Southern Africa Archive

Chinese investment and engagement now touches almost every aspect of Africa’s economy, including infrastructure, transport and logistics, trade, manufacture, agriculture, telecommunications and, of course, resource extraction. Because of the vastness of this engagement, commentators frequently fall back on catchall concepts, including an assumption that Africa is essentially passive in this relationship. The reality is much more complicated. Instead of simply imposing Chinese approaches on African realities, Chinese actors frequently try to attain their goals by partially adapting to specific African systems, with varying degrees of success. This article provides examples of this process by looking at China’s relationships with three […]

Last month, the ruling Botswana Democratic Party narrowly won a majority of seats in parliament. In an email interview, Gape Kaboyakgosi, senior research fellow at the Botswana Institute for Development and Policy Analysis, discussed Botswana’s domestic politics. WPR: What are the reasons behind the ruling Botswana Democratic Party’s (BDP) recent decline in support? Gape Kaboyakgosi: A number of factors led to the electoral decline of the BDP. First, for the first time ever, the BDP broke apart, leading to the formation of the Botswana Movement for Democracy (BMD) by several longtime BDP members. Their resignations deprived the BDP of experienced, […]

Since May 2009, Jacob Zuma’s leadership of South Africa has played out against a backdrop of corruption scandals and other damaging revelations that have drained the lifeblood from his presidency. Crisis management has effectively become Zuma’s modus operandi, with short-term political survival eclipsing the need to provide South Africa with stable and effective governance. Zuma’s re-election last May, following the decisive, if qualified, victory of the African National Congress (ANC) in national elections, did not provide the hoped-for new beginning. That has the ANC hierarchy scrambling. Zuma contaminates contemporary South African politics so much that it is difficult to envisage […]