Stronger religious protections, more affirmative action and new constitutional protections of minorities is the #4 story of Africa for 2017. Sounds good until said simply: tribalism on the rebound. The political catastrophe of South Africa and the election circuses in Kenya are the best examples. Democracy and tribalism bring out the worst of each other….Continue reading
In hindsight even as adults we behaved like children. We never shook off the mantle of goofiness justifying our exaggeration, so that now when it’s absolutely true that “there’s never been a time like this before” it’s hard for us to accept it. I don’t have ten top stories for Africa in 2017. I’ve just…Continue reading
Who is Nkosazana Dlamini Zuma? Well, she’s a presidential candidate in South Africa. But after she appeared at one of her scheduled political rallies recently, and not a person showed up but her own team, South Africa’s most provocative political publication asked Who is Nkosazana Dlamini Zuma? There’s a very important election in America, today….Continue reading
South Africans delightedly use Trump as a global explanation for their own Jacob Zuma, but if we get distracted by colorful individuals at the helm of complex political systems imploding all around us, we’ll have created nothing to fill the vacuum that follows their recklessness. Wasting time trying to pin sophisticated crimes on the “orange…Continue reading
Except for bribes, dirty deals and billionaire arrogance, Guinea would be one of the most prosperous places on earth. Any steel around you? Driving a car? Probably wouldn’t without Guinea. How about aluminum? Do you use aluminum foil after dinner? Not without Guinea! So how come Guinea is the ninth poorest country in the world?…Continue reading
Study carefully the picture above. (The inset is mine of South African protests, today.) That’s the website page that millions, maybe billions of people worldwide access to understand U.S. foreign policy. And that’s how it looked this morning: Come Back Later. As a group of activists in my small town discussed the possibility of creating…Continue reading
Jacob Zuma and Donald Trump are as different as the politics and societies of South Africa and the U.S. Yet the similarities make me wonder if we ought to watch carefully now what’s happening in South Africa as Zuma incrementally destroys the country he leads. Yesterday the Rand ended a struggled recovery, the country’s bond…Continue reading
African leaders scramble while their citizens shout and scream, terrified that they will be added to Trump’s ban list. On America’s most watched morning political show today one of the regulars asked why Trump’s travel ban didn’t include “Kenya?” This is a show that we know Trump and much of the Senate watch. The commentator…Continue reading
2016 was notable for the darkness which follows the dawn: as a comeback for dictators in Africa. For nearly the previous two decades dictatorship in Africa was on the decline and long-serving overlords looked increasingly in trouble. That changed in 2016.
Trump dominated the news in Africa in 2016 in so many different ways, including expectations and predictions that were much more correct than those made in America. Had Trump not been around, the top news would have been the finally substantiated science of massive declines in Africa’s big animals. Many important events like this were…Continue reading
Xenophobia infects, kills and spreads like any biological virus: “Johannesburg mayor Herman Mashaba … speaks loudly about illegal foreigners and tells them to leave his city … because of the right-wing frenzy whipped up by Trump.” A pandemic spreads until it dies out: It’s not reversible. Trump may have softened his xenophobic rhetoric in the…Continue reading
If you’ve got something to say, say it now. The world is contracting into conservative populism and freedom of expression is in the gun site. Trump idly suggests shutting down the internet or incarceration for flag burning, and legislators in Kenya and South Africa kick gleefully into high gear. Stalled legislation in both countries to…Continue reading
Anyone taking a picture is arrested or shot. Then, Facebook takes down the pictures of the courageous who manage to post the massacre. A Kenyan TV journalist is charged with “abetting terrorism” for taking … TV video. And most noteworthy of all, the organizer of the massacre, self-imposed Ugandan president Yoweri Museveni poses for a…Continue reading
Russia wasted no time using Trump’s election to increase its global power. Yesterday it thrust a masterful spear between Africa and the U.S. by aligning itself with African countries threatening to withdraw from the World Court. The renegade power’s lightning fast global moves have been reported this morning in Central America, Syria, and of course…Continue reading
Look, it’s happening all over the world. I’m going to compare two places I know, South Africa and the U.S. South African society is just beginning to seriously hurt about a year after a similar sort of political turmoil hit them to our Trump election, the re-election of a clearly incompetent executive that an entrenched…Continue reading