THOUGHT LEADERSHIP - The African Mirror

Mar

04

2026

South Sudan has never had an election to hand over presidential power: so what are the rules of succession?

THOUGHT LEADERSHIP

South Sudan has not held an election since it gained independence 15 years ago, and progress towards a new constitution has stalled. Election dates have been set and postponed at least three times. A new date has been set for December 2026, but it’s unclear whether the poll will take place. If it does, it will be the first electoral test for President Salva Kiir, who has been in power since 2011. It raises the question of what legal guardrails exist for a smooth transition to new leadership outside an election. Jan Pospisil, who has studied the country’s politics and…

Mar

03

2026

By JOVIAL RANTAO

The world’s moral compass has broken: one rule for Russia, another for America and Israel

THOUGHT LEADERSHIP

THERE is a moment in every civilisation's history when the gap between stated values and actual behaviour becomes so grotesque, so undeniable, that silence itself becomes complicity. We are living in that moment right now. And the world's failure to act consistently is not merely embarrassing - it is civilizationally catastrophic. Let us be brutally clear about what happened when Russia invaded Ukraine. The response was swift, coordinated, and in many ways, genuinely impressive. Sanctions were imposed within days. Roman Abramovich was forced to sell the Chelsea Football Club. Russian oligarchs watched their superyachts get seized in harbours from Barcelona…

Mar

02

2026

By KRISTOF TITECA

Joseph Kony: how a Ugandan war criminal and his soldiers have evaded capture and endured for decades

THOUGHT LEADERSHIP

JOSEPH Kony, the leader of the Lord’s Resistance Army (LRA), remains at large two decades after the International Criminal Court issued its first arrest warrants against him and four of his commanders. The LRA emerged nearly 40 years ago. Between 1987 and 2006, northern Uganda’s civilians were caught between LRA brutality – massacres and mass abductions – and a government counterinsurgency. This forced nearly two million people into camps for internally displaced people. The LRA framed its struggle as resistance to President Yoweri Museveni and the sidelining of the Acholi, the dominant ethnic group in northern Uganda. However, over time,…

Feb

28

2026

By JOVIAL RANTAO

TRIBUTE: Katlego Sechaba Matsila – A citizen of the world

THOUGHT LEADERSHIP

THERE are lives that are measured not in years, but in the depth of their reach - in the countries touched, the hearts moved, the injustices confronted, the conversations that linger long after the voice has fallen silent. Katlego Sechaba Matsila lived such a life. He came into this world on the 2nd of December 1982 in Gaborone, Botswana - a child of exile, a child of resistance, a child born into a story already larger than himself. His parents, Francisca and Jerry Matjila, had given everything to the struggle against one of the most brutal systems of racial oppression…

Feb

26

2026

By JOVIAL RANTAO

The Quiet Giant: A Tribute to Joe Latakgomo

THOUGHT LEADERSHIP

THERE is a particular kind of person who walks into a room and does not immediately demand that the room rearrange itself around them. They listen before they speak. They ask questions they do not already know the answer to. They give credit freely and absorb blame quietly. Joe Latakgomo was that person. And in a profession that can seduce even the most grounded souls into self-importance, he remained - to the very end - a man of rare and quiet power. He was born in Pretoria on 13 January 1948, the same year the apartheid government codified racism into…

Feb

24

2026

By GENEVIEVE SEKUMBO

Young Tanzanians are fed up with not getting a slice of the economic action – research

THOUGHT LEADERSHIP

WHEN young Tanzanians poured into the streets on 29 October 2025, most observers saw an election protest. Protests in Dar es Salaam, Arusha, Mwanza and other cities were met with live ammunition and internet blackouts. There were hundreds of casualties, according to human rights organisations. My research suggests a deeper dynamic: a generation asserting its right to become adults. As a PhD candidate, I set out in 2020 to understand how Tanzania’s natural gas industry was shaping young people’s transitions to adulthood. My research examined two interconnected questions. How does the gas industry shape youth transitions and experiences in Mtwara,…

Feb

23

2026

By YOHANNES GEDAMU

Ethiopia and Eritrea are on edge again: what’s behind the growing risk of war

THOUGHT LEADERSHIP

The histories of Eritrea and Ethiopia have long been closely intertwined. Once part of Ethiopia, Eritrea launched an armed struggle for independence in 1961 that resulted in its secession in 1993 following a referendum. But since Eritrea’s independence, relations between the two countries have evolved through many ups and downs, which include a devastating war from 1998 to 2000, followed by two decades of mutual isolation. The two countries appeared to have healed their broken relations when Eritrea’s Isaias Afwerki accepted the newly appointed Ethiopian prime minister Abiy Ahmed’s overtures for peace in 2018. Unfortunately, by early 2026, that started…

Feb

21

2026

By MUSHAGA AKILI

Fear and survival: Reflections on a year under M23 rule in Goma

THOUGHT LEADERSHIP

A few weeks ago, I travelled to a cemetery in Goma where hundreds of people had been buried in mass graves after the M23 rebel group seized the city early last year. I was hoping to find people who could help me mark the anniversary of the invasion. A few metres from the graves, I met Pascal, a day labourer. He said he passes the cemetery twice daily on his way to and from the city centre. I asked if he could help me find families with loved ones buried inside. What followed was an emotional outpouring. Pascal spoke about…

Feb

20

2026

By LUISA T. SCHNEIDER

Sierra Leone’s harsh new laws to protect women and girls are causing harm in the wrong places

THOUGHT LEADERSHIP

IN the decades after Sierra Leone’s civil war (1991-2002), there was pressure on the West African country to demonstrate progress on gender equality. Laws were passed to fight domestic violence, rape and teen pregnancy. But drawing on colonial legal models, the reforms don’t always match social realities and, in many cases, are harming young people from poor communities. Punishment is being made more important than resolution or education. Luisa T. Schneider is an anthropologist who has spent a decade researching the subject. We asked her about her open source book Love and Violence in Sierra Leone: Mediating Intimacy after Conflict.…

Feb

18

2026

By JOVIAL RANTAO

“I AM SOMEBODY”: Reverend Jesse Jackson, was Africa’s champion from across the waters

THOUGHT LEADERSHIP

THE thunder has gone silent. The rainbow warrior has laid down his banner. Reverend Jesse Louis Jackson Sr., who crossed into the ancestors on Tuesday at age 84, was not merely an American civil rights leader - he was a son of Africa who never forgot where his people came from, a freedom fighter who made the struggles of this continent his own. When Nelson Mandela walked out of Victor Verster Prison on that glorious February day in 1990, among the first faces he saw waiting in Cape Town was Jesse Jackson's. The two men embraced as brothers reunited after…