There was, once, an investment, south of Durban in KwaZulu Natal, South Africa. A local factory wanted to produce soap and perfumes. Normally, they would be looking to recruit some workers from the townships in the area, but this time it was different. Some men with knives and spears said they were workers, but also they said they were the neighbourhood committee. They were the people. And they wanted the people’s share of the project. Then there was another committee. And another one. Among the...
There was, once, an investment, south of Durban in KwaZulu Natal, South Africa. A local factory wanted to produce soap and perfumes. Normally, they would...
One of the guests at ZAM’s recently screened The Kleptocracy Project livecast on Thursday 24 June, the softly spoken Ivan Pillay, impressed many in the audience with his in depth understanding of dysfunctional systems in African governance and how to fix them. If you want to get to know him better, you may be interested in the recently published book The Unlikely Mr Rogue in which he is a central character. The book narrates Pillay’s personal history from the time he was involved in the armed...
One of the guests at ZAM’s recently screened The Kleptocracy Project livecast on Thursday 24 June, the softly spoken Ivan Pillay, impressed many in the...
Progressive South Africans fighting for justice are celebrating the Constitutional Court’s decision on Tuesday 29 June to sentence former president, Jacob Zuma to fifteen months in jail. The verdict for contempt of court was issued because Zuma failed to comply with a direct order by the same Constitutional Court to appear before the country’s Judicial Commission of Enquiry into State Capture that investigates ‘allegations of state capture, corruption, fraud and other allegations in the public...
Progressive South Africans fighting for justice are celebrating the Constitutional Court’s decision on Tuesday 29 June to sentence former president,...
Over the past few years the Rwandan Supreme Court seating as the Constitutional Court has established itself as a reliable force in considering challenges to unconstitutional laws. That’s why public interest petitions have arisen. In 2018, there was a petition about defamation and the Supreme Court largely ruled in favor of rights to expression. In response the president of Rwanda called for the repeal of the article that protected his office from defamation. The parliament proceeded to amend the...
Over the past few years the Rwandan Supreme Court seating as the Constitutional Court has established itself as a reliable force in considering...
The Nigerian Special Anti-Robbery Squad (SARS) has a frightening history of brutality, corruption and even killings. SARS officers have been alleged to profile young Nigerians, mostly males, based on fashion choices, tattoos and hairstyles. They were also known to mount illegal road blocks, conduct unwarranted checks and searches, arrest and detain without warrant or trial, rape women, and extort young male Nigerians for driving exotic vehicles and using laptops and iPhones . Nigerians have shared...
The Nigerian Special Anti-Robbery Squad (SARS) has a frightening history of brutality, corruption and even killings. SARS officers have been alleged to...
How Africa’s ‘new breed’ leaders have become the masters of information warfare. With weeks to go until the Ugandan presidential election on January 14, 2021, Ugandan readers of The Elephant, an online platform published in Nairobi, Kenya, suddenly could not access its site. Typically, at first, they presumed, the site was down, or was experiencing some normal malfunctions associated with the heavy use of such a platform. So, they really were not duly concerned, they knew the site managers would no...
How Africa’s ‘new breed’ leaders have become the masters of information warfare. With weeks to go until the Ugandan presidential election on January 14,...
Despite having to flee after the state raided their offices, members of LGBT+ Rights Ghana vow to continue to work for legal recognition in a country pushing for even more repressive laws. More than two months after fleeing “unprecedented” threats of violence, members of the queer rights organisation LGBT+ Rights Ghana are still in hiding. “It is very challenging. It takes a lot of toll,” says Alex Kofi Donkor, founder and director of the organisation. “The experiences of the past weeks haven’t...
Despite having to flee after the state raided their offices, members of LGBT+ Rights Ghana vow to continue to work for legal recognition in a country...
An official UK report on racism is ‘consistent with the radical historical amnesia and vicious revisionism of Caribbean and African history by the British far right’. It was only when I settled in the United Kingdom that I realised how very different it was to the Netherlands. The genuine fabric of British society had eluded me during the occasional holiday. Both countries qualify as European yet the UK seemed to mirror the United States, its raw and undiluted capitalism, a privatised public...
An official UK report on racism is ‘consistent with the radical historical amnesia and vicious revisionism of Caribbean and African history by the...
On Monday February 22, 2021, the high-profile Italian ambassador to the Democratic Republic of Congo, Luca Attanasio, was kidnapped on the outskirts of Virunga National Park and assassinated. What happened and who’s behind this heinous crime? To answer this question, let us first analyse the crime scene. Luca Attanasio and his companions, two other Italians and a Congolese, were murdered a little more than 10 km north of Goma, in the area commonly known as the ‘Three Antennas’ near the border...
On Monday February 22, 2021, the high-profile Italian ambassador to the Democratic Republic of Congo, Luca Attanasio, was kidnapped on the outskirts of...
Superstition remains because there is some racial undertone. This question has become necessary following reported cases of attacks and killings linked to witchcraft and muti beliefs in South Africa. In pre-apartheid and post-apartheid South Africa, these superstitious-based abuses have been perpetrated. A lot is missing in the way South Africans have addressed this problem. It has become necessary to explore how these dark and destructive phenomena could be eradicated going forward. Let us take a...
Superstition remains because there is some racial undertone. This question has become necessary following reported cases of attacks and killings linked...
Billions of dollars disappear through cartel schemes. In 2000, Zimbabwe was the breadbasket of Africa, with mass exports of tobacco and food to other African countries and to the world. Now, Zimbabwe is a major importer of food from Western countries, with more than 60 percent of its population battling food insecurity and rapidly approaching man-made starvation. This nationwide poverty is the result of a variety of factors, including the country’s turbulent political history, underqualified...
Billions of dollars disappear through cartel schemes. In 2000, Zimbabwe was the breadbasket of Africa, with mass exports of tobacco and food to other...
In the Mozambican province wracked by a violent insurgency, the convenient labelling of those rising up against the predatory elite paints a picture that is far from reality. When the uprising started in Cabo Delgado, Mozambique’s northernmost province, in 2017, the insurgents used the only weapons they had: their machetes. And they cut off the heads of local elites whom they accused of being allied to the leaders of the ruling Mozambique Liberation Front (Frelimo) in stealing the mineral wealth....
In the Mozambican province wracked by a violent insurgency, the convenient labelling of those rising up against the predatory elite paints a picture that...
Late president John Magafuli never was the anti-corruption saviour international media claimed. Tanzania, a country that produced Julius Nyerere, is a country tottering on the precipice of a pandemic catastrophe. The philosopher-president ruled for 23 years and put the nation on the international map as a frontline state that stood up to Apartheid South Africa and helped liberate modern Uganda by ridding it of Idi Amin. With the abrupt death of its populist president John Magufuli on March 17,...
Late president John Magafuli never was the anti-corruption saviour international media claimed. Tanzania, a country that produced Julius Nyerere, is a...
For more than three decades, ZAM's Investigations Editor Evelyn Groenink researched the murder of Paris ANC representative Dulcie September in 1988. The complex backgrounds of this gruesome act presented in Groenink's book Incorruptible were long ignored. Until now. Before she left for exile in 1973, Dulcie September was a school teacher. A serious one. She cared about her kids, cared so much that one of the reasons she left was that she had been banned from ever teaching in South Africa again. One...
For more than three decades, ZAM's Investigations Editor Evelyn Groenink researched the murder of Paris ANC representative Dulcie September in 1988. The...
Police cabs donated by the Dutch government were identified at the scenes of multiple instances of brutality. In July 2020, the BBC reported that security forces in Uganda may be more dangerous than coronavirus, with coronavirus restrictions in Uganda providing a license for the arbitrary arrests of civilians, journalists and members of the BTQ community. This violence escalated leading up to and in the wake of the elections in January of this year, with reports of human rights violations and...
Police cabs donated by the Dutch government were identified at the scenes of multiple instances of brutality. In July 2020, the BBC reported that...
The relationship between farmers and herders has grown increasingly tense amid contestations over land, crop damage, cattle stealing, and violence. Although the Boko Haram insurgency is the most frequently reported security threat, the farmer-herder conflict is now regarded as the most pressing security issue in Nigeria, causing significantly more casualties than Boko Haram and displacing hundreds of thousands of people. The government’s response has received wide criticism, with many claiming they...
The relationship between farmers and herders has grown increasingly tense amid contestations over land, crop damage, cattle stealing, and violence....
When Catherine Ndlovu looks at Adolph Rikhotso something seems to break. The impenetrable walls she has faced, the closed doors, the unreturned phone calls, made until your airtime runs out, the ‘come-back-later’s’. For months she has walked around with a manila file that contains the details of the death of her son: from the letter her father wrote to the police, to the catering costs for the funeral and the cold words from the death certificate: unnatural causes. Adolph Rikhotso is the policeman...
When Catherine Ndlovu looks at Adolph Rikhotso something seems to break. The impenetrable walls she has faced, the closed doors, the unreturned phone...
‘Why must I know about land’, says Mr Mahlangu, who heads the Agriculture Department’s Waterberg district in Limpopo. ‘Land Affairs knows about land. Whether it’s for building or residential or agriculture. Not us’. I have asked Mr Mahlangu if he is not concerned about the wasted land in his district. There used to be oranges here, after all, and lychees, and watermelons. I describe Groenvlei, midway on Modimolle Road, with its sick chickens, where Tsepo Ndlovu tried to make a living, but also...
‘Why must I know about land’, says Mr Mahlangu, who heads the Agriculture Department’s Waterberg district in Limpopo. ‘Land Affairs knows about land....
Professor Andrew MacLeod is using DNA technology to track down, and hopefully prosecute, foreign aid workers who have sexually abused women and girls in Central and West Africa. ‘Just call me Andrew, no need to call me Prof’. Andrew MacLeod is quick to decline any semblance of formality, when the vestiges of growing up in an African household ensure I call him ‘Professor’ three times in as many minutes into our interview. The man currently defying the ten-hour time difference between Berlin and...
Professor Andrew MacLeod is using DNA technology to track down, and hopefully prosecute, foreign aid workers who have sexually abused women and girls in...
In an urgent call to South African president Cyril Ramaphosa, Artscape CEO Marlene le Roux asks to assist the disabled community in avoiding the Coronavirus. The crisis, Le Roux writes in an open letter, has a devastating impact on the most vulnerable communities in the country, such as the youth and persons with disabilities. “It is incredibly important that as a nation we continue to reach out to these vulnerable persons who have little or no access to services and to provide them effectively...
In an urgent call to South African president Cyril Ramaphosa, Artscape CEO Marlene le Roux asks to assist the disabled community in avoiding the...
The South African Revenue Services (SARS) was probably the greatest success story of the country’s post-Apartheid era. Financial targets were exceeded year after year. SARS became the well from which programs aimed at closing the gap between rich and poor could tap: access to water and electricity, housing, the world's largest rollout of ARVs to people with HIV. Led by a team of former freedom fighters, the service also fought against corruption and abuse of power. The decisiveness with which SARS...
The South African Revenue Services (SARS) was probably the greatest success story of the country’s post-Apartheid era. Financial targets were exceeded...
