At the FPA’s Global Film Review Blog my colleague Sean Patrick Murphy takes a look at God Grew Tired of Us, a 2007 documentary tracing three of Sudan’s “lost boys” from a refugee camp to the United States, where they have to adjust to an entirely different life while reconciling with their pasts. I concur […]
Prepare for a serious crackdown in Guinea. On Monday a member of one of the disaffected factions of the country’s military shot President Moussa Dadis Camara, the leader of the junta that took power by coup eleven months ago, in a failed coup. The alleged assassin did not succeed in killing or seriously incapacitating the […]
I always wonder why despots and tyrants and authoritarians don’t realize that holding farce elections in which they win more than 90% of the popular vote actually serves to undermine their legitimacy. Granted, they don’t care — not caring what others think is sort of their thing, which explains why they are authoritarians to begin […]
Forgive the self-indulgence, but on Friday, April 23, 2010 I’ll be giving a talk at the Newberry Library’s Dr. William M. Scholl Center for American History and Culture as part of the 2009-2010 Chicago Seminar on Sport and Culture. The title of my talk, part of a larger project on sports, race, and politics in […]
Tendai “The Beast” Mtawarira, the burly Springbok and Sharks prop who is easily one of the most popular athletes in South Africa, is a Zimbabwean national. This has never raised anyone’s hackles in any meaningful way in the past. But suddenly South Africa’s Ministry for Sport, at the head of which sits Makhenkesi Stofile, has […]
It is easy to assert that the political negotiations in Zimbabwe have reached crunch time. But it might be more accurate to say that the negotiations that have been fraught from the outset are facing their last best chance of peaceful resolution. This assumes that both parties want peaceful resolution, or resolution at all, despite […]
Is the new trend of African nations selling or leasing agricultural land to foreign companies or countries a new form of colonialism (“agri-imperialism”) or a savvy form of investment and partnership? These are the questions raised in recent articles in the New York Times Magazine and Washington Post. The deeply unsatisfying answer from my vantage […]
On December 4 the run-up to the 2010 World Cup will begin in earnest as FIFA will conduct the draw for the tournament. South Africa is thus preparing for its long run in the public eye. Danny Jordaan, the CEO of South Africa’s World Cup hosting duties and thus the country’s uber-booster, insists that the […]
Sudan is delaying the country’s long awaited elections yet again. But this time the reasons seem legitimate: The National Elections Commission (NEC) announced a six day delay to the elections in order to allow more time for voters to register at least in part at the behest of opposition parties. Sudan state media issued an […]
So, it appears that China’s policies toward Africa might disproportionately benefit the powerful and the privileged? I, for one, stand flabbergasted.
The South African government has announced the formation of a new anti-corruption team. A cabinet statement announced, “The South African government takes strong exception to corrupt practices and regards the matter very seriously because of the potential damage that this could cause to the country’s reputation globally.” South Africa ranked a middling (which is to […]
Zimbabwe has started withdrawing troops from the country’s diamond fields at the behest of the countries behind the Kimberley Process. Now, to be fair, this is one Zim-related narrative that is not simply part of a larger “Mugabe = Bad” narrative. The troops were posted at the diamond fields in Marange in the eastern part […]
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