I do not watch the American network news programs. There are too many better options and the quality of the evening news programs, while rarely awful, is pretty shallow. I was not surprised, then, to find out that the coverage of international affairs on the network news programs reached a record low in 2008. I would surmise, […]
Just when the situation in Zimbabwe seems to have reached depths that defy absurdity a new story crosses the transom that baffles the imagination. The latest piece of bemusement comes with the tale of the arrest of three white men on charges of training terrorists with the goal of overhtrowing Robert Mugabe. The three did in fact have […]
In The Washington Post Chris Beyrer and Frank Donoghue illustrate the ways in which the cholera epidemic is merely a small (albeit visible and alarming) component of Zimbabwe's health crisis. And they blame Robert Mugabe for this spiraling crisis. Reductionist? Perhaps. Inaccurate? Not in any meaningful way.
Between the holidays, lots of travel, and general end-of-old-year, beginning-of-new activities I have not been able to devote much-deserved time to the coup in Guinea. This allAfrica article assesses the regional political ramifications that Guinea's forced regime change has wrought.
Robert Mugabe has taken a month-long leave, part of which he will spend outside of Zimbabwe. To say the least, Mugabe's plans raise a slew of questions. Are there any ramifications for this trip? Is this merely Mugabe's solipsism coming to the fore? Is the old despot suffering from ill health? Is it even remotely […]
The opposition candidate, John Atta Mills of the National Democratic Congress (NDC), appears to have won a slim margin of victory in Ghana's runoff election held last week. Both optimistic and pessimistic observers now hope that the results hold up and that no violence springs up in the wake of the final tally. Place me in […]
Is the African National Congress losing its best people to the newly formed rival Congress of the People? That is an argument being put forth in at least some circles. In response to another series of high-profile defections from the ANC to COPE Dirk Smit, Speaker of the City of Cape Town municipality, has asserted that […]
Helen Suzman, longtime stalwart of the Progressive Party and its various iterations (the Progressive Reform Party, the Progressive Federal Party), passed away on Thursday at the age of 91. Suzman was a long-time thorn in the side of the National Party, and if the Progressives’ anti-Apartheid bona fides have sometimes been overstated, her commitment to changing […]
General Summary: It is nearly impossible to provide a cogent summary of a year in the life of a continent as vast and as diverse as Africa. With more than four dozen nation states, about a billion people, and vast geographic scope, it is impossible and even foolhardy to try to encapsulate the continent with […]
On Sunday Ghanaians will go to the polls again to vote in their country's presidential runoff election after neither of the two main contenders achieved 50% of the vote earlier this month in Ghana's national elections. Nana Akufo-Addo, a lawyer running for the ruling New Patriotic Party (NPP) faces off against John Atta-Mills, a law professor representing the opposition National […]
As if circumstances are not difficult in the Democratic Republic of the Congo, the country has now seen a new outbreak of Ebola. The DRC is a country that never seems to catch a break and rarely makes its own good fortune.
Links: International Journal of Socialist Review has put together the “exchange” between respected Africanists Mahmood Mamdani and Patrick Bond over the situation in Zimbabwe that stems from Bond's rigorous response to an article (also included, indeed it is Mamdani's contribution to the exchange) Mamdani wrote in the London Review of Books. You can access other articles on […]
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