Nelson Mandela turns 91 this weekend. To commemorate Madiba’s birthday the Mail & Guardian has put together special features on Mandela-related posters during the struggle years, A collection of Zapiro’s M&G Mandela depictions, and Mandela in his own words.
What’s the deadliest place in Sudan? … … The odds are that your answer was immediate, and admit it, quite confident. But the correct answer is not what you think. The deadliest place in Sudan is Jonglei State in South Sudan where more than 1,000 were killed in political violence in March and April […]
One of the fears of the International Criminal Court’s indictment of Sudan’s President Omar al-Bashir surely was the effect it might have not only within Sudan, but also in the region, where perhaps the indictment would draw sympathy, particularly from citizens of Arab states or from countries with sizable Muslim populations. A recent poll offers […]
I participated in Hillary Clinton’s on-the-record conversation and press briefing at the Council on Foreign Relations today by conference call. It was fascinating even if much of what I heard was boilerplate. What was frustrating, however, was that Clinton virtually ignored Africa, mentioning President Obama’s Ghana speech in passing and then only to draw some […]
President Obama is set to arrive in Ghana this weekend for his first trip to Sub-Saharan Africa. Symbolically this is probably an important moment but in terms of actual policy, or even politics, it probably means very little. Ghana is, as Texas in Africa points out in this smart synthesis of the previews of Obama’s […]
For all of the attention paid to the emergence of the Congress of the People (COPE) from prominent disenchanted members of the ANC. And for all of my assertions that a party like COPE represents a far likelier long-term challenge to the ANC than the Democratic Alliance (DA) the reality is that in my entire […]
After a chaotic 48 hours of travel, I am back from South Africa. I was a bit surprised how limited my internet access was for most of this trip despite the fact that i brought my laptop, so I did not write quite as many diary posts as I had hoped, but over the next few […]
Amazingly enough, my hotel in Cape Town has had virtually no internet connectivity for three days. It is both liberating and frightening to feel this out of touch for so long. Observations from Cape Town: Amidst all of the generally pessimistic commentary one reads about South Africa, I suppose it is not surprising that we […]
Yesterday saw me sampling the good, the bad, and the ugly of travel in South Africa. The Good: The Springbok game was all I could have hoped for. The Lions came out storming, compensating for their sins of last week by controlling the pack and taking the fight to a Springbok squad that seemed lackluster […]
It’s game day here in South Africa as in a few hours the Springboks will take the field for their second test match against the British and Irish Lions at Pretoria’s Loftus Versfeld, home of the Blue Bulls, and which arguably represents the Afrikaner heart of Springbok pride. last night the pubs were swarming with […]
Who would have imagined that in four days at the University of South Africa’s lovely Sunnyside campus I would have no access to internet? Ahhh, South Africa, a country that at its high end has as much technological advancement as any in the world can still, on a day-to-day basis fluster and frustrate those of […]
Tomorrow I depart for a (nearly) three-week trip to South Africa. My blogging for the next few weeks will therefore involve some combination of reportage, essays, and something of a travel diary. I will try to post an essay daily, but of course this promise comes with the caveat that I need to have the […]
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