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South Africa Faces a Momentous 2009
South African politics is “hotting up,” as they say down this way. Earlier this month a new party, formed by disaffected members of the ruling African National Congress, was launched in Bloemfontein, ironically, the very city where the ANC was born in 1912. But the brash, new political kid on the block, known as the Congress…
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Where's South Africa's Obama?
One by one, South Africa’s Moses Generation is dying out—there was another funeral last Saturday—and its demise is raising uncomfortable questions about the yet-to-emerge Joshua Generation to lead South African into its Promised Land. These biblical references arise out of a speech Barack Obama delivered in Selma, Alabama last year, when the then 46-year-old Obama acknowledged…
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A Bitter South African Divorce
Out of the frying pan into the frying pan… That’s what I thought when I returned to South Africa after four months of sizzling U.S. politics. My adopted home in South Africa is also sizzling with the sounds of change. The breaking news is the breakup of Nelson Mandela’s African National Congress (ANC), the oldest…
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Rising to the Moment
It’s always a bittersweet time for me when I leave my home in Martha’s Vineyard for my home in Johannesburg; home being a place where you have people and things you love, as I do in both these places. With some sadness, I say “so long” to friends I drank and dined with or with…
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Mbeki Moved On
And now it’s breath-holding time for South Africa, as the nation comes to grips with the sudden, shock-and-awe removal of its president Thabo Mbeki by his own party. Mbeki’s credo for the continent was ‘African solutions for African problems.’ Even as he applied the doctrine next door in Zimbabwe, a South African solution to the Mbeki…
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Waiting for Sunset
The polls are set to open on Friday in Zimbabwe, despite calls from the world community to postpone the elections because of political, social and economic unrest in the country. Nelson Mandela is among the most recent leaders to condemn Mugabe and the violence there. Charlayne Hunter-Gault, a writer for The Root, is like many…
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Running for President or Running for His Life?
Zimbabwe will hold a run-off election on June 27. Presidential contender Morgan Tsvangirai, the opposition Movement for Democratic Change (MDC) leader, insists that he and his party have already won. But Robert Mugabe, the wily leader of the ruling ZANU-PF party refused to accept the results and in time—an unprecedented long time—the Zimbabwe Electoral Commission…
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Charlayne Hunter-Gault's Reporter's Notebook
I am out of Africa and into Singapore—a country mostly off my radar screen—except when I am visiting Francis Daniels, the father of my godson, Themba. To Francis, Singapore’s former Prime Minister, Lee Kwan Yew is a kind of icon who invariably comes up in conversations about what Africa needs to do to get out…
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Zimbabwe: If This is Not A Crisis, What Is?
The question I posed in this space before the Zimbabwe election on March 19th was whether the election would bring Democracy or Disaster? What comes to mind now, with no results announced after almost three weeks, is that old saying: ‘It’s always darkest just before it gets pitch black.’ Despite the pronouncements of friendly observers…
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Another Independence Day for Zimbabwe?
Historic change is in the air with tension and uncertainty mounting as Robert Mugabe’s government suffers its first major defeat since he came to power almost three decades ago. The opposition Movement for Democratic Change has won the lower house of Parliament and is set to force a runoff for the presidency. This is the…
Black News and Black Views with a Whole Lotta Attitude
