- Details
- By Bart Luirink
- Politics & Opinion
<p>Former members of the leadership of the Anti Apartheid Movement Netherlands (AABN) have spoken out in solidarity with 'many South Africans who raise their voice against state capture and the defilement of shared ideals'. In an Open Letter to the ANC they express their 'grave concern' about recent investigation by the South African police. </p>
- Details
- By Bart Luirink
- Politics & Opinion
ZAM editor Bart Luirink wonders why his former comrades in the Anti Apartheid Movement are investigated by the South African police.
- Details
- By Anneke Verbraeken
- Politics & Opinion
"Honestly, couldn’t we have done this on Skype?” inquires one of the team members after our first meeting. Comparing notes has been a cautious and not very exciting exercise at first. We only know other team members from social media and are still getting to know one another in real life.
- Details
- By Evelyn Groenink
- Politics & Opinion
Based on the average track record of FIFA presidents so far, Tokyo Sexwale seems the perfect candidate.
- Details
- By ZAM reporter
- Politics & Opinion
Ten days of student protests have won a victory.
- Details
- By Babah Tarawally
- Politics & Opinion
The elite in Sierra Leone ruthlessly stole Ebola funds. When will the poor finally rebel?
- Details
- By ZAM reporter
- Politics & Opinion
At the occasion of Rwanda Day in the Netherlands on 3 October supporters of that country’s President Paul Kagame targeted known opposition-friendly journalist Anneke Verbraeken and snatched the phone she used to take photographs of a pro-Kagame demonstration outside the Amsterdam venue. “It’s not so much the phone itself, it’s the fact that it contains many contacts of mine in Rwanda,” says Verbraeken. “It is very worrying that these are now in the hands of the regime.” Other journalists, among whom a Belgian TV crew, were also harassed and another two journalists’ phones were also stolen.
- Details
- By Uncle Tom
- Politics & Opinion
Uncle Tom has been preoccupied with pictures lately. First there was the one of the happy young men who had reached a Greek beach after crossing the Mediterranean from Syria. They made victory signs and took a selfie. With a stick.
- Details
- By Elnathan John
- Politics & Opinion
NGOs in his country are not the benign civil society activist groups they purport to be, says Nigerian satirist, former lawyer and novelist Elnathan John.
- Details
- By Bram Posthumus
- Politics & Opinion
On Wednesday 16 September the military in Burkina Faso –or rather an armed gang of 1,300 men who consider themselves above the law- staged a coup d’etat in that country. The Régiment de Sécurité Présidentiel (or RSP), intimately associated with Blaise Compaoré, -the autocratic ruler the Burkinabè people chased from power in October 2014-, clearly feels it needs to be back on top, if only to avoid ever being called to account for its many crimes.
- Details
- By ZAM Reporter
- Politics & Opinion
In his biggest undercover project ever, Ghanaian ace investigative journalist and ZAM partner Anas Aremeyaw Anas has recorded 34 judges –among whom a High Court judge and a Human Rights Court judge- promising to throw big cases in exchange for money. The thirty-four now all face impeachment.
- Details
- By Gustavo Costa
- Politics & Opinion
Thousands of Cubans working in Angola feel let down after the government of José Eduardo dos Santos has failed to pay a debt of 300 million Euros to their country. The money was meant to cover the salaries of the skilled workforce who worked in the African country as doctors, university professors and technicians in the water and energy sectors. But, with oil prices falling, Angola's state coffers are empty and water plants and hospitals, once staffed by Cuban comrades, have been abandoned.
- Details
- By Evelyn Groenink
- Politics & Opinion
Anti-FGM (Female-Genital-Mutilation) campaigners in the West use shock tactics (often pictures of screaming and bleeding girls, held down by ‘cutters’) to canvass support. True, the practice in the pictures is horrific. But sometimes the ‘do-gooders’ don’t accept that the wrong they are fighting is close to being righted. In Somalia, for example, -historically one of the worst ‘FGM’ countries-, the old practice has been replaced in 75 % of cases by much more benign clitoral hood removal, comparable to circumcision in boys. Remarkably, campaigners are hushing up this victory of Somalis themselves.
- Details
- By Uncle Tom
- Politics & Opinion
Last week my home girl Jeanie, who is now making it big in New York, Rome and Monaco as what I fancy to be the wealthiest escort-girl of all time, sent me this link to the story of a migrant woman. The intro was catchy. The woman had come from poverty, crossed borders, defied challenges and made many sacrifices to provide for her own needs and those of her family. But as soon as I saw the sentence “I am called illegal, disease spreader, prostitute, criminal, trafficking victim,” I knew what Jeanie was on about. She had clearly read the latest US State Department ‘Trafficking in Persons’ report.
- Details
- By ZAM reporter
- Politics & Opinion
A story taken from the AFP news agency by the South African Sunday Times, last weekend, highlighted how desperate prosecutors pass stiffer and stiffer sentences on poachers of rhinos in the country’s famous Kruger Park –without much hope that poaching will actually get any less.
- Details
- By Bart Luirink
- Politics & Opinion
A sharp attack on US President Barack Obama in an Al Jazeera column by Ugandan media owner and opinion leader Andrew Mwenda went viral yesterday on social media. Following Obama’s recent visit to Kenya and Ethiopia, Mwenda, founder and owner of the Ugandan newspaper The Independent, accused the US President of being a ‘colonial headman’ who came to tell ‘the natives’ how to behave. "Obama, being of African ancestry, is a puppet used by the US to disguise its contempt for Africans," Mwenda wrote in the piece which has been widely shared and liked, often by -clearly anti-imperialist-westerners.
- Details
- By ZAM Reporter
- Politics & Opinion
American-Nigerian writer Teju Cole on the Bill Cosby candal: 'We (men, Ed.) must be allies in this, in a subsidiary but vital role, to the generations of women who have been fighting it (rape, Ed.) since forever. Why should it be easy? It can't be. We have to face even the complication of confronting those few women who are themselves invested in perpetuating rape culture. It will cause us extreme discomfort, but our discomfort will be nothing compared to the pain of being a victim of rape or assault or harassment'.
- Details
- By ZAM Reporter
- Politics & Opinion
If Africa was a bar, Nigeria would be the guys manning the toilets and making more money than the bar itself; South Africa would be that light-skinned girl who is haughtily refusing to mix with anyone else and Uganda would be the drunk uncle repeatedly asking his neighbour Kenya to return his ‘stolen’ cows. In turn, Kenya, whilst unable to pay for own drinks, would keep droning on about how his countryman Obama made it in the USA. And Zimbabwe would be daring a white guy to step on his toes.
- Details
- By Evelyn Groenink
- Politics & Opinion
Never mind Fox News’ remarkable phrasing of the Charleston church shooting as an ‘attack on Christianity,’ or lists of mass shootings by mentally ill individuals such as this one. If ever there was a massive gun murder by a white male that cannot be explained as an ‘individual act caused by mental illness,’ this was it.
- Details
- By Uncle Tom
- Politics & Opinion
Uncle Tom finds out about fund raising in the Gambia.
- Details
- By ZAM reporter
- Politics & Opinion
A ‘gay revolution’ in Africa. Very likely, states Kenyan writer Binyavanga Wainaina in Boldly Queer, African perspectives on same-sex sexualities and gender diversity. The book, published by Hivos, was launched in The Hague on Friday 5 June 2015. Mozambique has already joined the revolution. President Filipe Nyusi signed a new penal code decriminalizing homosexuality. Congratulations to Lambda, the activist group, who fought against anti-gay-legislation introduced in 1887 by the Portuguese colonial rulers.
- Details
- By ZAM reporter
- Politics & Opinion
Martin Bosma, MP for the extremist Dutch anti-immigration party PVV, has reinvented the idea of South Africa as an empty land at the time when the white settlers arrived. In his book Minderheid in eigen land (Minority in own country) he presents South Africa’s transition to democracy as a forecast for his doomsday scenario: the low lands' takeover by Muslims. In a fact check, Bram Vermeulen, correspondent for Dutch daily NRC Handelsblad, investigated Bosma’s 'empty land' claim. Find one of his sources here. His conclusion: not true.
- Details
- By ZAM reporter
- Politics & Opinion
ZAM congratulates Mikhail Subotzky (1981, South Africa) and Patrick Waterhouse (1981, UK) on winning the prestigious 2015 Deutsche Börse Photography Prize. A six year journey into Johannesburg's 54 stories landmark building Ponte City resulted in a book (Steidl Publishers) and exhibitions from Paris to Lubumbashi and from Edinburgh to Cape Town.
- Details
- By Uncle Tom
- Politics & Opinion
Uncle Tom takes issue with afrophobia.
- Details
- By Nomalanga Mkhize
- Politics & Opinion
For middle class people in South Africa to accuse the marginalised of shaming the ‘rainbow nation’ is adding insult to injury, says Rhodes historian Nomalanga Mkhize.
