Southern Africa Archive

Despite the turbulence in South Africa’s domestic politics during the troubled presidency of Jacob Zuma, South Africa has continued to be viewed as the African continent’s natural leader, its principal conflict manager and its chief interlocutor with major external powers and international organizations. However, within the space of a week in late March and early April 2014, two separate yet related developments combined to bring this conventional wisdom into serious question for the first time. The first was on March 25, when the 2014 South African Defense Review—details of which were leaked to Reuters—highlighted a “critical state of decline” in […]

KIGALI, Rwanda—For a milestone year in Rwanda’s post-genocide history, 2014 began with an ugly start. In the early morning hours of Jan. 1, as revelers flooded Kigali’s nightspots, Patrick Karegeya lay half a continent away, dead in a Johannesburg hotel room. Once among Rwanda’s most powerful men, Karegeya had served for a decade as Rwanda’s head of external intelligence before falling out with the regime of President Paul Kagame. After spending time in prison, in 2007 he fled to South Africa, where he was granted asylum and put under state protection. But sometime on New Years Eve, in the upscale […]