A ruling party with a huge majority may not really need to crush its political opponents. Yet President Thabo Mbeki is squeezing as hard as he can the...

The South African police investigation into Zimbabwean entrepreneur Billy Rautenbach risks escalating into a diplomatic clash between Pretoria and Harare. Rautenbach is a close associate of Zimbabwe's Justice...

The loss of six zeros from the kwanza reajustado this month will sharply reduce the number of millionaires in Angola.

President Frederick Chiluba has had a surprisingly good six months. He brokered a seemingly impossible peace deal for the Democratic Republic of Congo, signed in July and now...

Four unknown gunmen at the gate of his house fired four shots and then disappeared. After a few hours in intensive care at the government hospital, he was...

Zimbabwe's war in the Congo gets costlier by the day. As the bill rises, the failure of President Robert Mugabe's government to budget accurately for its intervention has...

President Festus Mogae has gained the clear mandate he sought to govern in his own right. The ruling Botswana Democratic Party won its eighth successive victory at the...

As luck would have it, investment incentives and job creation measures by Botswana's new government could be paid for out of extra revenues from the recent recovery in...

After months of struggle, Angolan government forces have finally driven the rebels out of their headquarters in the Central Highland town of Bailundo, threatening a central symbol of...

Western governments, and Washington in particular, have been pressing the International Monetary Fund to be kind to Angola. They have lined up with the Luanda government's argument that...

It now seems clear that the almost unknown Swiss-based ProDev, which managed to get a foothold in Elf-Aquitaine's highly prospective ultra-deepwater oil block 32, was hoping to use...

As the United Nations struggles to impose sanctions on Angola's rebel diamond-smugglers, the government says it is tightening its chaotic system for certifying the stones. The old system...

United Nations' attempts to keep a presence in Angola are being frustrated by the United States Congress. Jonas Savimbi's União Nacional para a Independência Total de Angola has...

Worried about a re-run of its disastrous December offensive, the Movimento Popular de Libertação de Angola government is deliberately downplaying its latest military moves. Meanwhile, hoping to ridicule...

Although dominated by trades unionists, the Movement for Democratic Change, launched on 11 September, is a formidable coalition: lawyers, war veterans, students and activists from the women's movement...

Zimbabwe's trades unionists cannot expect the landslide that their colleagues in Zambia's Movement for Multi-Party Democracy scored against President Kenneth Kaunda in 1991. Although bad, conditions in Zimbabwe...

Politicians are scurrying to prepare for the country's second multi-party general elections: President Joaquim Chissano confirmed on 31 August that polling would take place on 3-4 December (probably...

South Africa's trades unions chose to confront the country's new President, Thabo Mbeki, just after his inauguration and before he'd had time to find his feet (AC Vol...

The public servants' challenge to President Thabo Mbeki's government involves over twelve unions with 800,000 members from all races and all shades of political opinion. Three constituent...

The Namibian government reacted with a heavy hand in early August when Caprivian secessionists mounted an armed raid on the region's capital, Katima Mulilo. The Caprivi Strip...

Mishake Muyongo leapt out of the obscurity of his Danish exile on 2 August when Caprivian separatists attacked Katima Mulilo. He says the raid on Caprivi's capital...

The latest international plan for turning Zimbabwe's economy around looks sound, in narrow economic terms. In narrow political terms, though, it ignores reality, including next year's parliamentary...

Government forces have launched a new offensive on the rebel bases at Andulo and Bailundo. They may be pushing at an open door. We hear that Jonas Savimbi...

For a few days, the death of Joshua Mqabuko Nyongolo Nkomo united Zimbabweans. He was 82, a towering figure since the 1950s, when he returned from college in...

Now centre-stage as President, Thabo Mbeki still keeps South Africans guessing. His patchwork cabinet is dominated by ministers who served Nelson Mandela, and expanded to 29 from 26...

Much more striking than the cabinet reshuffle are the big structural changes in government under President Thabo Mbeki. His office denies that he is creating an 'imperial presidency'...

Close-run and bad-tempered, Malawi's 15 June elections have sparked off several street confrontations and plenty of litigation. However, President Bakili Muluzi looks set to ride the storm, helped...

President Joaquim Chissano is determined to go to the polls before the end of the millennium, claiming most of the credit for Mozambique's reputation as Africa's new success...

The United Nations is at last getting serious about the massive diamond-smuggling operations which nourish the rebellion of Jonas Savimbi's União Nacional para a Independência Total de Angola....

President Robert Mugabe may not after all be heading for a speedy retirement, although he was 75 in February and has held power since April 1980. Speculation...

The overwhelming majority won by the African National Congress in the 2 June elections was spectacular if predictable. And it left opposition voters surprisingly unflustered, considering some...

The usual bashing of non-governmental organisations followed the World Bank's Consultative Group on Zambia in Paris on 26-28 May (AC Vol 40 No 11). Zambia's Finance Minister...

The smallest and richest of South Africa’s nine provinces seems certain to give the ruling African National Congress a solid majority at the national and provincial elections on...

Up to 2 million fewer votes may be cast in the national and provincial elections on 2 June than in the 1994 polls, which ended the apartheid era....

Zambia had little to show the World Bank's Consultative Group in Paris on 26-28 May. The future of the government may hang on this meeting. ...

Malawi's second multi-party elections are set to be a close-run thing. President Bakili Muluzi's ruling United Democratic Front is neck and neck with the opposition alliance of...

Who was behind the crude attempt to smear President Nelson Mandela by linking him to an oil deal with Nigerian middle-man Chief Antonio Deinde Fernandez? Copies of...

The people of KwaZulu-Natal (KZN) will cast their votes on 2 June, in national and provincial elections. However they vote, their party leaders have decided that their...

The Zulu people are proud of their reputation as fighters, which is sadly confirmed by the history of their region. Historic Zululand, incorporated wholesale into the white-ruled...

As the government's economic and military position worsens, its leading apparatchiks are finding ever more innovative ways of financing the war effort. The latest strategy, we hear,...

The news that creditor banks met to discuss the future of well connected Zimbabwean entrepreneur Billy Rautenbach's Hyundai Motor Distributors in Botswana raises questions about his continuing operations...

Washington now has closer relations with the African National Congress government than with any other in Africa, including the governments of Egypt and Morocco. The institutionalisation of...

The ousting of former African National Congress Secretary General Cyril Ramaphosa as a deputy chairperson of NAIL (New Africa Investments Limited) on 22 February raises questions about his...

Luanda is sharpening up its diplomatic tactics after a string of military successes by the União Nacional para a Independência Total de Angola in the north-west. Key to...

Of South Africa's nine provinces, Western Cape faces the fiercest battle for control in the run-up to the 2 June provincial and national elections. Western Cape is...

The African National Congress (ANC) is bound to win the elections for the national parliament on 2 June and its leader, Thabo Mbeki, will become the next president....

The ruling African National Congress wants South Africa's tax system to do two apparently contradictory things - both to correct social and economic discriminations inherited from apartheid, and...

No one in Luanda wants to take the blame for the government's string of military defeats by Jonas Savimbi's rebels over the past five months. It has...

Its coffers full of diamond money, União Nacional para a Independência Total de Angola went on an arms-buying spree to mount, first its defence of the central highland...

When they looted and burned businesses in the capital, Maseru, last September, Lesotho's young nationalists meant to protest against the 'protective' intervention in their country by South African...

Ben Ulenga, who resigned last year as Namibia's High Commissioner to Britain in protest at intolerance in the ruling South West African People's Organisation, has helped launch a...

The party is so new that it has not yet got a name, but its base is in the Zimbabwe Congress of Trade Unions and its leader is...

The deal to sell off the state’s best copper-mines must be tied up by the end of March, or Zambia is in effect out of business. For now,...

The political relaunch of a former Prime Minister, Obed Dlamini, could revive the antimonarchist opposition. This has been marking time since the 70,000-strong Swaziland Federation of Trade Unions...

Conflicting reports have emerged about British former Trade and Industry Minister Peter Mandelson’s offer to help the African National Congress 1999 election campaign. The project doesn’t look particularly...

The net is finally closing around convicted money launderer and Cape Town bon viveur, Vito Roberto Palazzolo. He is wanted by the Italian police on charges (which he...

What does Jonas Savimbi's União Nacional para a Independência Total de Angola hope to gain from the return to all-out war? Power, of course. Savimbi's specific aim is...

Two main imperatives drove the formation of President José Eduardo dos Santos' war cabinet, announced on 30 January: the need to find scapegoats for Angola's appalling economic and...

The frequent visits of convicted fraudster Nico Shefer and Fred Rundle, former Afrikaner Weerstandsbeweging spokesman, to President Charles Taylor in Monrovia have attracted the attention of officials monitoring...

The timing could hardly have been worse. As the world price of copper plummets, the Zambian government has at last moved decisively towards selling off its one big...

Remote Caprivi is the route to Zambia and Zimbabwe and secessionism is growing The first real test of post-Independence national unity looms with the emergence of a secessionist...

The Caprivi Zipfel (Strip) is a 500-kilometre-long finger of land which connects north-eastern Namibia to Botswana, Zambia and Zimbabwe. It is named after a German Chancellor, General Count...