By Discent Bajila In 2006, Professor Jonathan Nathaniel Moyo wrote, “That Mugabe must go is thus no longer a dismissible opposition slogan but a strategic necessity that desperately needs urgent legal and constitutional action by Mugabe himself.” Five years down the line, political events might have connived with each other and thrown the learned Mlevu […]
Zimbabwe
Posted inGeneral
The ins and outs of same-sex marriages in Zimbabwe and the US
By Anneke Meerkotter The first thing you are confronted with when you walk into the service section of the South African embassy in Harare is a South African department of home affairs poster on the process to register civil unions, including same-sex marriages. Why is this interesting? Because Zimbabwe’s first draft constitution released last week […]
Posted inNews/Politics
Zimbabwe: The high costs paid for ‘normality’
In photography, time-lapse exposures are a useful mechanism to make imperceptible changes unreel with new clarity before the eye. Similarly, for a journalist, a series of sequential exposures to a situation can make gradual social changes suddenly obvious in a way that microscopic study does not. After a long absence from Zimbabwe, where I used […]
Posted inGeneral, News/Politics
South Africa, the Rome Statute, Zimbabwe and torture
By Clare Ballard “Law is nothing unless close behind it stands a warm, living public opinion.” – Wendell Phillips So accustomed have we become to reports of atrocities in war-ravaged, post colonial Africa that I believe we’d be forgiven for associating the term ‘impunity’ with the perpetrators of these crimes, even though the nature of […]
Posted inNews/Politics
Malema is out but his message is the in thing
I was at Mbare township’s netball complex on Saturday April 3 2010 for ANC Youth League president Julius Malema’s rally. Mbare is Zimbabwe’s oldest high-density suburb and is also one of the areas that suffered tremendously from the Robert Mugabe regime’s shameful Operation Murambatsvina or Operation Get Rid of Filth, which left thousands of Zimbabweans […]
Posted inGeneral, News/Politics
Protection of sources: M&G is fighting solo
By Akanyang Merementsi From 2009, the Mail & Guardian has revealed shocking details of corruption in tenders awarded to Bosasa by the department of correctional services. This was also at the same time the company was investigated for other corruption-related activities dating back to 2004/2005. This week, the newspaper has been fighting a court battle […]
Posted inNews/Politics
Elections 2014 — last chance to save SA?
When the Zimbabwean parliament voted overwhelming in August 2005 to endorse constitutional amendments that would further restrict private property rights and allow the government to deny passports to its critics, exultant Zanu-PF MPs danced and cheered in the aisles. Several apparently even did cartwheels. Similar displays of vindictive glee had reportedly taken place previous, such […]
Posted inNews/Politics
Will the real pharaoh please stand up
The resignation of Egypt’s cabinet this week shows the paralysing complexities surrounding the process of transition to democracy in post-revolution societies in the Arab world. Only in Tunisia, the country that ushered in this huge wave of change in North Africa, has the transition to democracy been relatively smooth, albeit accompanied by some challenges. It’s […]
Posted inNews/Politics
Is SA the next Zimbabwe?
The simple answer is, no. I’ve attempted to answer this question once before, in 2009. My argument at the time was that South Africa had a strong Constitution, which ensured the country stayed on democratic course. Unlike Zimbabwe, post-apartheid South Africa has endeavoured to consolidate democracy by empowering independent institutions such as the judiciary. Soon […]