Southern Africa Archive

Editor’s Note: Every Friday, Andrew Green curates the top news and analysis from and about the African continent. President Emmerson Mnangagwa is stifling any form of public protest against his government as Zimbabwe’s economy keeps sinking. Police violently disrupted an opposition party gathering in Harare on Wednesday, firing tear gas and beating people with batons, and more repression looks likely. Opposition leader Nelson Chamisa warned his followers, “Our country is burning.” The latest crackdown comes after the government fired more than 200 doctors for participating in a months-long strike over low pay and poor working conditions. Earlier this month, police […]

South Africa’s largest opposition party, the Democratic Alliance, or DA, is in turmoil following its poor showing in parliamentary and provincial elections earlier this year. Several senior black figures in the DA, including Johannesburg mayor Herman Mashaba and Mmusi Maimane, the DA’s first black leader, left the party last month. Their resignations came on the heels of the return of the party’s controversial former leader, Helen Zille, to a top leadership post. Zille, who is white, has a history of making remarks seen as racially insensitive, so her return was widely interpreted as a sign that the party would recalibrate […]

Editor’s Note: Every Friday, Andrew Green curates the top news and analysis from and about the African continent. At least three university students were killed this week in the latest episodes of ethnically motivated violence in Ethiopia. The increasingly volatile situation is at risk of exploding ahead of national elections scheduled for next year. Africa’s second-most-populous country has been wracked by violence along ethnic lines this year, including the murder of the army chief of staff amid an attempted coup in June and intercommunal violence in the central Oromia region in October that left at least 86 people dead. After […]

Editor’s Note: Every Friday, Andrew Green curates the top news and analysis from and about the African continent. Even for a region that has witnessed the growing entrenchment of extremist groups and skyrocketing violence, it was a particularly deadly week in Africa’s Sahel. On Nov. 1, Islamist militants killed 54 people, including dozens of soldiers, in an attack on an isolated military base in northeastern Mali; the Islamic State claimed responsibility. Days later, gunmen ambushed a Canadian mining company’s convoy in northern Burkina Faso, killing at least 37 people and wounding 60 more. Though the two attacks are not directly […]

Two years after the military coup that removed Robert Mugabe from power, Zimbabwe has entered a new spiral of decline that threatens to take the country back to the worst days of his era. President Emmerson Mnangagwa, who came to power in that coup, had promised a “new beginning” for Zimbabwe. That initially bought him some valuable breathing space, and even goodwill from the international community, which seemed willing to give him an opportunity to make good on his pledge. It hasn’t taken long for the euphoria—always rooted more in the demise of Mugabe than in the rise of Mnangagwa—to […]

If climate change is the most important matter of common concern around the world, what comes second? Perhaps nothing close. But by my lights, the usual looming questions—about the fate of American power and influence, Brexit, the related viability of the European Union, and the many uncertainties surrounding the rise of China—seem almost parochial in comparison to one that gets immeasurably less international attention: the future of employment in Africa, where unprecedented demographic transitions are underway. Based on current projections, the continent’s population of nearly 1.2 billion people will rise to 2.5 billion by the middle of this century—more than […]

Editor’s Note: Every Friday, Andrew Green curates the top news and analysis from and about the African continent. The space for dissent in John Magufuli’s Tanzania is closing rapidly. Amnesty International issued a report this week accusing Magufuli, who was elected president in 2015, of creating a “climate of mounting fear with growing restrictions on the rights to freedom of expression, association and peaceful assembly.” Magufuli, who earned the popular nickname “the Bulldozer” from his time as minister of public works, was elected promising to reform Tanzania and end corruption. Instead, his administration has steadily trimmed the rights of opposition […]