If you are following affairs in Darfur, you would be wise to bookmark the Social Science Research Council’s “Making Sense of Darfur” Blog. Including contributions from Alex de Waal, Julie Flint, and several other important observers of events in Darfur and across Sudan, “Making Sense of Darfur” is really a must-consult reseource. De Waal is far […]
The Congress of the People’s (COPE’s) newly chosen presidential candidate Mvume Dandala on Wednesday made his first public speech since receiving the party’s nomination. And already one of the biggest issues he has had to address is whether he is a compromise candidate who was picked because of a leadership struggle between the party’s president, […]
So the International Criminal Court has come down with an indictment of Sudan’s President Omar Hassan al-Bashir for human rights violations. He is the first sitting head of state ever to be so charged. Now what? Will the indictment help Darfur’s suffering masses or those overlooked victims of Khartoum stretching across the vastness of Sudan? […]
The African National Congress (ANC) continues to suffer high-profile defections to the Congress of the People (COPE) in the run-up to April’s elections in South Africa. Former deputy president Phumzile Mlambo-Ngcuka and prominent businessman, Robben Island veteran, and former parliamentarian Saki Macozoma have joined the Congress of the People. So too has the ANC’s Limpopo […]
Violent upheavals, including the assassination of the president of Guinea-Bissau, Joao Bernardo Vieira, has thrown the country into chaos. These events have led to an emergency meeting of West African leaders hoping to forestall further tumult.
There is no doubt that the people of Zimbabwe desperately need aid. Years of Robert Mugabe’s malign neglect, punitive policies, and utter disregard for the masses in his country have meant that access to basic food, health care, and other essentials has been limited to nil throughout the country. And so now, under the new […]
Maybe it was just a harmless aside that means absolutely nothing. Still, when I read that South Africa’s Kgalema Motlanthe recently said that Jacob Zuma would drop out of the race for the presidency if he thought it for the best for the country, my jaw dropped. Motlanthe was asked on Tuesday night by an audience […]
Well, who didn’t see this coming? Whether out of plain opportunistic avarice, fear that their window for self-gain was closing, or a desire to destabilize the unity government, Mugabe’s ZANU-PF cronies, especially the so-called war veterans (many of whom were not even born during the war against Ian Smith’s regime) have started trying to grab […]
Here is where I give cause for celebration (and then in perentheses rain on the parade): In Mozambique there are hopes that the country is going to be able to add 6,000 Megawatts of new capacity to the region’s power pool by 2014. (This seems optimistic. Infrastructure in Maputo, never mind much of the rest […]
Not only will setting things even vaguely right in Zimbabwe likely cost billions of dollars (US), as Morgan Tsvangirai asserted this week. It will also have the unintended consequence of destroying or at least wounding the only economy that has even vaguely worked in recent years — the black market.
As if you need an excuse, this weekend’s New York Times travel section features Cape Town as a destination, emphasizing all of the wonderful aspects of the city and its environs, but also the relatively inexpensive costs (from the vantage point of a reader of the Times‘ travel section, anyway). For South Africans the idea of […]
Look, I’m no fan of the Democratic Alliance. And I have long argued that a primarily white opposition party is going nowhere in South Africa in the 21st century. I expect that the ANC-COPE division will serve many purposes, not the least of which will be to consign the DA to its rightful place as […]
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