Formally, the race to lead the African National Congress starts in October and its presidential candidate will be elected by a national conference in December. Yet the leading cont...

Influence over the intelligence services has become a crucial front in the African National Congress’s succession battle. The biggest casualty so far has been the former Director o...

Zimbabwe defies political gravity. Almost nobody in Harare or Tshwane takes seriously the South African-mediated negotiations between government and opposition. Next year's electio...

Soldiers and politicians may grumble but President Robert Mugabe and his apparatchiks maintain a wrestler's grip on the Zimbabwe African National Union-Patriotic Front's organisati...

After many years of debate among politicians, business and unions, the draft of a grand industrial strategy for South Africa has emerged in time for the party conference in Decembe...

Plans for Germany to extend an oil-backed US$1 billion credit facility to President José Eduardo dos Santos' government have hit problems.

Last week Adriaan Vlok, a former Police Minister, was given a ten-year suspended sentence for conspiracy to kill; that was one piece of unfinished business from the apartheid era. ...

Zimbabwe's highly effective Central Intelligence Organisation worked to ensure the Lusaka discussions on Zimbabwe went its way. Four days before the 16-17 August Southern African D...

The government is battling to contain the fallout from the 8 August sacking of popular Deputy Health Minister Nozizwe Madlala-Routledge.

The row over the future of Health Minister Manto Tshabalala-Msimang's future is now a battle between African National Congress factions ahead of December's leadership elections.