Over at The Mail & Guardian Verashni Pillay has some fun at the expense of South Africa’s white liberals.
Almost lost in the shuffle of Jacob Zuma’s personal controversies was his State of the Union address, which he delivered on Thursday night. As one observer has noted, Zuma tried to appropriate Nelson Mandela. That legitimate politics and policies will get buried as the result of Zuma’s indiscretion is precisely the problem with those indiscretions, […]
From the African Studies Centre at Leiden: 11 February 2010 marks 20 years since the apartheid regime of South Africa unbanned the African National Congress and other liberation movements, and released Nelson Mandela from prison. The Library, Documentation and Information Department of the African Studies Centre Leiden has compiled a web dossier to coincide with […]
Free advice for Congress of the People (COPE) leader Mosiuoa “Terror” Lekota: If you are going to condemn President Jacob Zuma for what you assert are his moral lapses, you probably ought not to be guilty of very similar transgressions.
ANC Youth League Leader Julius Malema is a lightning rod for controversy. But I fail to see how his most recent remarks, in which he asserted that former President FW de Klerk is “not a hero” and was a “product of apartheid,” are worthy of disapproval, never mind punishment. The truth is usually a good […]
The PPA has a new blog, and it might be the awesomest blog ever. Go check yoself the FPA Music and Global Affairs Blog. Just please return back here. I fear that Robert is going to put forth a flurry of content making the rest of us irrelevant in your eyes.
Twenty years ago, on 11 February 1990, Nelson Mandela left Victor Verster prison in Paarl. Today South Africa and the world celebrates that epoch-shifting event. After twenty-seven years the ANC leader, who had by the 1980s become a symbol of the anti-Apartheid movement and the embodiment of South Africa’s pariah status, was free. Mandela spent […]
I received an email from a reader this morning. The emailer (it was basically anonymous, and so I do not know the writer’s gender) asserted that they like this blog, but believe that I am too negative about Africa, and suggested a website (theirs, I assume) for me to visit that takes a sunny view […]
Two stories from today serve to hint how precarious Nigeria’s political situation might be if Goodlove Jonathan’s Interim Presidency goes awry. In his first day in power after taking over the presidency for Umaru Yar’Adua, who is hospitalized in Saudi Arabia with no indication if he will ever recover well enough to return to power, […]
One reason why Jacob Zuma is likely to weather the storm surrounding his latest controversy is that his popularity ratings were incredibly high before the story broke and had been rising throughout the early months of his presidency. According to polls in November 2009, 77% of South Africans felt that Zuma was doing his job […]
Nigeria’s Vice President Goodluck Jonathan has now taken over as the country’s Interim President, a position he will maintain until (and if) President Umaru Yar-Adua is able to recover from his rather dire health problems and return from Saudi Arabia. Theoretically the country has thus avoided a major political crisis and Jonathan said all of […]
Guinea’s interim president, General Sekouba Konate, has named Rabiatou Serah Diallo, secretary general of Guinea’s National Workers Confederation, to head a council charged with managing the country’s long-awaited transition from military to civilian rule. The National Transition Council will consist of 101 Guineans from civil society, political parties, religious groups and members of the ruling […]
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