The memories of the genocides in Rwanda and Bosnia Herzegovina in the mid-nineties must never be extinguished from our hearts. The reason why the ending of one was successful, and the failure to end the other is the darkest page in post-war US foreign policy, is banally simple. Bosnia stirred the conscience of the West,…
The kaleidoscope of power is spinning wildly in the Arab region. While most of us rejoice at the blossoming of the crescent democratic movements from Tunis to Amman, others are asking if the fragile balance of power in the region could be recast. Have decision-makers considered the consequences of if the “Arab Awakening” turns rouge?…
I have just finished reading Robert McNamara’s In Retrospect, which seeks to provide answers to why the “best and brightest”, who, after skilfully navigating the Cuban Missile Crisis, led the US into the tragic Vietnam War. President Barack Obama’s team, apparently, diligently studied this period of history when they drew up the new administration’s Afghanistan…
Ronald Reagan turned 100 this month, and his legacy continues to shape American politics from the social democrat White House to that woman from Alaska — especially in the realm of statecraft. Reagan, like President Barack Obama in 2008, was elected on a “transformational ticket” and, indeed, the former — politics apart — is said…
A fictional (?) account of the first post-summer meeting between the British prime minister and his deputy at 10 Downing Street ACT ONE (Tuesday 5 September 2010) Nick’s heart is pounding. First proper day back after covering while Number One and Sam Cam were in Cornwall, delivering babies. Four months on, he still cannot quite…
A large ominous shadow loomed about two metres away. Then a roll and the distinct white belly. I was in striking distance of man’s most feared predator. How, you might ask, did I — not known among my friends and foes for a love of danger — end up there? After a sprightly 5am pick-up…
Is Africa advancing? This was the crisp question we asked ourselves at the Mo Ibrahim shindig in Dar es Salaam two weeks ago. The Prize Committee had been unable to select a winner this year. Time magazine put it succinctly last month: 2009 has been a bad year for governance in Africa. The prize is…
A funeral attended by presidents past and present. It is Senator Edward Kennedy’s final farewell held at Our Lady of Perpetual Help in Boston. A milieu has come full circle in American politics. The “new king” presides over a ceremony rich in symbolism, a king spiritually descended from the noble line of Camelot. America is…
A genocide which has claimed more lives than Adolf Hitler’s gas chambers: the 20th century African holocaust. Who is to blame this time? What devil lurks in the background wreaking such ruin on our people? The answer is plain and simple — party politics. A chapter in the long Aids death march has come to…
On cue, at 12h25, just five minutes before President Jacob Zuma was due to give an economic briefing at Tuynhuys, the wind picked up in the parliamentary precinct and it started to rain. Cold drops in spring. Was the grey, leaden sky, I wondered, a portent from the gods about ill economic news? Had the…
