This time - at dawn on 22 September - mutinous soldiers of the Lesotho Defence Force faced well equipped South African troops, rather than just their own loyalist colleagues. Preto...

Donors were pleased, Zimbabwe’s voters may not be. Yet President Robert Mugabe is unlikely to be asking for their votes again. His government abandoned its hard line on land reform...

For the first time since Independence in 1990, a dissenter has publicly appeared in the senior ranks of the ruling South West African People’s Organisation. Ben Ulenga, High Commis...

The economy and its capacity to create jobs are the critical issues for the African National Congress in next year’s elections. Flanked by cabinet heavyweights Finance Minister Tre...

Jonas Savimbi is on the presidential campaign trail again. He has ordered his troops into a series of carefully orchestrated hit-and-run attacks against government positions in twe...

Zambia has decades of experience of the Angolan war (AC Vol 39 No 10). It hosts the oldest continuous refugee camp in Africa, Muykwayukwa, opened in 1966 for Angolan refugees. Thre...

Zimbabwe has two vice-presidents, Joshua Nkomo and Simon Muzenda, but people may have forgotten that Nkomo still exists. He does not appear in public; President Robert Mugabe conti...

Crime and a lack of confidence in the South African Police Service are, after unemployment, the government's biggest political problems. It was never going to be easy for the Afric...

The government puts a brave face on it but the economy is still in a mess and May's Consultative Group meeting in France (AC Vol 39 No 10) produced no balance-of-payments (BoP) sup...

Business people cannot understand what the International Monetary Fund is up to. It keeps on lending to the Zimbabwe government which, on the published figures, is heading for econ...