The sun will rise. The sun will set. South African rugby will be fraught with controversy. Some assertions are truisms. The latest kerfuffle over the transformation of South African rugby is a revival of the question of whether to remove the Springbok as the national program's emblem. For its critics, the Springbok is a symbol […]
It would have seemed absurd to have suggested as much nine months ago, but could Kenya end up providing something of a model for post-conflict resolution? The country provides an outlier of a test case, to be sure. The country had achieved hard-won stability that already had people pointing to it as a seemingly shining example […]
On any given day it is difficult to discern the status of negotiations in Zimbabwe. They might be resuming, if they ever ended, if they haven't been done for a while. Robert Mugabe is grabbing as much power in the form of ministries as he possibly can (causing Morgan Tsvangirai to considering pulling out of […]
Zambian election officials and politicians met on Wednesday in order to address concerns about vote rigging on the eve of the country's October 30 elections. Whether the Electoral Commission of Zambia hopes to preempt an electoral nightmare along the lines of those that have flared in Kenya and Zimbabwe in the last year or is reactively […]
The African National Congress has acted swiftly against the breakaway factions, led by Mosiuoa Lekota, by suspending Lekota and Lekota's former deputy, Mluleki George and threatening further disciplinary action. Lekota is purporting to be shocked and wronged, but that seems disingenuous. He effectively walked away from the party and promised that he was going to […]
Whatever progress or lack threof has been made in Zimbabwe's politicl negotiatons, the country's economic crisis continues unabated. The inflation rate, cartoonish for years, is now estimated to be (and estimates are really al that are plausible when the numbers get this high this fast) an eye-poppingly incomprehensible 231-million percent. That is 231,000,000% for those of you […]
The formation of a breakaway party of erstwhile African National Congress members comes ever closer to fruition. Former Defense Minister Mosiuoa “Terror” Lekota, who resigned from his post after Mbeki's forced resignation, has “dropped a bombshell” and “served his divorce papers” to the ANC. Lekota seems determined not only to sever his ties with the ANC […]
One of the unquestionable triumphs of Robert Mugabe's Zimbabwe before things fell apart was his education policies. The envy of Africa, Zimbabwe's educational system was an area that Mugabe chose to emphasize to counteract the malign neglect of the Ian Smith years. Thus it is doubly tragic that the education system has for all intents and […]
Even as talk of forming a breakaway party from the remnants of the ANC that have fallen out of favor accelerates, Allan Boesak has begun talk of also forming a new United Democratic Front (UDF). The timing of Boesak's proposal is perhaps telling. While the UDF, which Boesak helped form, is often seen as having […]
Even as the hope for successful negotiations in Zimbabwe continue to fade away as the sides remain far apart, both Robert Mugabe's ZANU-PF and Morgan Tsvangirai's Movement for Democratic Change are increasingly fraught with dissent from within as to whether power sharing is even desirable. More ominously, there are signs that some of the opposition […]
President Mwai Kibaki is about to undertake the first reshuffling of the cabinet of the Grand Coalition Government as the result of by-elections that changed the composition of parliament. Prime Minister Raila Odinga appears to have agreed to the nature of such changes. This ordinarily mundane undertaking will nonetheless provide a test of the stability […]
If you want an indication of the widely diverging opinions that Thabo Mbeki inspires, take a look at Ronald Suresh Roberts’ (utterly unsurprising) apologia and John Pilger's (no less shocking) indictment of Mbeki in The Mail & Guardian. Neither the hero nor villain narrative is compelling, as Pilger acknowledges before then villainizing Mbeki, but these […]
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