Some early, perhaps scattered, thoughts:Throughout today's monumental, historic, inspiring, and emotional events, my thoughts have continued to wander back to two individuals other, of course, than Barack Obama. I have written thousands of words about both and probably exhausted nearly as many hours thinking about them. One is Congressman John Lewis. The other, bizarrely, perhaps, […]
I hope you will forgive the naked self-promotion. In honor of Martin Luther King, Jr. Day, the University Press of Kentucky is having a special week-long sale on civil rights-related books. Included among these is my brand new book, Freedom's Main Line: The Journey of Reconciliation and the Freedom Rides, which is also available at […]
Anyone who has read this blog or many of my other writings for any length of time knows that I do not buy into the Afro-pessimism narrative, particularly when it comes to the African National Congress. Unlike some of the most intemperate critics, I do not see the ANC as going down the path of […]
It appears that the inauguration of Barack Obama is about to usher in a new era of good feelings toward America. Nowhere will Obama's ascension to the Oval Office mean more than in Kenya, where people feel a very real, if not particularly deep, connection with the President-Elect. In my own travels throughout the world, […]
Even as Movement for Democratic Change leader Morgan Tsvangirai has reached out to try to get negotiations with Robert Mugabe and his ZANU-PF going again, Mugabe has threatened to break off the talks if Tsvangirai does not agree to the next deal that comes his way. As usual the people of Zimbabwe are the ones […]
Mozambique is facing an impending food crisis, and some regions of the country are already at that point. First, huge swaths of the country have experienced half of their normal rainfall in recent months. Then heavy rainfalls caused flooding, with further heavy rains (and flood devastation) expected. Now, to add a Biblical element to this […]
In this column Nicholas Kristof asks us to reconsider out view of sweatshops inasmuch as the loaded term ignores the fact that these factories and businesses can represent a significant economic opportunity for the developing world. Most of his examples are from Asia, but Kristof does have Africa in mind as well: The best way […]
Guinea's military junta, which took over in a coup at the end of December, has installed the country's new government over the objections of most of the rest of the region, continent, and world. There was no indication that this is to be a temporary arrangement pending elections.
“African solutions to African problems” became the unofficial rallying cry for the new Pan-Africanism since the 1990s. The continent's leaders, from Gaddafi in the north to Mbeki in the South embraced what Mbeki called the “African renaissance.” In a guest opinion piece at allAfrica Tsoeu Petlane, a researcher for the Governance at the South African […]
I have long found some of the simplistic commentary about South Africa's inaction with regard to Zimbabwe to be frustrating, even if the motivation behind the frustrations with Thabo Mbeki's seeming inaction in particular is understandable. I do however find the criticisms of the failures of African leadership as a whole to be compelling. Where […]
Another example of a ray of hope in the South African economy comes in the news from the bargain retailer Mr. Price, which reported that its third quarter earnings rose more than 20%. Most of this impressive (and perhaps counterintuitive) growth came through clothing sales. Clearly South Africans are being careful with their money, but […]
There are serious divisions between factions in the CNDP, the main rebel group that has been waging war against the Democratic Republic of the Congo's troops and wreaking havoc throughout the eastern DRC. These fissures threaten to break apart the rebel opposition. Although Kinshasa probably sees this as good news — Laurent Nkunda's sometimes-ruthless CNDP […]
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