Cameroon: a political challenge for the Commonwealth
by Melanie Torrent, Senior Research Fellow Back in October 1995, the admission of Cameroon to the Commonwealth during the Heads of Government Meeting in Auckland was a fairly controversial affair. Within Commonwealth circles, a number of experts believed the country...
Cambridge Analytica and African elections
by Martin Plaut, Senior Research Fellow, Institute of Commonwealth Studies Cambridge Analytica, the British political consultancy caught up in a huge scandal over its use of Facebook data, has boasted that they ran the successful campaigns of President Uhuru Kenyatta...
Democracy and violence: the threat to South Africa’s elections
by Martin Plaut, Senior Research Fellow, Institute of Commonwealth Studies Violent politics in a violent society South African elections take place against a background of violence. The ruptures of the apartheid era have been carried over into post-apartheid society,...
‘New’ Zimbabwe, Commonwealth and Brexit
by Dr Balasubramanyam Chandramohan, Senior Research Fellow The recent events that led to change of leadership in Zimbabwe resulted in the creation of a ‘new’ Zimbabwe. However, there are more continuities than changes in the power structures at the systemic level, and...
How did Zimbabwe get here? Exclusive extract from forthcoming book
How did Zimbabwe get here? What is going on? What is likely to happen? The short answer is a combination of short-term factors, and long-term trends, economic structural pressures, political policy choices, and personal power agenda. Read this extract from Robert...
As pressure mounts on South Africa’s Jacob Zuma, he blames an old enemy: Western intelligence agencies
South African President Jacob Zuma has had his back to the wall. The National Executive of the ruling African National Congress (ANC) met at a hotel in Pretoria over the weekend of November 26-27. The discussions – so intense that delegates almost came to blows – were over whether to remove the president from his post.
For the journalists who hung around outside the ANC meeting to decide the fate of their president, it was a long and dreary wait, which continued into the Monday. The president was facing numerous allegations, ranging from corruption and bringing the ANC into disrepute to – perhaps most telling of all – charges of allowing the opposition to take key cities during municipal elections earlier this year.
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