Commonwealth
Opinion
African Parks buys John Hume’s 2000 rhinos to rewild them
By Professor Keith Somerville Africans Parks, the Johannesburg-based non-profit conservation organisation, announced on 4th September that it was going to buy rhino owner John Hume’s Buffalo Dreams Ranch and its 2,000 southern white rhinos. The organisation said that...
Zimbabwe’s elections and the Commonwealth: the challenge of how to deal with ‘business as usual’
By Professor Sue Onslow Late on Saturday night, the Zimbabwe Electoral Commission (ZEC) announced the expected result of the country’s harmonized elections: Emmerson Mnangagwa re-elected as president with 52.9%, his CCC challenger Nelson Chamisa with 44%. ZANU-PF...
South African white rhinos relocated to DRC’s Garamba National Park
By Professor Keith Somerville Fifteen years ago a survey of Garamba National Park (NP) in the Democratic Republic of the Congo sadly concluded that the last wild northern white rhinos (Ceratotherium simum cottoni) had died and that the sub-species of white rhino was...
Karnataka: A Potentially Historic Election
By Professor James ManorThe Karnataka election may eventually be seen as a watershed. It has set in motion two potential changes to the fundamentals of that state’s politics. If either or both become lasting realities, the Congress Party stands to benefit. The first,...
Making Sense of the Karnataka State Election
By Professor James ManorAny ruling party in Karnataka can expect to struggle to win re-election. No government has achieved that since 1985. The state’s voters are demanding, sophisticated and impatient. But Basavaraj Bommai’s BJP government faces additional problems....
Namibia: Rhino Poaching almost doubles in 2022 with Etosha hit hard
By Professor Keith Somerville In 2022, 87 rhinos were poached for their horns in Namibia, up a staggering worrying 93% on the figure for 2021, when 45 were killed, according to the Ministry of Environment, Forestry and Tourism’s (MEFT) spokesperson, Romeo Muyunda. ...
John Chilembwe: a new statue celebrates Malawi Pan-Africanist the world forgot
By Susan Williams (via the The Conversation) Samson Kambalu is a Malawian conceptual artist, writer and academic, whose sculpture Antelope was installed on the Fourth Plinth in Trafalgar Square in London in September 2022. The Fourth Plinth was originally designed for...
Kruger National Park’s rhino losses mirror continental African trend
By Keith Somerville The newly-released annual report by South African National Parks (SANParks) paints a sobering picture of the losses of white rhino in Kruger National Park (KNP), that sadly mirrors a report compiled by the IUCN (International Union for the...
Nelson Mandela: rainbow statesman
By Syed Badrul AhsanIn these dangerous, uncertain times we live through, the absence of Nelson Mandela only makes our circumstances a little more parlous than they have been so far. By the time he died, Mandela did not wield political authority, but there was about...
Adopt strong Media Principles and live by them, CJA tells Commonwealth leaders
By William Horsley, This autumn will see a historic moment in the Commonwealth’s story which, if well handled, could stem negative talk about the organisation’s irrelevance. Member governments should seize this chance to adopt a meaningful set of commitments on...
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