Africa Blog I have a long piece on the Zimbabwe crisis, the talks […]
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