Dele Agekameh (The Nation, Lagos): Time to rattle the 'sacred cows'
"In the last nine years, a lot of under-the-table deals have taken place. Those whose grandfathers and great grandfathers never came into contact with anybody in the Niger Delta Region are those now profiting from the oil resources of the region. Nigerians will be glad to know who these vampires are."
Seumas Milne (Mail & Guardian): Why do Zimbabwe and Tibet get all the attention?
"What has made human rights edicts by the US and Britain since the launch of the "war on terror" even more preposterous is that not only are they themselves supporting governments with similar or worse records, but they are also directly responsible for these outrages themselves: from illegal invasions and occupations to large-scale killing and torture -- along with phoney elections -- in Iraq and Afghanistan."
Anton Harber (BusinessDay,SA)- After Mugabe: the media challenge
"That the opposition has been able to win parliament in a situation where they have had almost no media platform, and faced the naked hostility of powerful state media, is a remarkable achievement...Much of the opposition communication has also been via SMS, another new technology hard for the state to control. In the words of my colleague, Tawana Kupe: “Zimbabweans have become masters of alternative communication and media strategies as surrogates for mainstream media.”"
Stephen T. Maimbodei (The Herald, Harare): Jendayi’s safari exposes Western hypocrisy
"Last December, she did it in Kenya, and now she is doing it in Zimbabwe, despite assurances by ZEC chairman Justice George Chiweshe that all electoral results are on the way.The outside world remembers that it was the US government through their top African diplomatic official Frazer who were the first to congratulate Kenyan President Mwai Kibaki as the winner, after the controversial December 27 2007 election, only to have the State Department backtrack from her statement a few days later."
Tony Marinho (The Nation, Lagos): Reversing Nigeria’s ‘fiscal political and corporate cultural castration’
"Our nation has the arts and culture it deserves – cheap and a disgrace and unexportable. More money is spent on buntings, balloons and populist Star Quest, a good project in its own right giving musical voice to the voiceless, than on Soyinka or Achebe in their life time. The real ‘money making’ culture remains comatose. Arts and culture worldwide are exactly like agriculture, needing not only government budgetary ‘subsidies’ but ‘financial fertilizers’ from the private sector to bear rich fruit and bring profitable harvest
Allister Sparks (BusinessDay,SA): Outrage and consequence in the twilight of a tyranthttp://www.businessday.co.za/articles/opinion.aspx?ID=BD4A758766
What brought about this sudden capitulation? One can only speculate, but the surge of public disapproval throughout the region, and particularly in SA, has undoubtedly played a role. As long as the disapproval came only from the “imperialist” west, Mugabe could brush it aside. But the surge of outrage in his own backyard shook him and opened cracks in the Zanu (PF) leadership
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