It has been an interesting month for leaders across Africa. Goodluck Jonathan finally declared a “total war” against Boko Haram despite not having the means to wage one, and after a puzzlingly sluggish…
What are we to make of the results of the 2014 South African elections? On one level, it was largely predictable: the ANC was always going to lose some support, but not enough to please the opposition…
Jacob Zuma’s ANC won the 2014 South African election with 62% of the vote, 3% down from 2009. Its nearest rival, the Democratic Alliance, won 22%, 6% up. And the newcomers, Julius Malema’s Economic Freedom…
On the surface, 2014 appears to represent “business as usual” for the landscape of South Africa’s electoral politics. The African National Congress (ANC) has secured a fifth straight victory in the latest…
The African National Congress drew a crowd of more than 100,000 supporters to its final election rally in Soweto at the weekend and there was a palpably jubilant mood at the rally as supporters predicted…
At the end of 2012, I published a deliberately surreal novel entitled Joseph Kony and the Titans of Zagreb. In it, using satire and magic realism, I tied together the corrupt destinies of figures on both…
When the South African president, Jacob Zuma, returned from the African Union summit last weekend, his press statement said almost nothing that could not have been written before he left. The summit decided…
Over the past year, South Africa’s media have relished the excitement and hype around the emergence of two new political parties. Julius Malema, the expelled former leader of the ANC Youth League notorious…
South Africa is mourning the death of Nelson Mandela, a founding father like no other. His legacy includes a still-lauded constitution, four peaceful, free and fair democratic elections (five if 2014 follows…