I didn’t really take much notice of the last Zambian election, one which pitted Michael Sata and Rupiah Banda, two men in their 70s. My lack of interest could have been because I wondered why these men, who actually belong to the nationalist period that swept Africa in the 1960s, should be the ones battling…
Patrice Motsepe, South Africa’s football and mining oligarch, last week took time to chill, as they say, with visiting US Hip Hop star 50 Cent. Motsepe even attended 50’s show at The Dome, in Johannesburg. And to compensate for Motsepe nodding and humming along to rather strange music in the company of teenagers and 20–somethings,…
The Pharaohs are deserving winners of this year’s Africa Cup of Nations. If they had not won against the “Indomitable Lions” (just as well lions were not asked when Cameroon chose this name), they would have been worthy victors for coming up with ever-so-novel goal celebrations at this year’s tournament. First it was Zidan who,…
January 3 2008 On January 1, as I sat in a Yeoville flat with Kenyan friends, the atmosphere was sombre. A Kenyan friend, was in tears. “They are lying. More people have died,” she said of figures the police were giving on the number of slain. She should have known; anyone who has police blood…
I have a stock response to the outraged SMSs and emails from Kenya, Zimbabwe and elsewhere I get on the death of reggae icon Lucky Dube: “He died of our society” — a society that is still learning to value life. I don’t quite remember where I got this from, but it may be a…
Jose Mourinho is gone — at least from Chelsea football club. But what an impression he left. The figure of the histrionic, hirsute and handsome man in a grey Armani coat remains etched on our minds. Let’s get this straight from the outset, I support Arsenal. His leaving is, in a way, liberating; those who…
While the many derisory and manifestly xenophobic descriptions that saddle Zimbabweans include “cowardly”, “itinerant”, “corrupt” and “criminal”, they will be galled to know that almost half of the population is insane. The other descriptions were not based on empirical data, but the latest designation comes from no less an authority than the World Health Organisation…
At the beginning of the crisis in Zimbabwe, Morgan Tsvangirai, leader of the anti-Senate Movement for Democratic Change, called on South Africa to cut off Zimbabwe’s power supplies. A practical-joker technician from the power utility cut off power supplies to his house. But seriously, the idea was that if the people of Zimbabwe were denied…
