SPECIAL FEATURES: ANALYSIS - The African Mirror

May

2024

Togo has adopted major constitutional changes to give parliament more power: how it will work

ON 25 March 2024, Togo adopted a new constitution that transforms its presidential system into a parliamentary one. Under this new system, parliament has the authority to elect the president of the republic. This major change will likely enable President Faure Gnassingbé, who has been in power since 2005, to extend his 19-year tenure by another term. This reform, adopted on first reading by MPs, sparked protests among opposition leaders who have denounced it as a constitutional coup. The law passed its second reading on 19 April. Koffi Amessou Adaba is a lecturer and researcher who has worked on the…

May

2024

By Hajooj Kuka

A mutual aid volunteer reflects on a year of war in Sudan

SPECIAL FEATURES: ANALYSIS

ONE year into a devastating war that has killed tens of thousands of people and displaced nearly nine million, there is one thing flourishing in Sudan: mutual aid. Since 15 April 2023 – when the Rapid Support Forces and the regular army began fighting each other – we have seen our dreams of a democratic, prosperous nation destroyed, and we have lived through a year of unrelenting atrocities and loss. Yet at the same time, millions of Sudanese have remained in war-torn areas outside the reach of international aid agencies, finding ways to support each other using local resources and diaspora…

May

2024

By NOAH TAMARKIN

South Africa’s Lemba people: how they view their Jewishness challenges Zionist ideas that identity is linked to one homeland

SPECIAL FEATURES: ANALYSIS

A man wearing a yarmulke stands on the edge of a hill, quietly taking in the landscape below as he considers his ancestors and their histories in this place. This isn’t Israel. It is Mapungubwe Hill, a Unesco World Heritage Site in the north of South Africa’s Limpopo province. The man in the yarmulke is one of around 100,000 Lemba people, Black Jews who live in South Africa and Zimbabwe. Lemba people have long held that they are Jews by descent. In the 1990s and early 2000s, scientists set out to determine whether this could be genetically substantiated. Those studies…

May

2024

By MAYA MISIKIR

Weighed down by war and drought, Tigray struggles to get back on its feet

SPECIAL FEATURES: ANALYSIS

SEVENTEEN months since the fighting stopped in Ethiopia’s northern Tigray region, people are still trying to rebuild what was deliberately destroyed – a mammoth task for a population and local government left destitute by the two-year conflict. Every facet of life in the region – from jobs to social services to security – has been impacted by the scorched-earth war, in which as many as 600,000 people may have been killed. It ended with an African Union-brokered peace agreement in November 2022, but the bill for reconstruction has been calculated at $20 billion. The climate has also taken its toll in Tigray. A drought…

Apr

2024

By JONNY STEINBERG

How the Mandela myth helped win the battle for democracy in South Africa

SPECIAL FEATURES: ANALYSIS

POLITICAL history scholar Jonny Steinberg’s 2023 book Winnie & Nelson: Portrait of a Marriage is a double biography of South Africa’s most famous political figures – Nelson Mandela and Winnie Madikizela Mandela – and their role in the country’s struggle for democracy. It’s also a book that shatters countless myths about the couple and the liberation struggle that have been formed in popular culture and even academic tellings of history. As South Africa commemorates 30 years of democracy, we asked Steinberg for his views on how and why these historical myths are formed. How did Winnie and Nelson become so…

Apr

2024

By The African Mirror

Sudan’s civil war is rooted in its historical favouritism of Arab and Islamic identity

SPECIAL FEATURES: ANALYSIS

THE current civil war in Sudan goes beyond a simple power struggle between two generals. It reflects a deep-rooted crisis within the country’s governing structure that’s been present since it gained independence from the British in 1956. Since independence, the Sudanese have experienced 35 coups and attempted coups, more than any other African country. In the country’s southern region a 56-year rebellion eventually led to the creation of South Sudan in 2011. A Darfurian uprising in 2003 was sparked by accusations that the central government was discriminating against the region’s non-Arab population. It led to ethnic killings and continues to…

Apr

2024

By NITA BHALLA and LIN TAYLOR

UK’s Rwanda plan: Which other nations send asylum seekers abroad?

SPECIAL FEATURES: ANALYSIS

THE British parliament has passed a divisive law to deport asylum seekers to Rwanda, with Prime Minister Rishi Sunak promising that flights will take off by July, but legal hurdles could yet hold up or delay the policy. The "Safety of Rwanda" bill aims to cut immigration by deterring migrants from arriving without permission, but refugee rights groups say it criminalises genuine asylum seekers, and Britain's Supreme Court ruled last year that the East African nation was not a safe country to send people. Sunak has invested huge political capital in the Rwanda scheme, promising that it will stop tens of thousands of people arriving without…

Apr

2024

By MICHAEL HOLDEN

What is UK’s plan to deport asylum seekers to Rwanda?

SPECIAL FEATURES: ANALYSIS

BRITISH Prime Minister Rishi Sunak promised to start sending asylum seekers to Rwanda within 10 to 12 weeks after parliament passed much-delayed legislation to facilitate the deportation of those arriving in Britain without permission. Last November, the Supreme Court declared the policy unlawful but Sunak says the new law overrides any legal concerns and will thus fulfil his pledge to stop people arriving across the Channel in small boats. Here are details about the plan and the migration issue: WHY IS IMMIGRATION SUCH AN ISSUE IN BRITAIN? Taking back control of Britain's borders and ending the free movement of people into the…

Apr

2024

By SIBONOKUHLE NDLOVU

Academics with disabilities: South African universities need an overhaul to make them genuinely inclusive

SPECIAL FEATURES: ANALYSIS, EDITORS CHOICE

VERY little research has been conducted about academics with disabilities working in South African universities. This means their stories, and the challenges they face in the daily demands of their jobs, are not often told. Sibonokuhle Ndlovu, who holds a PhD in education and lectures on the subject, explains what her study of academics with disabilities revealed. How many academics with disabilities are working in South Africa’s universities? We’re not sure. Statistics are hard to find, whether from individual institutions or the country’s education authorities. There’s also not been much research about academics with disabilities in the country. Government data…

Apr

2024

By SANDY AFRICA

South Africa’s security forces once brutally entrenched apartheid. It’s been a rocky road to reform

SPECIAL FEATURES: ANALYSIS

ONE of the important tasks that faced South Africa’s democratic government after 1994 was to reform the apartheid-era security apparatus. The African National Congress (ANC), which was voted into power, had a laudable vision in the 1990s for reforming the police, military and intelligence services. Determined that South Africans would never again be subject to the brutality of the security forces, it ensured that the core principles it stood for were written into the country’s democratic constitution. Putting the vision and principles into practice, however, has not been easy, and fraught with setbacks. Over time, the abuse of power, a…