Please forgive my unalloyed cynicism, but is there anyone who believes Sudan’s President Omar al-Bashir when he says that Sudan would accept a decision to secede on the part of the country’s southerners? Does Bashir even believe it?
Angola has changed its Constitution, and in so doing has transformed the way by which the country will choose its president. The country will no longer hold direct elections for president, instead giving the presidency to the leader of the parliamentary party with the most seats. In theory this is not, as critics claim, anti-democratic. […]
At the FPA’s Global Engagement Blog James Ketterer has a great post on Robert Kennedy’s June 1966 trip to South Africa. I once used Kennedy’s speech as a framing device for a journal article on teaching a course on race relations in the United States and South Africa. (The piece was republished here.) I agree […]
The latest issue of The American Interest has a somewhat lengthy article on Kenya from Economist online contributor Misha Mintz-Roth. “Skin-Deep Democracy: A Letter From Kenya” reveals some of the strengths but also many of the weaknesses of contemporary reportage from Africa. Mintz-Roth spent time with the locals, provides some nifty descriptions and puts forward […]
I would encourage all of you to check out The Foreign Policy Initiative. So far there is not a whole lot of breadth or depth of Africa coverage, but hopefully that will come. I’m adding it to my blogroll in hopes that it does.
FPA Africa 2009 Year in Review Overview: It is a fool’s errand to try to summarize the events of an entire continent of 53 nation states and hundreds of millions of people in a few hundred words. Nonetheless, there are some generalizations that hold for the continent, particularly for its politics and international relations. Sadly some […]
Reports indicate that Nigerian President Umaru Yar’Adua is suffering from brain damage and cannot recognize his wife, never mind govern the country. Suffice it to say that the situation has fast created a leadership vacuum. And if we know anything it is that leadership vacuums create political crises.
Story Updated Below Stunning news from Angola on the eve of the kickoff of the Africa Cup of Nations. Gunmen, almost certainly rebels, opened fire with machine guns on a bus carrying Togo’s national football team to the province of Cabinda from its training ground in the Republic of Congo (Congo-Brazzaville). The bus driver is […]
Nigerian President Umaru Yar’Adua continues to be nowhere to be found. Yar’Adua, who has continued to suffer health problems and whose absence has caused rumors to swirl, has been missing for six weeks, since November 23. Nigerian opposition parties are beginning to ask questions, and understandably so. A serious political crisis in Nigeria could be […]
I was all set to explain why the Transportation Security Administration’s (TSA) knee-jerk response to recent (and undoubtedly serious) terrorist activity is incredibly dumb. Texas in Africa beat me to it. I will just add that this silly (and almost sure not actually to make us any safer) policy will also assuredly damage relations with […]
At the FPA’s Global Film Review Blog Sean Patrick Murphy reviews Invictus. I am working on an essay on the movie, the book on which it is based, and another book on South African sport and Apartheid which I will share with you as soon as it is published.
Recently the Foreign Policy Association published a “Viewpoints” piece of mine titled “Disunity in South Africa.” Please check it out if you have any interest in South African politics.
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