Everyone wanted to see Cote d’Ivoire play Ghana in the African Cup of Nations final on Sunday. A heavyweight clash between the two West African giants, it held the promise of a meeting of “golden” generations. The Ivorian veterans against the Ghanaian whipper-snappers, Drogba versus Ayew, Yaya Toure against Agyemang-Badu. Everyone wanted to see it. […]
I am trying to avoid the media blitz on the Superbowl and anybody keen to enthuse about all the “amazing” commercials. But sometimes I can’t look away. One trope gets me every time. It involves The New York Times and Giants linebacker Mathias Kiwanuka. Last week The Times did a profile of Kiwanuka. It recounts […]
The knockout phase of the Cup of Nations started this weekend and by next Sunday we’ll have a new champion. Events in Port Said, along with the Zimbabwean match-fixing scandal have made it a dreadful week for African football–but there has not been any question of postponing the remaining fixtures. The quarter-final line-up is without the tournament’s biggest losers, Senegal. Morocco and Angola also miss out. Earlier today red-hot Zambia played Sudan (in the end, Sudan came up short) and hosts Equatorial Guinea take on favorites Côte d’Ivoire as I am writing. The two major surprise quarterfinalists are Equatorial Guinea and Sudan, but they have very different back-stories.
Recently Malawians have been protesting against government corruption and cronyism. The focus of citizen anger is President Bingu wa Mutharika. The state’s response has been state violence and repression; in some instances fatal. Last month Robert Chasowa, a student leader, was murdered under mysterious circumstances. Malawi is of course a democracy. Malawians last coped with this […]
Elliot Ross, Guest Blogger The former antiapartheid activist who now heads Greenpeace, Kumi Naidoo, spent his weekend in a Greenland jail after a headline-grabbing dash onto an Arctic sea oil rig. Naidoo, who is from Chatsworth in Durban, dodged a Danish war-ship and hauled himself up an 80 ft ladder attached to one of the rig’s […]
By Elliot Ross, Guest Blogger We don’t give Africa a pass just because we are Africans. It’s a mistake to respond to blanket negative coverage with blanket positive coverage. Africa is overexposed not underexposed. We just get the wrong kind of exposure. The words of Ugandan journalist Angelo Izama at a recent, wide-ranging conference on the […]
Tendai Biti tells the story of being on a plane to an international conference with Robert Mugabe. Mugabe approached his finance minister and prodded his shoulder accusingly. “Biti,” he said. “Your trouble is that you forget that we are a sovereign state.” “No,” replied Biti, unflinching in his retelling of the exchange at least, “we […]
