South Africa

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 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...

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....

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,...

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...

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...