confidentially speaking

The Africa Confidential Blog

• MONDAY 8th September 2008

Africa | Football: Heros and villains

By Lion

The traditional summer bargaining season has come to a dramatic end and the football season has got underway in earnest. Among the usual whirlwind of gossip about which player might go where and which player is unhappy here and wants more money there, the...

• MONDAY 4th August 2008

The arms deal that haunts British and South African politics

By Patrick Smith

The tale of secret payments of $50 million payments by Britain’s BAE Systems to a company in the British Virgin Islands which featured on 1 August on the front pages of Africa Confidential<...

• MONDAY 30th June 2008

Zimbabwe: A stolen election, a hasty inauguration and then a jet to Sharm el Sheikh

By Patrick Smith

HARARE: Sunday was a soporific affair on the streets of Harare, except for the government’s Chinese-made Mig jets zig-zagging across the cloudless sky in a show of power. All shops closed; nobody out on a Sunday stroll. Even some of the boisterous ...

• SUNDAY 29th June 2008

Zimbabwe: The election that never was

By Elephant

Africa Confidential’s special correspondent reports from Harare as President Robert Mugabe declares victoryVoting was unenthusiastic and turnout low in yesterday's presidential poll, despite Saturday’s bombastic headline in the s...

• THURSDAY 26th June 2008

Lost Voices of Darfur

By Lion

As the international media focuses its attention on the electoral chaos in Zimbabwe, the ethnic cleansing of Darfur by the Sudan government carries on. It is five years since reports first emerged of the Islamist regime’s attacks through its...