Nairobi, Kenya – YOUR SHIP HAS SAILED INTO PORT In September 2015, a ship called the Hoegh Transporter called at the port of Mombasa. Kenyan police promptly detained the Norwegian-flagged ship and arrested its Filipino crew. Investigators then started a systematic search for drugs in the vessel.[1] A few weeks earlier, the 1999-built vehicle-carrier had left […]
Kampala, Uganda – CUE THE STATISTICS. There is a rising concern in both government and welfare circles that the region could be on the brink of a ‘drugs epidemic.’ This could be misleading, and partly a result of our official culture of imitative behaviour. The seizure and impounding of larger and larger amounts of contraband […]
Kampala, Uganda – AN ASYMMETRICAL CONFLICT WITH A SHAPE-SHIFTING ENEMY There were two historic junctures at which the journey to the current ever-globalising quagmire of the ‘war on terror’ could have been headed off. I say ‘globalising’ because what began as a promise of a quick war to depose the Bin Laden-friendly Taliban regime in […]
Luanda, Angola – Recently, I was flagged down by a traffic policeman seeking a ride back to the station after finishing his shift in one of Luanda’s main thoroughfares.Candidly, he explained his predicament: The pick-up vehicle had broken down. Angolans being more used to seeing traffic cops stopping cars to check papers or negotiate a petty […]
Dar es Salaam, Tanzania – THE STRATEGY: CHANGING HEADS JPM’s key policy concerns are tackling official waste and corruption, enhancing tax compliance, and creating large numbers of jobs through industrialisation. In the past 12 months, he has dismissed numerous senior officials in central and local government and state corporations for suspected corruption or poor performance, removed […]
Cape Town, South Africa – THE SUCCESSION WILL NOT WAIT FOR THE STARTING GUN The starting gun has yet to go off, but that hasn’t stopped the campaigns to succeed President Jacob Zuma at Union Buildings from racing ahead. At the end of January this year, South Africa’s ruling party, the African National Congress finally announced […]
Capetown, South Africa – Of all the controversies swirling round the figure of President Jacob Gedleyihlekisa Zuma aka Msholozi – his clan praise name – probably the best known and most discussed around South Africa is the issue of his super controversial Nkandla homestead. More than the 783 corruption charges reinstated in April this year after […]
New York, USA – In the 2015 Corruption Perception Index released by Transparency International, the United States ranks a creditable 16th out of over 170 countries. It could be because the index looks at levels of public sector corruption, in which case ordinary Americans can comfortably say they do not suffer the scourge of corrupt public […]
Kampala, Uganda – On November 11, 2016, the Anti-Corruption Division of the High Court in Uganda convicted three former top officials in the Ministry of Public Service who had been found guilty of engaging in syndicate corruption leading to the loss of Ush 88 billion ($25.5million) from government coffers. The scam involved payment of money to […]
Cape Town, South Africa – One could argue that it is never an easy time to be a journalist; but there is less debate about whether in these times when the media is in a constant state of change, it is getting harder to hold on to a permanent job in the press. When it isn’t […]
