THOUGHT LEADERSHIP - The African Mirror

May

2021

When standing in the dock is more important than a conviction

SOUTH Africa has had several historic moments in her 27 years of democracy. However, as these historic moments go, the moment former president Jacob Zuma stood up in the dock in the high court in Pietermaritzburg and pleaded, deserves a special place. Dressed in a blue three-piece suit and a red tie, stood up, removed his Covid-19 mask, looked at Judge Piet Koen and said: “I plead not guilty.” With those words, Zuma marked an important milestone, once sending a message to South Africans that his trial, delayed for over 17 years, is now officially underway. This moment also sent…

Jun

2021

By The African Mirror

Africa’s forgotten crisis

THOUGHT LEADERSHIP

YASMINE SHERIF A few weeks ago, I travelled with the UN High Commissioner for Refugees Filippo Grandi to the Modale refugee site in the Nord-Ubangi province of the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC). What we witnessed there was a profound humanitarian crisis that has left 4.7 million children and youth in need of urgent, life-saving, life-changing educational support. Yasmine Sherif Here on the frontlines of violence, forced displacement, climate change-induced disasters, and COVID-19, an entire generation of children are at risk of being left so far behind they will never catch up. Fleeing the chaos and insecurity connected with last year’s…

May

2021

By The African Mirror

Abubakar Shekau: battle for supremacy among Islamist groups bodes ill for the Sahel

THOUGHT LEADERSHIP

THE Nigerian military says it is investigating claims that the Boko Haram leader Abubakar Shekau is dead. His death has not been independently confirmed. It is also not the first time a claim like this has been made. The reports have nevertheless raised questions about who has the upper hand in the region – Boko Haram or the breakaway Islamic State West Africa Province. Adejuwon Soyinka, The Conversation’s West Africa regional editor, asked Folahanmi Aina, an expert on Boko Haram and security in the Lake Chad Basin region, to analyse the security situation. FOLAHANMI AINA, Doctoral Candidate in Leadership Studies,…

May

2021

By The African Mirror

‘Today it feels good to be an African’

THOUGHT LEADERSHIP

THABO MBEKI I am an African. I owe my being to the hills and the valleys, the mountains and the glades, the rivers, the deserts, the trees, the flowers, the seas and the ever-changing seasons that define the face of our native land. My body has frozen in our frosts and in our latter day snows. It has thawed in the warmth of our sunshine and melted in the heat of the midday sun. The crack and the rumble of the summer thunders, lashed by startling lightening, have been a cause both of trembling and of hope. The fragrances of…

May

2021

By The African Mirror

Happy Africa Day to all of you

THOUGHT LEADERSHIP

CYRIL RAMAPHOSA LAST week, the media around the world carried heart-rending images of a young boy adrift off the coast of the Spanish enclave of Ceuta. He was clinging to a makeshift buoy made of plastic bottles and desperately trying to make it to shore. Over the years we have become accustomed to seeing images of African men, women and children crammed into boats and makeshift rafts trying to reach Europe. According to relief organisations more than 20,000 people have lost their lives trying to cross the Mediterranean since 2014. As we observe Africa Day tomorrow, these tragic stories remind…

May

2021

By The African Mirror

How can we ensure financial investments flow to Black and minority communities?

THOUGHT LEADERSHIP

YVONNE FIELD ON the 25th May 2020 a video was posted of George Floyd online, that went viral across the world. This video, followed by many, many more: gave us nowhere else left to look, but at the truth. It exposed something latent in the entire fabric of the West. The topic of race has long been denied, avoided, rebuked, refuted, dismissed, eliminated, repressed, invalidated and silenced. This truth, triggered a global re-traumatisation of Black people everywhere. In May 2020, the deepest parts of Black people’s personal trauma went viral. As trauma became in the hands and devices of everyone,…

May

2021

By The African Mirror

Genocide in Ethiopia? Why answering the question will be a challenge

THOUGHT LEADERSHIP

THE head of Ethiopia’s Orthodox Church, Abune Mathias, recently condemned the ongoing armed conflict in Ethiopia’s Tigray region and the suffering it’s causing the civilian population. In a video message, he was seen saying “genocide is being committed now”. FIREW TIBA, Senior Lecturer, Deakin University Abune Mathias may be the highest-profile figure to label the alleged criminal acts against Tigrayans as genocide, but he’s not the first. In January, the leader of the Tigray People’s Liberation Front and former president of Tigray – Debretsion Gebremichael – accused the Ethiopian and Eritrean forces of waging a “devastating and genocidal war” in…

May

2021

By The African Mirror

Anger over slow progress, size of rewards at Nigeria’s police brutality hearings

THOUGHT LEADERSHIP

ALEXIS AKWAGYIRAM NDUKWE Ekekwe was furious when he heard how much compensation a judicial panel had awarded him after finding that members of an elite Nigerian police unit tortured him in custody following a raid on his phone accessories shop: 7,500,000 naira ($18,000). The night after his arrest, he said, officers took him back to the store and pushed him from a second floor balcony, leaving him paralysed from the waist down and struggling to make ends meet. "I sold my land, all my property, my goods!" he shouted. During the hearings, the officer who led the operation disputed Ekekwe's…

May

2021

By The African Mirror

South Africa stands with Palestine – Ramaphosa

THOUGHT LEADERSHIP

CYRIL RAMAPHOSA OUR experience with the democratic transition is a lesson about the power of empathy, negotiation and compromise. The escalating situation in Israel and Palestine affirms once more what we South Africans know too well, that intractable conflicts can only be solved through peaceful negotiation. It also demonstrates that unless the root causes of a conflict are addressed, in this case, the illegal occupation by Israel of Palestinian land and the denial of the Palestinian people’s right to self-determination, there will never be peace. The latest violence was sparked by an Israeli court decision to evict a group of…

May

2021

By The African Mirror

The UN’s Guterres, an incumbent with strong backing by Europe, is bound to win another term

THOUGHT LEADERSHIP

BARBARA CROSSETTE IT was all over in one crucial week. Barring an unforeseen hitch, António Guterres is the clear winner of a second, five-year term as secretary-general of the United Nations, beginning on Jan.1, 2022. This was not a surprise: he had no major competition and the process moved faster than expected. A three-hour question-and-answer session with UN diplomats from around the world in the General Assembly on May 7 appeared to support a growing sense internationally that the Security Council may decide by late June or July, three months before the normal deadline for a candidacy to go to the General Assembly for…