15 September 2013 Rape is an African Problem By Gwynne Dyer Last May, with considerable trepidation, I wrote an article about what seemed to be extraordinarily high rates of rape in Africa. The original data came from a study by South Africa’s Medical Research Council in 2009 which found that more than a quarter of […]
13 June 2013 Mandela’s Legacy By Gwynne Dyer As I write this Nelson Mandela is still with us. He may even still be living at the end of this year. But this is his fourth hospitalisation in six months, and the prognosis for 94-year-old men with persistent lung infections is not good. How will South
22 May 2013 An African Iceberg? By Gwynne Dyer Keeping a file of random clippings is an old-fashioned thing to do, but sometimes it offers you unexpected connections. Sometimes it’s a connection that you don’t even want to see. But there it is, so what are you going to do about it? In June, 2009,
20 August 2012 South Africa: The Politics of Massacre By Gwynne Dyer Forty-eight hours after South African police killed 34 striking miners last Thursday (16 August), Julius Malema showed up at the Lonmin platinum mine north of Johannesburg to assign the blame. “President Zuma said to the police they must act with maximum force,” Malema
5 January 2012 The African National Congress at 100 By Gwynne Dyer “It’s a bittersweet victory,” said William Gumede, a distinguished South African academic, about the hundredth anniversary of the African National Congress (ANC), which opens with a enormous party in Bloemfontein on Sunday. “This is our tipping point. From here things will go downhill.
14 August 2011 South Africa: Malema’s Game By Gwynne Dyer Julius Malema did something unusual on Saturday. The leader of the Youth League of South Africa’s ruling African National Congress (ANC) apologised for something he had said. “We are a young people who will time and again commit mistakes and are prepared to learn from
12 June 2011 Twenty-Five Years of Non-Violent Revolution By Gwynne Dyer The “Prague Spring” of 1968 was a gallant attempt at a non-violent democratic revolution, but it was crushed by Soviet tanks. Eighteen years later, in the Philippines, the first “people-power” revolution succeeded, and since 1986 non-violent revolutions have driven a great many dictators from
14 November 2010 Burma: Not A “Mandela Moment” By Gwynne Dyer People love historical analogies, so it’s easy to think of Aung San Suu Kyi’s release from house arrest on Saturday as Burma’s “Mandela moment.” When Nelson Mandela was freed from 27 years of imprisonment in 1990, it marked the start of a process that
15 February 2010 South Africa at 20 by Gwynne Dyer On the 20th anniversary of the day in February 1990 when the end of South Africa’s apartheid system was announced the former President F.W. de Klerk wrote: “We astounded the world in 1990 and in 1994, and we shall do so again.” But in 1990
8 April 2009 Despite Zuma By Gwynne Dyer In less than two weeks (22 April), Jacob Zuma will be elected as South Africa’s new president. Many people see this as the beginning of the end for South African democracy, and even for South Africa as a developed country, because Zuma is an ill-educated populist who