THOUGHT LEADERSHIP - The African Mirror

May

11

2026

It’s hot at the top: Faye and Sonko open battle for Senegal’s soul – and its presidency

THOUGHT LEADERSHIP

WHEN Bassirou Diomaye Faye walked out of Rebeuss Prison on 24 March 2024, just hours before polls opened on the day that would make him the youngest president in Senegalese history, few could have imagined that within two years he and his liberator, political godfather and now Prime Minister Ousmane Sonko, would be locked in a contest that threatens to crack their shared revolution in two. On 8 May 2026, President Faye declined to sign into law electoral code amendments passed overwhelmingly by the ruling PASTEF-dominated National Assembly on 28 April - amendments crafted specifically to restore Sonko's eligibility to…

May

09

2026

By JOVIAL RANTAO

The Constitution’s reckoning: The man who built the law now faces its full force

THOUGHT LEADERSHIP

ON 8 May 1996, a young Cyril Ramaphosa stood before the Constitutional Assembly in Cape Town and called South Africa’s newly minted supreme law “our new nation’s birth certificate.” The apartheid securocrats, he noted with evident wonder, were sitting next to the people they had once labelled terrorists. The gallery was full. The country was alive with the sense of something irreversible and magnificent having just happened. Mandela watched in silence from the podium as the chamber erupted into song. Exactly thirty years later, on the same calendar date, Ramaphosa - now the President of the Republic, the highest officer…

May

07

2026

By MAHIR AL-AWAMI

SULTANA طانة Queen of Pain and Pride

THOUGHT LEADERSHIP

EDITOR'S NOTE: IN Arabic, Sultana means a woman of authority - a queen, a noble female ruler. The woman whose story follows was named Sultana by people who could not yet know the terrible regal weight the name would carry. She ruled nothing but the love of her children. She commanded nothing but her own endurance. And yet, in the geography of Libyan memory, she stands as tall as any sovereign who ever sat upon a throne. This narrative is told as a son's conversation with his mother - a conversation that has happened, in one form or another, in…

May

06

2026

By DR MATHEWS PHOSA

Reflections on Winnie Mandela, her legacy, and Netflix’s ‘The Trials of Winnie Mandela’

THOUGHT LEADERSHIP

WATCHING Netflix's 'The Trials of Winnie Mandela' has brought back a cascade of memories - some joyful, some painful, all deeply personal. As someone who stood beside Mama Winnie in her darkest hours, who witnessed her strength when others abandoned her, I feel compelled to share what the cameras cannot fully capture: the woman I knew. Not the icon that history has made her, not the caricature that media outlets have painted, but Mama Winnie - a real person of extraordinary contradictions, fierce love, and unwavering commitment to our people. The Netflix series does important work in ensuring her story…

May

06

2026

By NORMAN SEMPIJJA and MOUHAMMED NDIAYE

Mali’s armed groups fill a government vacuum – addressing this is key to ending the violence

THOUGHT LEADERSHIP

MALI has been in a state of political turmoil since 2012. That year saw a military coup as well as armed groups taking over the northern regions of the West African country. In the intervening years, efforts at establishing transitional governments have failed, culminating in the military junta dissolving and banning all political parties in May 2025. In addition, the country has seen waves of military interventions by outside players like France, the US, and, most recently, Russia. All have invested heavily in trying to contain the extremist threat in Mali. But groups linked to al-Qaeda and the Islamic State…

May

03

2026

By JOVIAL RANTAO

Grandma’s eyes and colours of the past

THOUGHT LEADERSHIP

THIS is a compelling narrative on how restoring faded photographs sent one Libyan journalist-photographer on an unexpected journey into the wounds of history - and the eyes of a grandmother he never stopped seeing.There is a photograph he cannot find. It does not exist - or if it ever did, it was lost to the same history that made it necessary. Yet Mahir al-Awami, journalist, photographer, and son of Libya, knows exactly what it would show: a woman with coloured eyes. Not brown. Not black. Something rarer - a warm, luminous hue that his family speaks of the way people…

May

02

2026

By PANDELANI NEFOLOVHODWE

A revolutionary who lived his convictions: Remembering Thivhilaeli Mutobvu

THOUGHT LEADERSHIP

I met Comrade Thivhilaeli Mutobvu during the trying times of the struggle to free black people from the yoke of white oppression, and I came to work with him in many ways. We both belonged to the Azanian People’s Organisation (AZAPO). We were committed cadres of the Black Consciousness Movement (BCM). During that period, AZAPO was engaged in implementing one of its fundamental pillars - the dismantling of all the then Bantustans, also called Homelands, which the Apartheid regime designated for what it termed the Bantu people. It is now history that, at the time of our meeting, Mutobvu and…

Apr

30

2026

By NARCISSE MARTIAL YÈDJI

Benin election: Wadagni’s landslide win raises questions about his legitimacy

THOUGHT LEADERSHIP

ROMUALD Wadagni won the 2026 presidential election in Benin with over 94% of the vote. Wadagni, 50, is a technocrat who became an influential finance minister under Patrice Talon from 2016 until his election. The Beninese political system is a pluralist democracy organised around a presidential system, with regular elections and political alternation. It is also characterised by a strict institutional framework governing electoral competition, particularly since recent reforms. The outcome raises questions about the current dynamics of Benin’s political system. How should the 2026 presidential results be interpreted in a context marked by reforms to the party system and…

Apr

29

2026

By ALLAN NGARI and LAETITIA BADER

Lack of principled African leadership, action in Sudan

THOUGHT LEADERSHIP

FOR three years, civilians in Sudan have borne the brunt of a conflict epitomized by widespread violations of human rights and international humanitarian law, often amounting to atrocity crimes. Once, such a conflict would have moved continental leaders into action. But three years in, concrete measures by African states and bodies to protect civilians and end impunity are still wilfully lacking. What began in April 2023 as a power struggle between the leaders of the Sudanese Armed Forces (SAF) and the Rapid Support Forces (RSF) has evolved into widespread abuses, generating the world’s largest humanitarian crisis, with more than 14 million…

Apr

28

2026

By JOVIAL RANTAO

KZN: the province that could break the ANC – and test democracy itself

THOUGHT LEADERSHIP

WHEN the Electoral Commission of South Africa dispatched its full complement of commissioners to KwaZulu-Natal for an intensive week of stakeholder consultations ending on 24 April, the gesture carried a weight far beyond administrative diligence. It was an admission - carefully worded but unmistakable - that South Africa's most politically combustible province stands at a crossroads that could define the character of the 2026 local government elections and, with it, the integrity of the country's democratic project. KwaZulu-Natal has never been an ordinary province. It is the birthplace of many ANC leaders, the historical heartland of the Inkatha Freedom Party,…