Like a slow-motion train crash, from 5 to 8 December Commonwealth leaders allowed a bad-tempered discussion on Zimbabwe to dominate their summit, ending in the continuation of sanctions...

Greatly strengthened by November's local elections (AC Vol 44 No 24), the Secretary General of Frente de Libertaçao de Moçambique (Frelimo), Armando Guebuza, is preparing to purge the...

The plan of the governing South West African People's Organisation to divide its opponents ahead of next year's elections is working. The official opposition Democratic Turnhalle Alliance is...

Ex-President Frederick Chiluba faces two trials this month, after his lawyers failed to block the charges against him as 'vindictive and unfair' (AC Vol 44 No 19); they...

As it plots a path beyond President Joaquim Chissano's retirement at 2004's general elections, the ruling Frente de Libertação de Moçambique has emerged from November's local elections looking...

History is catching up with President Robert Gabriel Mugabe as he prepares for the party congress in Masvingo next month. Even political allies concede that Mugabe is well...

Big questions are meant to be settled when the ruling Movimento Popular de Libertação de Angola (MPLA) holds its congress in Luanda on 6-10 December (AC Vol 44...

Mystery surrounds the 'social bonus fund' set up from proceeds of the oil licence payments from blocks 31-34. Touted as proof that big oil investors could nudge Angola's...

Namibia's delicate inter-ethnic balance, carefully maintained since Independence in 1990 by President Sam Nujoma, is the hot political topic. After much uncertainty, Nujoma will retire next year when...

Can government plans for black empowerment and the transfer of equity to black-owned businesses work in tandem with its market economic strategy? That is the question that foreign...

Several government ministers and senior military officers accused of grabbing farms are refusing to hand them back to the state, according to a new report on land reform...

Contenders for the presidency are stepping up their campaigns following the announcement that the governing South West Africa People's Organisation will hold an extraordinary party congress in May....

South Africa's ruling African National Congress risks sinking deeper into a quagmire of spy-naming and mutual suspicion amidst suspected corruption in a multimillion pound arms deal (AC Vol...

The ovation given to Deputy President Jacob Zuma at last month's national conference of the Congress of South African Trade Unions points again to the very odd nature...

After the government's closure of the Daily News, Information Minister Jonathan Moyo is turning his attention to the two remaining independent weeklies, the Sunday Standard and Zimbabwe Independent....

When Cherise Makubale beat eleven contestants this month in Big Brother Africa, an international 'reality television' show avidly followed in Zambia, President Levy Mwanawasa immediately appointed her a...

The courts are crowded with politicians and public servants who served under the previous President. Frederick Chiluba himself was arrested on 5 August to face 96 counts of...

The African National Congress had studiously avoided an open succession struggle since going into exile four decades ago. Now no holds are barred as it prepares for April's...

A public inquiry into contracts awarded for South Africa's arms purchasing programme, the Strategic Defence Procurement Package, found in 2001 that most bids required closer scrutiny. Main successful...

The Strategic Defence Procurement Package was signed in November 1999, six months after Thabo Mbeki took over from Nelson Mandela as president. The largest arms procurement programme in...

Protests against the government's land reform programme are growing ahead of the publication next week of a new investigation into corruption headed by former Cabinet Secretary Charles Utete....

Steam is building in the empowerment debate. Now the Oppenheimer family, which for 100 years has dominated South African gold and diamond production, has made another...

In 2002, the draft of government legislation on a mining charter was leaked to reveal that 51 per cent of the mining industry was earmarked for ...

Hopes that the installation in late April of President Domitien Ndayizeye, a Hutu, would hasten an end to the fighting have not been realised. Instead, the conflict has...

Defying the ever extending setbacks to Africa's peace and security agenda, South African President Thabo Mbeki has again shown his impatience with fellow African leaders over their sluggish...

South Africa's relations with the United States reached a low point over the invasion of Iraq, with both President Thabo Mbeki and his predecessor Nelson Mandela sharply criticising...

With its emphasis on new concepts of African collective responsibility and its promise of strong moral and financial support from Western countries, the New Partnership for African Development...

United States President George W. Bush's quick tour of Southern Africa may have strengthened fellow President Robert Mugabe and it has certainly weakened Zimbabwe's opposition leader, Morgan Tsvangirai...

Botswana's democratic reputation rests on its constitution, whereby the president is chosen by the governing Botswana Democratic Party and duly voted into office by the elected parliament. Thanks...

Churches, the governing United Democratic Front, the United States' Save the Children Fund and the Muslim Association of Malawi were early casualties of Malawi's 'war on terrorism'. Muslim...

Just in time for President George W. Bush's visit to Gaberone on 10 July, a row has blow up over allegations that five suspected supporters of Al Qaida...

President Levy Mwanawasa's government agreed a budget for 2003 with the International Monetary Fund and overspent it by 612 billion kwacha; the IMF's man in Lusaka, Mark Ellyne,...

'It's the clock. The time for me is up... it's time to move on'. Thus Charles Utete explained his retirement in April. President Robert Mugabe, who at 79...

Let him take his medicine!' South Africa's Foreign Minister Nkosazana Zuma told fellow diplomats after learning that opposition leader Morgan Tsvangirai had been detained after a week of...

In an unexpected reshuffle on 28 May, President Levy Mwanawasa sacked Vice-President Enock Kavindele, long-time friend and Finance Minister Emmanuel Kasonde and Information Minister Newstead Zimba. Two main...

With the December 2004 elections now in sight and President Joaquim Chissano stepping down after 18 years in power, the long-running battle for power in the ruling Frente...

Helder Muteia: the Minister of Agriculture. A Young Turk reformer, he naively accepted the mantle of the Chissano camp in the leadership contest where Guebuza decisively beat him....

Zimbabweans have been thronging the banks in Bulawayo and Harare this week desperate for cash to stock up on necessities before the opposition's planned general strike. That Morgan...

Archbishop Pius Ncube is emerging as the most important and convincing opponent of President Robert Mugabe's government. Ncube, the Roman Catholic prelate for Bulawayo, criticises corruption by the...

Three busy Presidents had a frustrating time when they visited their colleague Robert Mugabe in Harare on 5 May. Thabo Mbeki of South Africa, Olusegun Obasanjo of Nigeria...

That President Thabo Mbeki is the African National Congress presidential candidate for 2004 and its leader for now is not in question. Yet already speculation is rife about...

Nine years of multi-party politics after 30 years of dictatorship have tested the country's young democratic institutions. Two years of famine, a devastating HIV/AIDS epidemic and persistent allegations...

South Africa is about to raise the stakes by committing three battalions for peacekeeping duties in Burundi and eastern Congo, having hosted a succession of summits to persuade...

A year after the fighting ended, war-ravaged Angola is on hold. The most pressing issues, such as resettling and rehabilitating more than three million civilians displaced by four...

Barely noticed abroad because of the war on Iraq, on 31 March the Movement for Democratic Change regained some of the momentum it had lost with two by-election...

Many Namibians, including key members of the ruling South West African People's Organisation (SWAPO) are sceptical about President Sam Nujoma's latest pledge - made at the closing session...

Claims in a government audit that President Robert Mugabe's sister Sabina, several high ranking government officials and company executives have grabbed farms and have been forcibly evicting landless...

The arrest of former President Frederick Chiluba on 24 February, to face 66 charges of corruption, will make a lot of African leaders even keener to hold on...

A confidential government audit of Zimbabwe's land reform has found widespread evidence of corrupt allocations and the use of violence by senior politicians and military officers to evict...

Zimbabwe's power-brokers take the struggle to succeed President Robert Mugabe seriously and ingratiate themselves with whomever they think likely to win. Some stand by Mugabe, believing he can...

Angola, a hoped-for oil ally of the United States and with a seat on the United Nations Security Council this year, should be doing well (AC Vol 44...

The blame for South Africa's peculiar policies on HIV/AIDS is shifting from President Thabo Mbeki to his Health Minister, Manto Tshabalala-Msimang, caricatured by local AIDS activists as 'Dr....

President Thabo Mbeki's State of the Nation speech at the opening of parliament on 14 February has left many feeling he slighted the nation in favor of a...

The campaign for a fourth, so far unconstitutional, five-year term for President Sam Nujoma is increasingly orchestrated. It ranges from support from an influential group of Herero traditional...

General Paulo Lukamba Gato's announcement that he will not seek nomination as presidential candidate for the União Nacional para a Independência Total de Angola is at odds with...

The architects of the soft-landing plan for President Robert Gabriel Mugabe are frustrated (AC Vol 44 No 1). Their efforts have produced the opposite effect to that intended:...

Inkatha, the only party strong enough to face up to the governing African National Congress, won a tactical victory this month in its home province of KwaZulu-Natal (KZN)....