THOUGHT LEADERSHIP - The African Mirror

Sep

02

2021

Diagnoses of doom mask denial about real problems facing South Africa

THOUGHT LEADERSHIP

TO understand South Africa today, we need to recognise that people can focus endlessly on a country’s problems but still live in a state of denial. STEVEN FRIEDMAN, Professor of Political Studies, University of Johannesburg Hand-wringing about problems which are said to spell the doom of South Africa’s negotiated democracy is a well-established custom. It began only months after the first election in which all adults could vote in 1994. It has become louder over the past decade and dominates the national debate, which is the preserve of the minority who enjoy access to media. Right now, violence in the…

Feb

03

2021

By The African Mirror

Results from Novavax vaccine trials in the UK and South Africa differ: why, and does it matter?

THOUGHT LEADERSHIP

To fast track the response to the COVID-19 pandemic, a broad range of candidate COVID-19 vaccines are being investigated. The results of clinical trials being run on some of them have started to be released. The Novavax vaccine trial is one of them. Phase 3 trial results from the UK and phase 2b results from South Africa were recently announced. Shabir Madhi was the lead researcher in the South African leg of the trial. The Conversation Africa’s Ina Skosana asked him to provide context. SHABIR A. MADHI, Professor of Vaccinology and Director of the SAMRC Vaccines and Infectious Diseases Analytical…

Feb

01

2021

By The African Mirror

Jacob Zuma’s defiance – in his own words

THOUGHT LEADERSHIP

JACOB ZUMA I have received an overwhelming number of messages of support from members of the African National Congress and the public at large following the recent extraordinary and unprecedented decision of the Constitutional Court where it effectively decided that I as an individual citizen, could no longer expect to have my basic constitutional rights protected and upheld by the country’s Constitution. With this groundswell of messages, I felt moved to publicly express solidarity with the sentiments and concerns raised with me about a clearly politicized segment of the judiciary that now heralds an imminent constitutional crisis in this country.…

Feb

01

2021

By The African Mirror

Neglected tropical diseases threaten a whole new generation, but it is not too late to avert disaster

THOUGHT LEADERSHIP

ANATOLE MANZI GROWING up in rural Rwanda, I thought that my constant abdominal pain was an inescapable condition of childhood. I was surrounded by my friends, all with distended stomachs, hair loss from malnutrition, chronic conjunctivitis, or worse. Without available treatments, parents would coach their children to endure the pain. Thirty years later, I visited my home village as a public health specialist overseeing health systems strengthening at Partners In Health, a leading global health organization. There, I met old friends suffering from blindness, and chronic physical and mental impairments. They were afflicted from advanced forms of the same Neglected…

Feb

04

2021

By The African Mirror

Presidents who subvert democracies they vowed to protect can hit a brick wall: ask Jacob Zuma

THOUGHT LEADERSHIP

IT can be tough when you are a former president in a democracy you have attempted to subvert, especially when that democracy comes back to bite you. Former South African president Jacob Zuma is finding this out the hard way. ROGER SOUTHALL, Professor of Sociology, University of the Witwatersrand Zuma is holed up in his expansive homestead in Nkandla, KwaZulu-Natal, since being ousted from the presidency in February 2018. His leadership of the governing African National Congress (ANC) ended with the election of his nemesis, Cyril Ramaphosa, in December 2017. Since then, Zuma (78) has spent his retirement engaged in…

Feb

09

2021

By The African Mirror

What it will take to produce vaccines in Nigeria: money’s just the first step

THOUGHT LEADERSHIP

The Nigerian government recently released N10 billion (about US$26 million) in support of the local production of COVID-19 vaccines. Wale Fatade, from The Conversation Africa, asked Daniel Oladimeji Oluwayelu, a professor of virology, for his views on this and how the country can get full benefits from the money. DANIEL OLADIMEJI OLUWAYELU, Professor of Veterinary Microbiology, University of Ibadan How do you see the federal government’s decision to give N10 billion to support local production of COVID-19 vaccines? I think the allocation of the funds to initiate local vaccine production is a step in the right direction, but I doubt…

Feb

06

2021

By The African Mirror

The many faces of Sibongile Khumalo

THOUGHT LEADERSHIP

GWEN ANSELL MUCH will be written about the music career of Sibongile Khumalo and many will elide her achievements into the single, limited category of “singer”. Singer she was, no doubt, and a magnificent one, with a voice that melded honey, smoke and crystalline waters into a cascade of captivating sound. She resisted, throughout her career, the genre envelopes into which critics tried to stuff her. She did not set out to be an “opera singer” or a “jazz singer” and did not appreciate media coverage that tried to confine her within one of those boxes and assess her work…

Aug

06

2021

By The African Mirror

How communists have shaped South Africa’s history over 100 years

THOUGHT LEADERSHIP

UNTIL recently, just living to a 100 was an achievement worth celebrating for itself. In England new centenarians receive a special card from their queen. Perhaps the same convention is maintained in South Africa and its Communist Party’s 300 000 or so members can expect a birthday message from South African President Cyril Ramaphosa on their centenary. Or maybe not. TOM LODGE, Emeritus Professor of Peace and Conflict Studies, University of Limerick In any case, they have more to celebrate than their party’s extreme old age, though under often tough conditions survival itself is an achievement. Next to the 109-year…

Aug

04

2021

By The African Mirror

Keep the politics out of scientific pursuit for COVID-19 origin

THOUGHT LEADERSHIP

ABBEY MAKOE LEADING political elites in South Africa have joined a chorus of global scientists by expressing public support for the People’s Republic of China’s efforts to keep politics out of the Covid-19 origin-tracing studies. The World Health Organisation’s (WHO) in a joint study with the Chinese health authorities launched a 34-member team of experts from around the world to investigate the actual origins of SARS-Cov-2. The study followed repeated unsubstantiated claims in some sections of the Western media that the Covid-19 virus first emerged through a leak in a Wuhan laboratory in China. In March this year, the joint…

Feb

12

2021

By The African Mirror

Child victim, soldier, war criminal: unpacking Dominic Ongwen’s journey

THOUGHT LEADERSHIP

DOMINIC Ongwen, a former Ugandan child soldier, has been convicted of war crimes by the International Criminal Court. Three judges found him guilty of 61 of 70 charges. These ranged from the war crime of the forced conscription of child soldiers to the crime against humanity of forced pregnancy. KJELL ANDERSON, Assistant professor and Director of the Master of Human Rights program, University of Manitoba The presiding judge, Bertram Schmitt, read aloud the names of dozens of his victims in a stark reminder of the human consequences of Ongwen’s acts. Ongwen was impassive as the verdict was read out, only…