Respected and beloved Africanist and human rights campaigner Alison Des Forges died last week in the plane crash near Buffalo. Best known for her indefatigable work on Rwanda, Des Forges not only is one of the foremost experts in the world on that country’s 1994 genocide, but she continued to reveal the complexities of that […]
The Boston Globe has a story about a partnership between a prominent Boston AIDS doctor, Bruce Walker, and an unexpected partnership he has formed in South Africa. As important as government and international action is in addressing Africa’s HIV-AIDS epidemic, it is important to remember that these sorts of partnerships in the scientific and medical […]
A pretty good case can be made for South Africa representing the epicenter of the sporting universe right now. The country and the world are gearing up for the 2010 FIFA World Cup, and while Bafana Bafana just lost rather unceremoniously to Peru, South Africa’s national team had been riding a five-game winning streak, giving […]
Even as some observers find rays of hope in Zimbabwe’s new coalition government, which took power yesterday, yet another bizarre story plays out that makes one wonder just how earnest Robert Mugabe and ZANU-PF are about sharing with the Movement for Democratic Change. Last week Zimbabwean police arrested an MDC official, Roy Bennett, on gun […]
The negotiations about the possibility of negotiations between Sudan’s leaders and the Justice and Equality Movement (JEM), Darfur’s largest rebel organization, have gone about as well as can be expected, assuming you know enough to keep expectations low. One of the problems is that while JEM is crucial to any peace prospects, its presence at […]
South Africa’s almost universally respected Finance Minister Trevor Manuel has continued to argue that his country is not in the grips of a recession. This is obviously good news, though for those who work or rely on those industries, such as manufacturing, that have seen contraction, will find the news to be of small semantic […]
Depending on what source one chooses to believe, the judges on the International Criminal Court (ICC) either have or have not issued an arrest warrant for Sudan’s President Omar al-Bashir. Whatever the reality of the situation, two things appear clear: 1) Whether the warrant has been issued or not, the noose is circling around al-Bashir, […]
Morgan Tsvangirai has taken office in Zimbabwe. (You can read his inauguration address here.) His calls to restore the rule of law and to revive the country’s devastated economy coupled with the belief among masses in Zimbabwe that he is the country’s rightful leader have resulted in Tsvangirai’s receiving a hero’s welcome. Naturally optimists want […]
Authorities in Gabon have arrested two journalists, one French, the other Swiss, for posing as tourists. According to an official the two men were trying “to dig up a story on French Foreign Minister Bernard Kouchner,” who went before France’s parliament last week “to reject accusations made in a new book of having unethical ties […]
There have been some new pharmaceutical developments that seem to hold out promise in combating HIV/AIDS. According to The Washington Post: Two experiments in monkeys showed that antiretroviral (ARV) drugs, given by mouth or by vaginal gel, were highly effective in blocking infection by the virus that causes AIDS. A third study, in 3,100 women […]
In an interview with SABC on Sunday South African President Kgalema Motlanthe suggested that perhaps Zimbabwe could adopt the rand as its currency. What he surely means (or what I hope he means, if this gains traction, anyway) was that at some point down the road, under the right conditions, Zimbabwe could tie the Zimbabwean dollar to […]
There have been some interconnected developments on the Sudan/Darfur front that bear watching. First, the Sudanese government is set to sit down with the Justice and Equality Movement (JEM) rebels in Qatar in order to try to kickstart peace talks. It is frankly difficult to muster up a whole lot of optimism that these talks […]
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