Botswana's famously democratic politics are as stable as usual but they cannot solve all the problems. First, the politics. A year into President Festus Mogae's first five-year term,...

The African National Congress swept to victory in the local government elections on 5 December, winning 59 per cent of the total vote (AC Vol 41 No 23)....

Procedures for voting in the local government elections of 5 December were complicated but voters seemed to take that in their stride and the poll was accepted as...

President Robert Mugabe held onto the party presidency at the special congress of the Zimbabwe African National Union-Patriotic Front on 13-15 December.

Cocksure of its diplomatic and military position, the ruling Movimento Popular de Libertação de Angola has secured parliamentary approval of a new and renewable 60-day amnesty law that...

Angola's go-slow on the development of its massive offshore oil fields is sending ripples through the world's biggest oil companies, worried about lower investment returns and profits. Luanda's...

Frederick Chiluba seems to want to keep his job, although the constitution says a president may serve only two five-year terms. His ambition could be frustrated if his...

King Mswati III vies for the title of Africa's last absolute monarch with Mohammed VI of Morocco. Mswati is the more absolutist but his standing is falling so...

The assassination of pioneering Mozambican journalist Carlos Cardoso in central Maputo on 22 November shows the growing threat to African reporters.

President Thabo Mbeki faces his toughest battle for voters yet in local government elections on 5 December (AC Vol 41 Nos 17 & 19). A predicted low turnout...

Everything looked rosy in July, when Britain's Minister of State Peter Hain, in Angola, signed a memorandum on air services with Transportation Minister Luis Brando. Foreign Minister João...

Post-war reconciliation looked shakier after clashes between the opposition Resistência Nacional Moçambicana and police on 9 November. More than 40 people died and over 100 were injured.

The ruling parties of Namibia, Angola, South Africa, Zimbabwe and Mozambique would work together to root out agents of imperialism in Southern Africa, said South West Africa People's...

The more opponents urge President Robert Mugabe to quit, the more he wants to stay put. His backers insist that he will be running again in the 2002...

The stance of Zimbabwe's 40,000-strong armed forces will be critical in the coming months. At the senior officer level, there is still tremendous loyalty to the ruling Zimbabwe...

The Mercs to Malawi affair - the purchase of 39 top-notch Mercedes-Benz limousines by President Bakili Muluzi's aid-dependent government - turned discontent into crisis. This has had three...

The ruling United Democratic Front is struggling to pick its presidential candidate for 2004 and its continuity camp wants a third term for Bakili Muluzi, which would mean...

Is President José Eduardo dos Santos' government, slopping around in oil revenues, serious about economic reform at last? Luanda officials claim it is, pointing to Dos Santos' appointment...

Two weeks of mass opposition protests and clashes with the army and police have further weakened President Robert Mugabe and his opponents draw parallels with the overthrow of...

South Africans feel unsafe. Fear of criminals demoralises people and is a major cause of emigration. High expectations therefore attach to the first black Commissioner of Police, Jackie...

Zambian Archbishop Emmanuel Milingo, healer and exorcist in Rome for 18 years, has been silently sacked as Vatican Special Delegate to the Pontifical Commission for Migration and Tourism.

In the Cape Town area in the past 27 months, 21 bombings have caused three deaths and injured at least 130 people. In Cape Town itself, a major...

The Movement for Democratic Change, offspring of the Zimbabwe Congress of Trade Unions, amazed everybody by winning 57 of the 120 seats contested at the parliamentary elections in...

Union officials now MPs for the Movement for Democratic Change...

President Bakili Muluzi pleads for cancellation of Malawi's US$2.5 billion international debt. Meanwhile Parliament's Public Accounts Committee has described the embezzlement of millions of government money, naming and...

This was not what was supposed to happen. The last-minute opposition alliance of the Mouvement Socialiste Militant (MSM) and the Mouvement Militant Mauricien (MMM) won three-quarters of the...

President Laurent-Désiré Kabila is increasingly relying on mercenary soldiers and bomber pilots as he prepares for a new round of fighting with the disparate rebel factions across the...

The new chief of the Namibia Defence Force is Major General Solomon 'Jesus' Hawala, which worries many Namibians (AC Vol 31 Nos 19 & 20). In the undeclared...

Government officials unofficially promise to spend at least US$16 million of new oil money on social projects. This may be a first tangible sign of the state oil...

Black union militants are planning new clashes with the African National Congress government over jobs and labour law reform. But many union leaders would prefer a compromise that...

Zambians' belief in the brand new Republican Party faces its first test on 26 September. By contesting seven by-elections, the party hopes to give a voice to the...

A congress for peace held at Luanda's Catholic University on 18-21 July might sound like a bland affair. Yet by bringing together over 20 churches with politicians and...

Zambia's ruling politicians had hoped that selling off the government's ailing copper-mines would bring benefits in time for next year's elections (AC Vol 41 No 14). The slow...

Real multi-party politics started raucously in Harare's parliament on 18 July, with both sides breaking into song after the election of former Justice Minister Emmerson Mnangagwa as Speaker...

The African National Congress has emerged from its national general council, held in the coastal city of Port Elizabeth on 11-15 July, looking more like the Western-style social...

Promises of dollops of money at the Consultative Group meeting in Lusaka on 16-18 July (AC Vol 41 No 14) dispelled fears that Finance Minister Katele Kalumba was...

Another eighteen months of economic stagnation and high-tension politics lie ahead after the ruling Zimbabwe African National Union-Patriotic Front squeaked to victory in the 24-25 June parliamentary elections....

Zimbabwe now has a multi-party political system. ZANU-PF will have to struggle to get more controversial bills through, as about 15 dissidents among the new crop of ZANU-PF...

Zimbabwe's land rows have touched a sore nerve in South Africa, where land hunger is a lively, if partly suppressed, political issue and where white people still dominate...

Namibia's 4,000 white farmers have been shocked by the farm occupations in Zimbabwe. The farmers, mostly of Afrikaner or German ancestry, had felt safe under the government's policy...

Good land is scarce in Malawi and the best of it is occupied by settlers (often of South African origin) who produce the grain and the exports of...

The knives are out as the ruling Movement for Multi-party Democracy, bereft of a natural successor to President Frederick Chiluba, begins its pre-election finagling. Chiluba could yet cancel...

Lusaka is buzzing with preparations for a crucial meeting of the Consultative Group of donors in the city on 16-19 July. The government is hoping for US$605 million...

The African National Congress inches ahead with privatisation, though its partner, the Congress of South African Trade Unions (Cosatu), links this to the redrawing of labour laws to...

Inspiring a broad resistance front is not the same as running a pragmatic government, as the African National Congress has discovered. To iron out the long-standing and often...

The arrest in Kinshasa of Mines Minister Frédéric Kibassa Maliba and Economy Minister Bemba Saolona raises more doubts about the planned launching of Oryx Diamonds on the London...

A new consortium to mine diamonds in war-torn Congo-Kinshasa, Oryx Diamonds, is to be launched on the London Stock Exchange on 13 June, in partnership with the governments...

The collapse of the 27 April British-Zimbabwe ministerial negotiations in London on land redistribution now makes any bilateral agreement unlikely before the parliamentary elections due before mid-August. The...

South Africa's policy on Zimbabwe's crisis has been run entirely by President Thabo Mbeki and officials in the enlarged presidency. The department of Foreign Affairs has been sidelined....

The Congo war is at the heart of President Robert Mugabe's troubles. The economic cost of Zimbabwe's military involvement, with no immediate return, is a load which donors...

Paris-based arms trader Arkady Gaydamek has bought 15 per cent of Lev Leviev's Africa-Israel company as part of arrangements to settle some of Angola's military debt. The holding...

One of the country's sharpest and most popular politicians Defence Minister Mosiuoa (Patrick) Lekota has a daunting task ahead of him if he is to reform the military...

So strong was the personality cult around the Independence leader and Father of the Nation, former President Kenneth Kaunda, that his United National Independence Party has been thrown...

The ousting of Zimbabwean magnate Billy Rautenbach as Chief Executive of Congo-Kinshasa's Gécamines and the breaking up of his Congo-based Central Mining Group is part of a bigger...

Few serious politicians doubt that Zimbabwe is heading for its roughest elections since Independence and the end of the liberation war in 1980. The ruling Zimbabwe African National...

Five years after having been the world's favourite basket case, Mozambique is trying hard to ensure the floods don't wash it off course (AC Vol 41 No 5)....

President Joaquim Chissano's new government in January included several tried and trusted ministers, whose experience has paid off in the flood disaster. The team at Foreign Affairs and...

The United Nations' latest exercise in naming and shaming sanctions-busters may see the international isolation of Burkina Faso's President Blaise Compaoré and Togo's President Gnassingbé Eyadéma.

Income taxes and the budget deficit are down, defence spending is up. That conservative combination in Finance Minister Trevor Manuel's budget on 23 February won plaudits from business,...

Angola has transformed the market for its diamonds, cancelling or suspending all existing marketing contracts for the stones. The government claims that this radical shake-up, made by decree...

The National Summit on Africa in Washington on 16-20 February attracted several star speakers, such as United States President Bill Clinton and Organisation of African Unity Secretary General...

The fuel crisis is deepening despite the government's recent deal with BP Amoco for shipments through the Beira pipeline. Ships delivering fuel to Beira were halted by the...

'We've won this war, so we're all guerrillas now,' a young man shouted out at a crowded civic meeting in Harare, just hours after the Zimbabwean people had...

Britain is maintaining an 'informal arms embargo' on Zimbabwe, defence sources told Africa Confidential in Harare this week. This is despite a cabinet meeting in Downing Street last...

A decade after Nelson Mandela walked out of prison and South Africa's political revolution started, his successor Thabo Mbeki is launching another revolution,It aims to overthrow the apartheid...

The failed attempt by Nicky Oppenheimer, Chairman of De Beers, to meet the United States Justice Department's Joel Klein at the business people's festival in Davos, Switzerland last...

Launched in Lisbon, the Commission for Peace, Justice and Reconciliation in Angola is the latest diplomatic device of the União Nacional para a Independência Total de Angola. It...

The first real post-apartheid government will start work after President Thabo Mbeki opens parliament on 4 February, focusing at last on economic and administrative reform, rather than on...

After four years of startling growth, Mozambique is set to be the world's fastest growing economy this year (according to the Economist Intelligence Unit). Moreover, the presidential and...

In courting the country's three million Afrikaners, President Thabo Mbeki wants to harness their still formidable financial power to boost a flagging economy. Ministers concede that despite the...

The government's military victories have perked up President José Eduardo dos Santos. In fine form for a millennium address to diplomats on 17 January, he wooed investors and...

Senior Angolan officers say their military intelligence has been much improved by foreign 'commercial agencies'. These officers are far too discreet to say if these commercial agencies are...

Nobody expected President Sam Nujoma or his ruling South West African People's Organisation to lose the elections but SWAPO's victory was impressive. Putting down a marker was the...

Africa Confidential has learned that more than 100 companies are considering applying to the South Africa Reserve Bank for listing on foreign stock exchanges. This follows the giant...

His party won December's general elections comfortably but the surprise came when President Joaquim Chissano took only 52.29 per cent of the vote in the presidential poll while...

Confusion mounts over Zimbabwe's parliamentary elections. Last month Justice Minister Emmerson Mnangagwa, 53, announced their postponement from March to June so that the poll could be held under...