In the United States Ronald Reagan used to be referred to as “The Teflon President” because no matter what befell his administration or what mistakes he made or what failures he had, nothing seemed to stick. It appears that South African President Jacob Zuma has his own non-stick sheen. Despite myriad personal controversies and political […]
Stories that have accumulated on my desk over the last few days with commentary as apt: Increasingly ANC Youth League (ANC-YL) president Julius Malema finds himself in President Jacob Zuma’s bad graces. And this, of course, is shorthand for the increasingly tendentious relationship between the ANC and the Youth League. This is yet another of […]
Johannesburg (52), Nairobi (56), and Lagos (59) made the Foreign Policy magazine’s 2010 Global Cities Index. The index provides a comprehensive ranking of global cities’ performance by measuring their influence on the world stage, ranging from the size of the economy, politics to culture. Not a surprising choice here, but personally I find the three […]
The possibility of the ANC government cracking down on the media and the concerns over the implications of the Protection of Information Bill (2010) and the possible establishment of a “media tribunal” (the tribunal and the act are not the same thing) continue to vex observers both in in and outside of South Africa. See […]
Zambia may be Africa’s largest producer of copper, but the impact of this red metal on the country‘s economy still remains a mixed blessing. In the Mail and Guardian article posited on the Zambian Watch website at http://www.zambianwatchdog.com/2010/08/23/zambia-on-red-metal-alert/, it is argued that Zambia’s heavy reliance on copper is exactly what’s wrong with Zambia’s economy. To […]
Public sympathy for the increasingly nasty ongoing public sector strike is starting to lose the sympathy and support of the general populace if it has not done so already. Even in labor-friendly South Africa, where the union movement was a central component of the anti-Apartheid struggle and are a central component of the governing coalition, […]
Interesting. Usually the South African Communist Party (SACP) and Congress of South African Trade Unions (COSATU) stand united as the left flank of the ANC’s Tripartite alliance, usually at an uncomfortable distance from the ANC itself. President Jacob Zuma is following the ANC script by condemning the ongoing public sector strikes that are disrupting the […]
Foreign Policy magazine has published its 2010 Global Cities Index. The methodology is difficult to discern, but the editors claim: the index aims to measure how much sway a city has over what happens beyond its own borders — its influence on and integration with global markets, culture, and innovation. To create this year’s rankings, […]
Lost in the nightmare that has been Robert Mugabe’s “land reform” is the fact that while Zimbabwe’s reform has been a nightmare because it was geared toward rewarding or placating the so-called “war veterans” who have made up so much of Mugabe’s ZANU-PF support (and an even greater percentage of its thuggery), land reform in […]
According to an IRIN report: South Africa is unlikely to deploy soldiers in support of the African Union Mission in Somalia (AMISOM), as it did “not believe” in the political direction being followed to resolve the conflict, and there was no exit strategy, an analyst said. Because it is by just about any measure the […]
Like him or not, this week’s person of the week in the SADC region goes to Robert Mugabe. On August 17, 2010 during the closing ceremony of the 30th Southern African Development Community (SADC) summit in Namibia, Robert Mugabe of Zimbabwe received a standing ovation, a gathering that included Africa’s present and former heads of […]
Earlier, I posted some comments and reactions that I received on my facebook wall regrading the Mugabe article. Here are more comments regarding other articles as well. And, oh…I am also on twitter. http://twitter.com/NdumbaKamwanyah 1. Democracy without Independent Voters Article: • You are doing a good job with these analysis, we are getting educated from […]
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