South Africa

When President Jacob Zuma reshuffled his cabinet last month, he fired the powerful Communications Minister, General Siphiwe Nyanda. We can reveal that Nyanda fell out of favour for refusing to support...

A second term in office is President Jacob Zuma’s main aim. To see that he gets it, his cabinet reshuffle on 31 October seemed designed to win allies...

Jacob Zuma notched up a success when the Hawks, the special crime investigation unit, abandoned its inquiries into the arms deal in which it had been alleged that...

South Africa is the European Union's leading trade partner in Africa and the 27 EU countries form its most important trading bloc. Both parties are well aware of...

It was a rare victory for President Jacob Zuma. By persuading the governing party’s National General Council (NGC) in Durban on 20-24 September to delay all substantive decisions...

Amid the doctrinal squabbles in Durban, speculation intensfied about how President Jacob Zuma might reshuffle his cabinet. Hard-line presidential allies such as the Communications Minister, General Siphiwe Nyanda,...

President Jacob Zuma is hitting the media hard with a charm offensive before the governing party’s critical National General Council meeting on 19 September. His plan is to...

Not only have trades unionists pushed the government to accept most of their demands for higher wages and housing allowances but some of their leaders now believe they...

Support is building for the national strike of nurses, teachers and clerks since it was launched on 18 August, presenting two serious threats to President Jacob Zuma’s government....

The policies and programmes of the governing African National Congress will be reviewed at the party's National General Council in Durban on 20-24 September. Few of the policies...

The main opposing statements for the National General Council to be held by the governing African National Congress come, firstly, in the official policy document and, secondly, in...

Someone in President Jacob Zuma’s office has read a management textbook and reproduced chunks of it as government policy. Ahead of his post-World Cup cabinet ‘lekgotla’ (big meeting)...

The emergence of Khulubuse Zuma, the nephew of South African President Jacob Zuma, as a leading player in Congo-Kinshasa’s oil industry has provoked curiosity and anger in almost...

The would-be killers who bungled an attack on dissident Rwandan General Faustin Kayumba Nyamwasa seem to have thought that the World Cup would divert police attention from their...

As South Africa opens the World Cup tournament on 11 June, the most important national event since the 1994 elections, most of the visiting football fans will be...

More than a quarter of all South Africans seeking work in the formal economy cannot find it. The urgency to get the new National Planning Commission up and...

The battle for control of economic development planning continues and the National Planning Commission’s mandate has not yet been agreed. President Jacob Zuma blundered when, in his address...

This week, President Jacob Zuma has hard choices to make about Julius Malema, the vociferous leader of the African National Congress Youth League. Malema has several times publicly...

The timing could hardly have been worse. Only two months before South Africa hosts the football World Cup, incidents involving politicians at opposite ends of the political spectrum...

The royal reception accorded to South Africa’s firebrand youth leader Julius Malema in Zimbabwe over the Easter weekend has proved counterproductive (AC Vol 51 No 7). As President...

After South African President Jacob Zuma's 16-18 March trip to Harare, the abrasive Chairman of the African National Congress Youth League, Julius Malema, is due to arrive in...

South Africa is now the biggest welfare state in the developing world and the implications for public finances are frightening. As the recession tapers off, the rising public...

In October, Finance Minister Pravin Gordhan hinted at big economic changes. The South African Reserve Bank’s inflation strategy would be amended, the 3-6% target range for official inflation...

Reports of President Jacob Zuma’s political demise are exaggerated. Yet what should have been a moment of triumph for him during the 20th anniversary of Nelson Mandela’s release...

As the African National Congress leadership tries to dampen factional rivalries, some are asking whether Julius Malema, the firebrand President of the ANC Youth League, has moved from...

The US$450 million in fines that BAE Systems agreed to pay on 5 February to halt investigations into corrupt payments on arms deals adds to its financial woes....

Over a hundred of us gathered at the Friends Meeting House in Washington DC on 29 January to pay tribute to David Coetzee, a pioneering spirit in African...

When Mines Minister Susan Shabangu assured South African mining companies that nationalisation would not happen in her lifetime, the reaction at this year’s mining indaba in Cape Town...

In his New Year address, President Jacob Zuma likened 2010 to 1994, when South Africa became a democracy. To the outside world, the only big event happening in...

The African National Congress’s loud debate over economic policy will continue in 2010. The Left demands a more interventionist stance than that of the then Finance Minister, Trevor...

From energy and construction to transport and agriculture, President Jacob Zuma's 23-26 August trip to China has garnered billions of dollars in potential investments across the economic spectrum....

President Jacob Zuma's August trip to China completed the final stage of his tour this year of the BRIC - Brazil, Russia, India and China - economies. The...

The business empire of Khulubuse Zuma, a favourite nephew of President Jacob Zuma, is growing at breakneck speed and strengthened by a raft of opaque deals with Chinese and South Korean...

Faced with popular outcry about profiteering from electricity shortages and opaque ties between political parties and businesses, South Africa’s governing African National Congress is being forced to abandon its stake in...