Robert Mugabe turned 84 on Saturday, and the wily old tyrant was in a typically feisty mood, announcing in the face of his increasingly emboldened opposition that “There will never be regime change here … Never.” Simba Makoni, Mugabe's challenger in the March 31 election, is unbowed by Mugabe's intransigence and continues to forge ahead […]
The Mail & Guardian has a feature on Kader Asmal, who is leaving politics to take on a post at the University of the Western Cape in Bellville. Asmal's peripatetic career in opposition to the Apartheid state and in support of democracy took him to Bellville in 1994, where he lectured at UWC after he […]
Not everyone shares the general belief that president Bush deserves some credit for his Africa policies. Josh Kurlantznick is decidedly unimpressed with the President's approach toward Africa, as he shows in this piece at The New Republic. Here is a sample: Rather than supporting democratic institutions and criticizing a new generation of African authoritarians, the […]
My apologies for the light posting this week. I’ve been down and out with a nasty case of the flu for the last few days. Things will pick back up as I recover from my current zombie status. In the meantime, you should read this piece on President Bush's trip to Africa by the Foreign […]
The Council on Foreign Relations has a useful primer on American policies toward the five countries President Bush is visiting this week. I am going to make a controversial assertion: Although President Bush has, by just about any measure, been a pretty bad president, he ranks among the upper echelons in terms of policy toward […]
Periodically you’ll hear the whispering: FIFA is displeased with South Africa's progress in preparing to host the World Cup in 2010. Every sign of “political instability” (which is a patronizing way of referring to political division, which every vibrant democracy has) or possible internal conflicts in the organizing effort sends the FIFA overlords and Afro-pessimists […]
The Economist this past week had a correspondent keeping a diary based on experiences in Kenya. The week's entries are, by definition, episodic, but provide some context for daily life amidst the political and social chaos that has emerged.
There is lots going on these days across the continent, so without further palaver, I’ll point you in the right directions to catch up. Your first stop should probably be the latest Pambazuka News, which has useful articles on Chad, Zimbabwe, lots on Kenya, and other important issues. From there you can go to the […]
The sun will rise, the sun will set, and South African sport will exist in a perpetual case of turmoil. Or so it seems. Winning the Rugby World Cup last year does not seem to have provided a balm to SARU's (usually self-inflicted) wounds and in many ways seems to have rubbed them raw. Even […]
My initial response to this article asserting that Simba Makoni has quite a challenge ahead of him was to wonder what sort of moron might argue anything to the contrary. Fortunately, though, the reporter goes deeper than the “no tea party” argument: Makoni's real challenge is to show he has the clout to attract enough […]
Kofi Annan seems optimistic that he can broker agreements in Kenya that will allow for that country to begin to heal. One of the key elements to any solution appears to be the establishment of a coalition government that will sit until the country can hold new elections, which would probably not take place until […]
Charles R. Stith, a former US ambassador to Tanzania and director of the African Presidential Archives and Research Center at Boston University, has an op-ed piece in today's Boston Globe endorsing the Millennium Challenge Initiative as a way to help develop Africa. He argues that partisan squabbling over the amount of funding to provide the […]
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