Southern Africa Archive

Last week, a wave of xenophobic violence struck two of South Africa’s largest cities, Johannesburg and Durban. Mobs torched foreign-owned shops and killed seven people in the country’s worst attacks against foreigners since 2008, when over 60 people were killed in similar incidents. The localized unrest quickly became a regional crisis, as multiple African governments issued angry statements on behalf of their citizens, millions of whom have migrated to South Africa in search of economic opportunity since the end of apartheid. South African President Jacob Zuma has been scrambling to respond; so far he has deployed the army to quell […]

Forty years after its independence from Portugal and 13 years since the end of the civil war that immediately followed, Angola has made great progress in consolidating peace and stability, but continues to face many challenges. Foremost among them is managing an economic crisis, exacerbated by staggering inequality, while avoiding the potential social and political fallout it could generate. The country’s political landscape could also prove perilous: The ruling party, the People’s Movement for the Liberation of Angola (MPLA), faces both a determined opposition and a potential internal battle over who will succeed longtime President Jose Eduardo dos Santos. The […]

The past two years have been deeply unsettling ones for South Africa’s economy, defined by sluggish growth rates, power shortages, service delivery protests and endemic labor unrest. International ratings agencies are getting wary and could eventually downgrade the country’s sovereign credit rating. President Jacob Zuma’s government is currently failing to satisfy any of the key constituencies with a material stake in its economic policy: its own support base, an increasingly fragmented labor movement and investors at home and abroad. Like other emerging markets around the world, including the once-solid BRICS, South Africa’s economy is in a sea of trouble. Since […]