Asia is responding to President Robert Mugabe’s calls for solidarity in the time of cholera – but not in the way that Harare had envisaged. The economic meltdown...

Ideological rather than commercial motives led to the 2003 launch of Zimbabwe’s ‘Look East’ policy, but as the country’s economic position has deteriorated, Harare has tried to woo...

The 1 December ‘mutiny’ precipitated fierce clashes between the Zimbabwe National Army (ZNA) and the Zimbabwe Republic Police (ZRP), which deployed anti-riot police after several of its members...

The US dollarisation of Zimbabwe’s economy has a caused a crisis over small change. There are plenty of US$100 and $50 notes but not enough of the lower...

Among the issues facing African National Congress President Jacob Zuma over the coming holiday season will be the High Court’s decision on whether he should be prosecuted for...

As the Congress of the People prepares to launch its party on 16 December in Bloemfontein, the governing African National Congress is challenging it legally and physically. The...

The rains have barely broken and already deaths from cholera have been reported in all but one of Zimbabwe’s ten provinces. The United Nations and local doctors report...

Reserve Bank Governor Gideon Gono and Harare businessman Mohammed I. Mohammed are using a British company to siphon tens of millions of US dollars out of Zimbabwe to...

At the African National Congress's National Executive Committee (NEC) meeting in mid-November, the incoming Chief Executive of ABSA Bank, Maria Ramos, turned up with the group's Chairwoman Gill...

In October 2008, at a fundraiser for Jacob Zuma, several Black Economic Empowerment oligarchs once closely allied to former President Thabo Mbeki turned up.

Black Economic Empowerment was intended to place Africans alongside whites at the head of South African business. Most big white-controlled companies went along with BEE, facing two realities....

As Namibia's economy faces international pressure, its central bank, the Bank of Namibia, has revised its forecast for this year's real gross domestic product growth to 3.9% from...

The leaking of a private correspondence between the Malawian President and his predecessor has given Malawians a taste of bitter political battles to come. The 19 May 2009...

Zambia's new President, Rupiah Bwezani Banda, 71, will rule for only three years. The next election is already scheduled for 2011. In that brief period, he must convince...

Once the promoter of Lottie Mwale, Zambia's Commonwealth boxing champion (1974-83), President Rupiah Bwezani Banda rolls with the punches in Southern Africa's difficult politics. In his long career,...

The intolerance is wider, as indicated by calls to oust suspected RDP members from their jobs, in or outside the public sector. During the recent election campaign for...

The big idea of a development push in Africa, to be part-financed by Western aid, has been propagated by rock stars and given intellectual credibility by United States'...

Some say that all aid is good aid. British Premier Gordon Brown, as Chancellor of the Exchequer in 2005 said: 'Let us double aid to halve poverty.' Irish...

Wresting the Finance Ministry from Robert Mugabe and his Zimbabwe African National-Patriotic Front (ZANU-PF) may prove a Pyrrhic victory for Morgan Tsvangirai and the Movement for Democratic Change...

Vital questions emerge from the US dollarisation of Zimbabwe: where have all the US bills come from? How long can the supply continue? How will they be replaced...

Suspicion hangs over Norway's oil major Statoil Hydro after an internal audit published last month flagged as suspicious a joint venture with a mystery Angolan company, signed in...

President Robert Mugabe initially responded to the world's financial crisis with more than a touch of Schadenfreude. This has given way to panic as the implications become clear....

South Africa's mobile telephone giant MTN risks losing its second Indian suitor as a schism in India's richest family could prevent the deal's signing. A merger between the US$38 bn....

The courtship by Sunil Mittal's Bharti Airtel of Cyril Ramaphosa's MTN hit the rocks in May. Enter the next ardent suitor: Anil Ambani's Reliance Communications. A marriage between Reliance, India's second...

Angola and China are to set up a'new model partnership'. This will involve the'sharing of risks' and will'complement existing models', said Gao Jian, Vice-Governor of the China Development Bank (CDB) on...

Japan is increasing its diplomatic presence in southern Africa following the successful Tokyo International Conference on African Development (TICAD) IV in May. Until this year, Japan’s Embassy in...

Relations between Angola and China are steaming ahead, despite the wishful thinking of some Western diplomats. China's Prime Minister Wen Jiabao visited Luanda on 23 June and signed an agreement for...

India needs coal to fire up its growth, freight rates from Australia's mines have soared, and India's own coal-mines are crippled by price controls and labour regulations. So importers are...

Tension and recriminations continue to mark relations between Zambian workers and Chinese investors, two months after the end of a two-day strike at a US$200 million copper smelting...

The abrupt closure of the Malaysian textile company Ramatex Group's operations in Windhoek with a loss of 3,000 jobs in early March has sparked a political row with trades unionists accusing...

Namibia Construction and South Africa's Murray & Roberts claim that a N$74.4 million (US$9.5 mn.) contract awarded last year to China Nanjing International for the construction of a new headquarters for...

Sithanen is the key strategist behind his country's fast-expanding ties with Asia's hyper-economies, China and India. He wants Chinese and Indian investment to support his plans for the development of...

Asia is looming large in Zambia's presidential elections, due on 30 October. This is partly because China and India have invested hundreds of millions of dollars in Zambia's copper mines and...

Zambia's relations with India go back a century to colonial rule under Britain, when people from the subcontinent were recruited by the colonial authorities as civil servants and others set up...

As long as it lasts, the diamond boom may help Japanese companies. They are well placed to take advantage of the decision by state diamond company Endiama that more than...

Mauritian Prime Minister Navinchandra Ramgoolam began negotiations to make his country China's second special economic zone at the Forum for China-Africa Cooperation held in Beijing in November 2006, after the Indian...

Talks on a complex three-party investment deal between China and Angola and the ailing Air Tanzania Company are nearing conclusion, officials have confirmed in Dar es Salaam. The aim...

Mid-October was not a good time to visit Washington. As banks collapsed and great industrial firms were threatened with closure, Jacob Zuma, the African National Congress President and...

The Congress of South African Trade Unions and South African Communist Party are enraged by African National Congress President Jacob Zuma's statements on economic policy continuity. One Cosatu...

Chinese Foreign Minister Yang Jiechi visited South Africa on 7 January 2008 to deepen a relationship which has been elevated to a ‘strategic dialogue’. The visit was to...

Angola's Finance Ministry has strengthened its policy to promote greater transparency in public finances, with the disclosure of new details about Chinese credit lines that support an array of projects...

South African companies are pushing into India’s markets. So far, the traffic has been one-way with Indian manufacturing companies such as Tata, Mahindra and Mahindra, and pharmaceuticals...

After a spate of high-profile contract awards, local contractors are accusing their Chinese competitors of using political influence and state subsidies from Beijing to dominate Zambia’s construction market....

Indian diamond traders are being forced to import rough diamonds directly from overseas suppliers after South Africa-based De Beers, the world’s largest supplier, recently slashed the number of...

Zambia, like Kenya andZimbabwe faces the risk of a disputed presidential election. The vote to replace the late Levy Patrick Mwanawasa is set for 30 October...

General Solomon Mujuru, former head of the army and politicalkingmaker, is caught up in a feud over the ownership of one of Zimbabwe’s biggest diamond mines. Mujuru’s company...

The ink was barely dry on the accord before President Robert Mugabe left for New York to address the United Nations General Assembly with a 60-strong entourage. Muddles...

Malnourished children are dying in the countryside and the next harvest is unlikely to be better. The combination of the worst drought for a decade and bad government...

On 13 October, its National WorkingCommittee, dominated by supporters of party President Jacob Zuma, suspended former party Chairman, Defence Minister Mosiuoa Lekota, who announced five days earlier that...

The Western Cape and Eastern Cape branches are still reeling from the pro-Zuma leadership’s sacking this year of their pro-Mbeki Premiers, Ebrahim Rasool and Nosimo Balindlela. On 10...

Mosiuoa ‘Terror’ Lekota, born in 1948 in Kroonstad, Free State, is from the same political generation as Cyril Ramaphosa, Tokyo Sexwale, Mathews Phosa and Kgalema Motlanthe. They all...

England’s Football Association (FA) may be interested in the links between Alexandre Gaydamak, the declared owner of Portsmouth Football Club, and arms-dealing companies that have emerged in the...

The soft-spoken Kgalema Motlanthe, elevated from the Deputy Presidency of the African National Congress to the Presidency of South Africa, faces a tough job. Amid bitterness, Thabo Mbeki...

In 1997, the quiet, unassuming but cerebral Kgalema Motlanthe was nominated by the left wing of the African National Congress tripartite alliance as ANC General Secretary, as a...

Baleka Mbete, Chairwoman of the African National Congress, says: ‘anybody who is thinking of going off and forming another party is wasting their energy’. Gwede Mantashe, the ANC’s...

The much-talked of US$1 billion rescue package for Zimbabwe's new power-sharing government is an illusion, according to British, United States and World Bank officials. There is no agreement...

Negotiations between the Zimbabwe African National Union-Patriotic Front and Movement for Democratic Change have been deadlocked for the past month over five key ministries: Information, Finance, Home Affairs,...

John Robertson, an economic consultant, says any recovery must start by restoring previous levels of agricultural productivity. 'They have destroyed the farming sector and shown no respect for...

Botswana President Ian Khama's open criticism of President Robert Mugabe's regime has provoked a stream of vitriol from Zimbabwe's state-controlled media. Mugabe's officials referred to Khama's government as...

The agreement reached in Harare on 15 September may not be what Zimbabweans wanted, but it was the best the negotiators could get after various governments had tried...

Amid the euphoria and impeccably presented theatre of the signing of the Zimbabwe power-sharing agreement on 15 September, only a Jeremiah would have warned that Monday’s child is...

Private companies may move faster than Western governments, the International Monetary Fund and World Bank in returning to Zimbabwe after the political deal. There are plans for hundreds...

body>The crushing victory of the ruling Movimento Popular de Libertação de Angola (MPLA) in the parliamentary elections on 5-6 September opens the way for veteran party leader President...

The Angolagate arms saga comes to a head on 6 October, when 42 prominent French officials and businessmen face trial in Paris in a delicate moment for Franco-Angolan...

As President Thabo Mbeki claims a rare success in promoting cooperation between the rivals in neighbouring Zimbabwe, the Jacob Zuma-dominated ANC leadership is deciding whether to impeach him,...

Acting Judge Chris Nicholson’s bitterest swipe was his comparison of President Thabo Mbeki’s campaign to sideline rival Jacob Zuma to that of apartheid governments using legislation and state...

Contractors in Luanda are gossiping about who might benefit from the privatisation of Angola’s state-owned cement company, Encime, as the construction business booms.

The 5 September elections will help to determine whether Angola attains its potential as one of Africa’s leading powers. Eight million voters will pick 220 members of parliament...

The election funds of the ruling Movimento Popular de Libertação de Angola dwarf those of its rivals. Some say the campaign has been so peaceful partly because the...

A blot on the generally calm parliamentary election campaign was the six-month ban on Rádio Despertar, the voice of the main opposition party, the União para a Independência...

As the power-sharing talks falter, the star of Emmerson Mnangagwa, Chairman of the Joint Operations Command and Rural Housing Minister, continues to rise. Whatever happens in the negotiations,...

Reserve Bank of Zimbabwe Governor Gideon Gono’s first five-year term expires in November 2008. The Movement for Democratic Change insists that his replacement take a more conventional view...

After his death last month, President Levy Patrick Mwanawasa continued to dominate Zambian politics as his coffin toured the country for a week. The extended countrywide funeral procession...

Robert Mugabe's slogan for his victorious, opponent-free rerun of the presidential election was 'the last battle for total control'. Yet the formal economy is spiralling out of...

The control freaks of the Zimbabwe African National Union-Patriotic Front seem astonished that their diktats go unheard by the world's stock exchanges. Yet when it comes to their...

The country's political crisis is intensifying and threatening government finances, thanks to the confrontational style of President Bingu wa Mutharika and his eager lieutenants. More clashes are...

Zambia faces a difficult political transition after the death of President Levy Patrick Mwanawasa on 19 August, aged 59. Contrary to expectations, he had presided over an...

Britain’s BAE Systems, one of the world’s biggest arms companies, has paid over £25 million (US$49.5 mn.) to a company whose majority Zimbabwean shareholder is a long-time business...

Everyone seems convinced that President Levy Patrick Mwanawasa, who suffered a stroke a month ago, will not resume his duties. Inside his Movement for Multiparty Democracy (MMD) the...

Jacob Zuma, having won the election for the presidency of the ruling African National Congress, wants to win next year's election for the presidency of South Africa. He...

Chief Justice Pius Langa: The head of the Constitutional Court and of the Judicial Commission from rural Limpopo Province worked as a labourer in a shirt factory and...

KwaZulu-Natal Judge President Vuka Tshabalala studied at the Universities of Fort Hare and Natal. He lost many pro-African National Congress President Jacob Zuma friends by choosing retired Judge...

The ports, the roads and the telephone networks are jammed full. Angola's economy is speeding ahead. Some experts think a slowdown is coming, but the price of oil...

The three negotiating teams are to resume talks in South Africa on 3 August after a break to discuss progress with their respective parties. The original deadline for...

Leading members of President Robert Mugabe's regime and their business allies are transferring tens of millions of US dollars out of Zimbabwe to safe havens to avoid the...

China and Russia's dual veto of a draft sanctions resolution against Zimbabwe at the United Nations Security Council on 11 July took nostalgic diplomats back to the height...

Supporters of Jacob Zuma, the President of the African National Congress, made their boldest effort yet to take over the government when they brought Kgalema Motlanthe into the...

The battle for control of the African National Congress divides African intellectuals inside and outside the ANC, with Jacob Zuma supporters, Thabo Mbeki supporters and third-man advocates sparring...

A six-month ban on broadcasts by Radio Despertar, the voice of the opposition União Nacional para a Independência Total de Angola, was imposed on 8 July by the...

The election on 27 June was Zimbabwe's worst. The opposition leader, Morgan Tsvangirai, had formally withdrawn but his name was still on the ballot paper (AC Vol 49...

Foreign mining investors still drop cash into Zimbabwe's empty bucket. Anglo American hit the spotlight in June with its US$400 million Unki platinum project, to be run by...

Emmerson Mnangagwa was roped in by President Robert Mugabe to mastermind his bid for re-election, together with his close ally, Legal Affairs Minister Patrick Chinamasa. Together, they persuaded...

The force behind Robert Mugabe's re-election campaign was former intelligence chief Emmerson Mnangagwa, the Secretary for Legal Affairs of the Zimbabwe African National Union-Patriotic Front, along with the...

Three Russian companies plan to inject over US$2 billion into Zambia's mining sector. If this project is successful, it will be the country's single biggest foreign direct investment....

In power since 1992, the Movimento Popular de Libertação de Angola is at least sure of its ability to deliver peaceful polls. Even the main opposition party (the...

Top of the list of Angola's fat cats is the family of President José Eduardo dos Santos. Its latest visible acquisition, in January, was Channel Two of the...

Angola's coming general elections are followed far beyond its borders. While the country was enmeshed in civil war, oil companies and their governments were the only outsiders who...

Until Germany's Chancellor Angela Merkel leant on them, Munich-based security printers Giesecke & Devrient GmbH had a lucrative contract to supply paper for Zimbabwe's considerable demand for new...

The last ditch efforts by the United Nations’ Haile Menkerios and South Africa’s Thabo Mbeki to broker a meeting between President Robert Mugabe and opposition leader Morgan Tsvangirai...

In Zimbabwe’s state-controlled media – the Zimbabwe Broadcasting Corporation (paradoxically modelled on the British Broadcasting Corporation but periodically purged), the Harare daily The Herald, and the Sunday Mail...

It began with the refusal of Southern African governments to allow a shipment of Chinese arms to unload at their ports and cross their territory to landlocked Zimbabwe...

Bitterness has festered within the governing African National Congress since Jacob Zuma took over as party President from national President Thabo Mbeki. The stabbing of Mcebisi Skwatsha, a...

Bulelani Ngcuka, South Africa’s former National Public Prosecutor and boss of the Scorpions anti-corruption investigators, is the man most hated by African National Congress President Jacob Zuma and...

With backing from the World Bank's International Finance Corporation and the United States Agency for International Development President Armando Guebuza's government is trying to raise nearly US$3 billion...

Violent rampages in townships and informal settlements have changed South Africa and the way the world sees it. Mobs have forced tens of thousands of migrants from other...

More than 50 opposition supporters have been killed and tens of thousands displaced since the first round. On 4 June, police briefly arrested the likely winner, Morgan Tsvangirai,...

About 150 kilometres south of Harare, Chikomba District has long been the home base of the ruling party’s power elite. These days, however, it shows the same political...

President Bingu wa Mutharika boasts that he is a disciple of founding President Hastings Kamuzu Banda. Indeed, he has picked up the old autocrat’s authoritarianism without his tactical...

The following have been arrested and charged, or expect to be charged, with treason in connection with an alleged coup plot. All except Bakili Muluzi and Humphrey Mvula...

In April, Sindika Dokolo, a Congo-Kinshasa-born businessman and husband of Isabel dos Santos, daughter of Angolan President José Eduardo dos Santos, was made an administrator of Amorim Energia,...

British Foreign and Commonwealth Office (FCO) officials are concerned whether the Zimbabwe operations of London-based Standard Chartered Bank violate European Union sanctions, according to emails seen by Africa...

One of Zimbabwe’s most strident businessmen, Mutumwa Mawere, is winning his long battle for compensation with President Robert Mugabe’s regime over the ownership of his company Africa Resources...

South African officials visiting Russia on 22-23 May were in damage-control mode. In March, Eskom let it be known that the Russian nuclear reactor builder Atomstroyexport (ASE), would...

With his main rival, Michael Sata, in emergency care in South Africa, Zambia's President Levy Mwanawasa is firmly in charge of his country. Sata suffered a heart attack...

Western dignitaries and intelligence operatives race in and out of Lusaka, pushing for a solution to the Zimbabwe stalemate. President Levy Mwanawasa chairs the 14-member Southern African Development...

With one bound Jacob Zuma was free. No longer was the new President of the African National Congress a dangerous populist in a threatening alliance with communists and...

After almost a week of political paralysis in ZANU-PF following the 29 March elections, Emmerson Mnangagwa and his allies honed a fight-back strategy for the party that involves...

Legal Affairs Secretary and former Security Minister Emmerson Mnangagwa has led the charge for Zimbabwe African National Union-Patriotic Front (ZANU-PF) since he organised the party congress's decision last...

'We will get it done,' Daniel H. Overmyer assured Africa Confidential, leaning in conspiratorially. Overmyer is the President of Castle, Overmyer, Poole & Schubert (COPS), a merchant bank...

This week as the opposition Movement for Democratic Change’s diplomatic efforts appeared to be paying off with growing condemnation in Africa of President Robert Mugabe and the discredited...

The division of the opposition into three rival components hampers its response to the government’s crackdown and its ability to mobilise against electoral fraud. Activists believe the Central...

The thwarted voyage of the An Yue Jiang – a Chinese freighter with a cargo of ammunition, mortars, mines and artillery bound for President Robert Mugabe’s government –...

War veterans, 'green bombers' and other irregular armed military units are being despatched across Zimbabwe to crush the opposition Movement for Democratic Change following its win in the...

The parliamentary victory of Morgan Tsvangirai's Movement for Democratic Change - winning 99 seats in the House of Assembly to 97 for the Zimbabwe African National Union-Patriotic Front...

On the fringes of an opposition rally just before the election stood a solitary figure holding a placard, his jacket pasted with Z$10 million bearer cheques. With the...

Southern Africa's model democracy shamed its neighbours with the dignified inauguration of its new president on 1 April. Lieutenant General Ian Khama Seretse Khama quickly stamped his authority...

Economic diversification is the centrepiece of President Ian Khama's strategy and its first test will be in the diamond business. Botswana, the world's biggest producer of diamonds by...

It is universally accepted that a Malawian government's legitimacy is determined by the latest maize harvest. 'Chimango ndi moyo' (Maize is life) is an expression often heard and...

The formal processes that must precede next year's general elections get started on 24 April, at the national convention of Bakili Muluzi's United Democratic Front (UDF). The meeting...

Questions surround the resignation of President José Eduardo dos Santos's confidant, special consultant and billionaire Arkady Gaydamak, on 6 April, as well as the fate of Gaydamak's diplomatic...

Zimbabwe's elections on 29 March raise some hard questions for the region. Member governments and the Chairman of the Southern African Development Community, Zambia's President Levy Mwanawasa, have...

When Kenya's opposition leader Raila Odinga referred to Zimbabwe's President Robert Mugabe as 'a dinosaur' last year, his party received an angry phonecall from Futungo de Belas in...

Companies are watching the elections with a particular focus - the implementation of the Indigenisation and Empowerment Act. Announced by President Robert Mugabe on 7 March, the Act...

The sacked director of South Africa's National Intelligence Agency, Billy Masetlha, is at the centre of fresh claims about the agency's collusion with plotters against Equatorial Guinea's government....

There are four elections in Zimbabwe on 29 March and none of them are going according to plan for President Robert Gabriel Mugabe. The old mixture of coercion...

Tempers are fraying as Malawi approaches next year's parliamentary and presidential elections. The all-important Malawi Electoral Commission, which will supervise the polls, has at last been appointed by...

Angola's decision to set up its own sovereign wealth fund, as Africa Confidential recently reported (AC Vol 49 No 3), is only part of the picture. Fernando Ulrich,...

Sonangol intends to list its shares on the New York Stock Exchange by 2010, according to Chief Executive Manuel Vicente. In February 2006, he mentioned this intention,...

Vice-President Lieutenant General Ian Khama Seretse Khama, who is to take over as head of state within weeks, is a remarkably secretive politician. Even outgoing President Festus Mogae,...

President Robert Mugabe, sure of victory in the presidential election on 29 March, chose to hold his 84th birthday party in Beitbridge. The party overlooked the border post...

Whatever may happen in the presidential poll, the legislative elections are crucial and independent candidates likely to swing behind Simba Makoni are thin on the ground. A total...

Finance Minister Trevor Manuel’s 2008 budget was a more powerful statement on Thabo Mbeki’s presidency than the President’s own speech. In his State of the Nation address to...

Trevor Manuel’s budget showed real gross domestic product (GDP) growth of 5% in 2007 and forecast growth of 4% in 2008, 4.2% in 2009, and 4.6% in 2010.

The African National Congress’s new leadership, in which the Congress of South African Trade Unions (Cosatu) and the South African Communist Party (SACP) have aligned themselves behind Jacob...

African National Congress leader Jacob Zuma’s purge of allies of President Thabo Mbeki is gathering pace, with all the ANC’s key policy-making committees under the control of the...

Pomp, ceremony, fashion parades and backslapping are the usual accompaniments to the state-of-the-nation address with which President Thabo Mbeki opens a session of South Africa's parliament. This time,...

Simba Makoni's decision to challenge President Robert Mugabe has surprised those who suspected he lacked the courage to see it through. The odds could hardly be higher for...

This may prove to be the week that Simba Makoni and his backers started to turn the tide in Zimbabwe's politics. On 13 February, Makoni launched his independent...

Simon Mann, former Special Air Service officer and mercenary, was extradited on 1 February from Zimbabwe to Equatorial Guinea, where he is to face charges of coup plotting...

Zambia's first lady, Maureen Kakubo Mwanawasa, is seen as the power behind the throne of President Levy Mwanawasa, and many believe that he wants a third term in...

The electricity shortage is the immediate issue that makes South Africans question their government's competence. The energy utility Eskom says that underinvestment has left it with inadequate generating...

Only former Finance Minister Simba Makoni can resolve the issue of whether he is going to challenge President Robert Mugabe for the Presidency in the elections now set...

A diplomatic storm is brewing as Mozambican police crack down on West Africans they accuse of being illegal miners. The formal tone of a letter from the Mozambican...

The establishment of an Angolan sovereign wealth fund is generating huge interest, not least because its operations and objectives have so far been shrouded in secrecy. We...

Plots abound ahead of Zimbabwe's election season. The leading plotter is President Robert Gabriel Mugabe, who is determined to win by pressing ahead ­ regardless of the breakdown...

The governing African National Congress is preparing for all-out war between President Thabo Mbeki – and his allies in government ­ and Jacob Zuma, the ANC's newly elected...

The African National Congress conference in December elected six pro-Jacob Zuma activists into the top leadership positions and gave them control of the National Executive Committee. The Congress...

Investigations into the relations between Zimbabwean ministers and Britain’s Barclays Bank may reopen following the admission by several ruling party politicians that they operate accounts with the bank...

Two politicians – South Africa’s highly effective Finance Minister Trevor Manuel and France’s forthright Cooperation Minister Jean-Marie Bockel – are adding to the pressure on international institutions to...