Spare a thought for South African journalists, reduced to peering into murk and gun smoke for clues to what’s going on inside South Africa’s National Prosecuting Authority (NPA), the crisis-riddled state agency that...
Africa in Fact Issue 35
Nigeria: delays and distractions
One of Nigeria’s most dramatic episodes of judicial corruption happened in January 2013. The country’s Economic and Financial Crimes Commission (EFCC) had charged six officials with pilfering 32 billion naira [$204m]...
Côte d’Ivoire: war crimes and elections
Elections should bring peace, not war. But for the past 15 years, whenever voters in Côte d’Ivoire went to the polls, ballots turned to bullets. After the 2010 election sparked the latest civil war, tensions remained,...
Southern Africa: defamation and insult
Defamation and insult laws remain on the books in many countries, but for the most part, the West has abandoned enforcing these statutes. In much of Africa, however, criminal trials for insult and defamation are still...
Mozambique’s gender-based violence laws
One night in April 2013, Luisa, a 46-year-old woman living in a small town in Mozambique, was on her way home when two men dragged her into an abandoned hut and raped her. “I wanted to die, but I told myself I...
Tunisia: transitional justice
Tunisia’s “transitional justice” process, which was set in motion in late 2013 after the 2011 revolution that overthrew the regime of Zine el-Abidine Ben Ali, has been bedevilled by problems from inception. A...
READ THE LATEST ISSUE
