SPECIAL FEATURES - The African Mirror

Mar

18

2026

War dividends: How Africa’s ports and skies are cashing in on the collapse of Middle East trade routes

SPECIAL FEATURES: ANALYSIS

WHEN US and Israeli warplanes struck Iranian military and nuclear installations on 28 February 2026 — killing Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei and triggering a cascade of Iranian missile and drone retaliation across the Gulf — the immediate read was one of pure catastrophe for global commerce. The world's most critical oil transit corridor, the Strait of Hormuz, through which roughly 20 percent of the world's daily petroleum supply normally flows, was effectively shut down. The world's busiest aviation interchange — the triangle of Dubai, Doha, and Abu Dhabi — went dark. Insurance underwriters refused coverage for Hormuz transits. Freight surcharges…

Mar

17

2026

By SULEMAN LAZARUS

Human traffickers are using football dreams to lure young Ghanaian men to Nigeria – how to stop it

SPECIAL FEATURES: ANALYSIS

FOR a young man growing up in Ghana or Nigeria, few dreams burn brighter than becoming a professional footballer. Icons like Michael Essien (Ghana), Jay-Jay Okocha (Nigeria) and Nwankwo Kanu (Nigeria) didn’t just win trophies. They escaped poverty, provided for their families, and earned the respect of entire communities. Football, in much of West Africa, isn’t just a sport. It is a promise. This promise has led to an elaborate trafficking scheme that claims many young, African victims every year. Victims are lured with promises of football trials, academy placements or opportunities in Europe, only to end up in exploitative…

Mar

16

2026

By The African Mirror

How a former Police sergeant allegedly ran an eleven-person murder-for-insurance empire

SPECIAL FEATURES: ANALYSIS

THE body of a disabled man found floating in a dam — a man who could not have walked there on his own — is reportedly what finally cracked open one of the most disturbing criminal conspiracies in post-apartheid South Africa. That grim discovery in 2024 led investigators to former South African Police Service (SAPS) sergeant Rachel Raesetsa Shokane-Kutumela, 43, who was arrested while in uniform at Senwabarwana Police Station in October of that year. What would unravel over the following 18 months is an alleged murder-for-insurance scheme so methodical, so intimate, and so relentless that police would ultimately describe…

Mar

13

2026

By The African Mirror

No kiss left unpunished

SPECIAL FEATURES: ANALYSIS

ON the morning of 18 February, two women in their early twenties - Wendy Faith, 22, a dancer who performs under the name Torrero Bae, and Alesi Diana Denise, 21 - were arrested in Arua City, a provincial capital in Uganda's northwestern West Nile region. The charge: kissing. Their neighbours had been watching. Someone had a camera. The police were called. That simple, intimate act - a kiss between two young women - now carries the weight of Uganda's Anti-Homosexuality Act of 2023, a law that prescribes life imprisonment for consensual same-sex conduct and reserves the death penalty for what…

Mar

11

2026

By The African Mirror

Volvo’s 755km electric giant lands in South Africa – and it wants to rewrite the rules

MOTORING

SWEDEN has drawn a long line in the sand. Volvo Car South Africa has officially launched the ES90 - its most technologically formidable electric vehicle to date - into a local market still wrestling with charging infrastructure, range anxiety and the stubborn allure of German diesel estates. If the numbers hold up in the real world, those anxieties may be about to look very last decade. Priced from R1,590,000 and available in South African dealerships from today, the ES90 enters the premium electric sedan fray with a claimed WLTP range of 755 kilometres on a single charge - a figure…

Mar

11

2026

By The African Mirror

From the assembly line to the showroom floor: How Two brands are putting women in the driver’s seat

MOTORING NEWS

LET us begin with a confession: the South African automotive industry has, for most of its existence, treated women approximately as it has treated GPS navigation -- as a nice-to-have that nobody quite trusted until they absolutely needed it. For decades, the grease-stained gospel of the workshop held that this was man's work: heavy, technical, loud, and emphatically not for the ladies. Then International Women's Day 2026 arrived, and two of South Africa's most prominent motor brands -- Hyundai Automotive South Africa and Tata Motors SA -- stepped forward to politely, enthusiastically, and in one case quite movingly, announce that…

Mar

12

2026

By ROSE MIYONGA

Mau Mau: how Kenya’s history of colonial violence speaks through living bodies and graves

SPECIAL FEATURES: ANALYSIS

BETWEEN 1952 and 1963, Kenya experienced one of the most violent chapters in its modern history. The Mau Mau uprising, rooted in land dispossession and political repression under British colonial rule, escalated into a brutal counterinsurgency war. An estimated 50,000 Kenyans died during the violent conflict between Mau Mau guerrillas and British forces, and from disease and starvation. Torture, sexual violence and forced detention were widespread. Over a million people were displaced into villages and detention camps in the 1950s. Many victims of the uprising were buried in unmarked mass graves. Others survived, but were permanently scarred. As Britain prepared…

Mar

11

2026

By BRENDON J. CANNON

Gulf attention is turning inward: why the Iran war could destabilise the Horn of Africa

SPECIAL FEATURES: ANALYSIS

GULF states have become increasingly prominent in the squabbles, civil wars and inter-country tensions in the Horn of Africa over the past decade. The countries in this region include Sudan, Ethiopia, Eritrea, Somaliland, Somalia and Djibouti. As a result, the US-Israel war on Iran matters for the Horn, where Gulf money, Gulf diplomacy and Gulf defence equipment have become part of the operating environment of conflict and rivalry. For over a decade, I have researched the interactions of sub-Saharan Africa with Arab Gulf states, as well as Turkey, Japan, China and others. In my view, Gulf states may scale back…

Mar

06

2026

By TIMOTHY CLACK and SHADRECK CHIRIKURE

Colonialism in Africa: archaeology offers a deeper view

SPECIAL FEATURES: ANALYSIS

COLONIALISM has been a central part of history around the world, differing only in form over time and space. After all, whenever people have moved from one place to another, they have colonised spaces and other people or forms of life. In Africa, colonialism has mostly been studied as something imposed from outside, for example, from Europe in the 19th and 20th centuries. A recent special issue of the journal Azania sought to address this. Scholars looked at the topic from an angle that’s so far been neglected – the archaeology and history of colonialism from within Africa. We introduced…

Mar

05

2026

By ANDRÉ WESSELS

Warships as diplomats: how the South African Navy is tasked with building ties with other nations

SPECIAL FEATURES: ANALYSIS

A naval exercise off the South African coast in January 2026, dubbed Will for Peace and involving the warships of South Africa, China, Russia, the United Arab Emirates (UAE) and Iran, elicited international and domestic controversy. It also contributed to a further souring of relations between South Africa and the US. Under pressure at home, South Africa’s defence ministry appointed a board of inquiry to investigate whether an instruction by President Cyril Ramaphosa not to involve Iran had been defied. The exercise and its controversies have placed the spotlight on the South African Navy’s diplomatic role. André Wessels, who has…