New African articles from May 2006

New African archives from May 2006

Who were the Ancient Egyptians?(Letters)(Letter to the editor)
May 1, 2006... I congratulate Ayi Kwei Armah on his painstaking research culminating in his forthcoming classic, The Eloquence Of The Scribes, due out in May, and which New African has begun to serialise (NA April). It is refreshing to see how he brings...

Sackcloth and ashes.(Letters)(Letter to the editor)
May 1, 2006... After reading Baffour's Beefs (April), I went on the internet and searched for the meaning of IQ. In doing so, I came across the famous IQ of 70 that Africans are supposed to have, which means, in effect, that we Africans are all "mentally...

Katie Phelps and her homeland.(Letters)(Letter to the editor)
May 1, 2006... Katie Phelps' geniality comes through in her letter (NA Feb 2006). But her patriotism, like that of many of her compatriots, is based on decades of deceit by successive US governments and the unwillingness of Americans to question their...

Wrong on Kenya.(Letters)(Letter to the editor)
May 1, 2006... Your articles on Kenya (NA, March) read like a sick joke when viewed against the government's recent affront on media freedom. The writer not only failed to attribute his quotations to the original media sources, and instead passed them as his...

African writing systems.(Letters)(Letter to the editor)
May 1, 2006... I must congratulate New African (April 2006) on the article, "Cameroon--For Those Who Say Africa Had No Writing System", which exposes the lie that Africa had no indigenous writing system, and thus Africans were lesser intellectual beings...

Had Nkrumah been allowed to continue ...(Letters)(Letter to the editor)
May 1, 2006... Your February issue, with a well-deserved tribute to that great African, Kwame Nkrumah, was the last one my late husband, Eyenue King, had the opportunity to read and appreciate. Himself, always propagating the African cause, was a great...

Important issues in Malawi.(Letters)(Letter to the editor)
May 1, 2006... The 39th session of parliament has just been inaugurated in Malawi. The rural populace expects the parliamentarians to discuss important issues affecting the country, such as the food crisis, the political impasse rocking the country between...

What about Cabinda?(Letters)(Letter to the editor)
May 1, 2006... I am a regular reader of your magazine, and I find it extremely informative and insightful. Your articles cover Africa (fearlessly might I add), but I have yet to read any article on the least reported conflict in the occupied territory of...

A pound of flesh, but in whose interest?(Baffour's Beefs)(Column)
May 1, 2006... "Power without grace is a curse"--John Hope Franklin, African-American historian. If there ever was a time to talk frankly as Africans, it is now. And I intend to do so in this column. Please let me repeat, from my last month's column,...

Charles Taylor: why me?
May 1, 2006... Why, among all the people who have led wars in Africa and invasions of other African countries, has Charles Taylor, the former Liberian president, been singled out for arrest and trial by the UN? We provide the answers--from page 8 to 23. Here,...

Charles Taylor: 'when your master is your enemy, you are doomed'.(Interview)
May 1, 2006... For 10 years between 1992 and 2002, Baffour Ankomah, our editor, covered Liberia very intimately. During seven reporting trips to the country, he interviewed Charles Taylor five times, both before and after he became president. The last, in...

The Taylor saga: a clash of civilisations.(Charles Taylor )
May 1, 2006... "Breaking one's word may be a matter of dishonour to the person involved but even in domestic affairs, the law imposes financial penalty. But when it comes to international relations, the result would be pure anarchy. Diplomacy could not run...

South Africa: spy wars.(Around Africa)
May 1, 2006... The tribulations of Jacob Zuma, South Africa's former deputy president, has given birth to many inventions. One is that his dismissal last year was part of a conspiracy to stop him becoming the next president. But matters took a murky turn in...

Lesotho.(InBrief)(investigations on corruption in Lesotho Highlands Water Project)(Brief article)
May 1, 2006... The Lesotho Highlands Water Project (LHWP) is the world's largest water transfer operation, taking water from the "Mountain Kingdom" to South Africa. A local NGO, Transformation Resource Centre (TRC), fighting for the rights of communities...

The Gambia: coup plot foiled; The Gambia hosts the African Union summit in July, but certain army officers had different ideas four months earlier. They planned a coup to overthrow President Yahya Jammeh's government. But, as Sheriff Bojang reports, the government was one step ahead of them.
May 1, 2006... On the afternoon of 20 March, President Yahya Jammeh flew out of his capital, Banjul, for a three-day visit to Mauritania where he was to discuss maritime transport and social security issues with President Mohamed Ould Vall. But he returned...

Nigeria: governor out, history in; A courageous ruling by Nigeria's Federal Court of Appeal has raised new hopes for the country's democracy. Peter Ezeh reports from Enugu.
May 1, 2006... In an unprecedented decision, the Federal Court of Appeal, the highest court on electoral disputes in Nigeria, has ordered the removal from office of the Anambra State governor, Chris Ngige. The action was taken on the grounds that the 2003...

Malawi.(Brief article)
May 1, 2006... Over 20 opposition MPs who resigned from their parties to join President Bingu wa Mutharika's fledgling Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) now face the threat of losing their seats in parliament if a controversial amendment of Section 65 of the...

Diego Garcia: 'all we want are our fundamental rights'.(Feature)
May 1, 2006... Finally, after decades of resisting, the British and American governments have allowed 100 Chagossians (also known as the Ilois) to return--for one day only--to the Chagos Archipelago, their homeland in the Indian Ocean which Britain, in a...

Africa: chicken trouble; As the H5N1 (bird-flu) virus takes its first victims in Africa, Mercy Eze commiserates with housewives and urges Africa to review its poultry import policies.
May 1, 2006... Beef and fish may be famous for what they represent on the dining table, but chicken is a genius! Should the unfolding H5N1 (or bird-flu) epidemic cause severe damage to King Chicken and his brood, not only will the fast-food giants count the...

Zimbabwe: Operation Garikai waits for Annan; The Zimbabwean government's rebuilding programme started after last year's controversial demolition exercise is going well, but an invitation to Kofi Annan, the UN secretary general, to come and "see things for himself" appears to be encountering problems. Chipo Shoko reports from Harare.
May 1, 2006... Risipa Ray Kapesa, mayor of the northern town of Chinhoyi, is an extremely happy man. "It's not always that one loses something, and recovers more of the same thing within a short time. How else can I feel finding myself in this fortunate...

Will the Queen apologise for slavery?(Lest we forget)
May 1, 2006... For much of next year, Britain will commemorate the 200th anniversary of the abolition of Transatlantic Slavery, but will Queen Elizabeth II apologise for "Britain's shameful past"? More so, when William Wilberforce's words: "you may choose to...

What colonial education did to Africans.(Special Books)
May 1, 2006... Ayi Kwei Armah on the black man's burden of perpetually juggling with his own antecedents and the "received wisdom" from Europe via a colonial education system planned to pull his mind steadily away from the realities at home towards a...

'But sir, Christ himself never went to university': "young man, have you studied theology? Have you studied philology? Have you studied ethics? Have you studied philosophy?" Ayi Kwei Armah relives his days at Achimota School and a particular brutal encounter with an American Religious Knowledge teacher.(The Eloquence of the Scribes)
May 1, 2006... My father died in 1947, in a traffic accident at a railroad level crossing in Nsawam, a town some 40km north of Accra. I was eight. During funeral ceremonies organised at his family home in Accra, my mother startled me when, turning to me in...

The day the world failed to end--again: solar eclipses have a tremendous hold on the imagination of our people, and a major one on 20 May 1947 brought utter panic in Ghana, particularly among doomsday prophets. Fast forward to 29 March 2006.(Under the Neem Tree)
May 1, 2006... I was very sorry not to be in Ghana on 29 March 2006, when a solar eclipse was observed in many parts of the country. Eclipses have a tremendous hold on the imagination of our people, and I was not surprised to read in The Ghanaian Times that...

Gas widens African appeal: Neil Ford on the new trends in the oil and gas sector in Africa. On the whole, it is good news all the way, he reports.(OIL & GAS SPECIAL)
May 1, 2006... Interest in the African oil and gas sector used to be limited to the continent's main producers. Investment was largely restricted to two areas: the North African hydrocarbon powers of Algeria, Libya and Egypt; and the Gulf of Guinea states of...

Computers and the Algerians of London.(Not in Black or White)
May 1, 2006... Printing was a revolutionary tool when it was discovered. It remains so. But the revolutionary discovery of the internet has not, and will not, displace printing or paper or the reading of printed materials... And the middle-class...

USA: 'those negroes did not touch me'.(Diaspora)
May 1, 2006... 31 March marked exactly 75 years when nine black youths were indicted for allegedly raping two white girls on a train passing through Alabama in the deep south of USA. Lynching of black men for merely winking at white women was the norm at the...

The African presence in Czech Republic: Tom Mbakwe reports on what it means to be African in the Czech Republic and how one African group based in Prague is changing perceptions.(Diaspora)
May 1, 2006... "Before 1945 most Czech citizens had never seen or met a black person. But ever since the first black soldier entered the country with General Patton's Third Army in April 1945, people [Czechs] have gradually got used to Africans and...

The life and times of king sugar.(Feature)
May 1, 2006... In the Caribbean, the former residences of slave plantation owners are called Great Houses, and are on every guidebook's top tourist attractions in the region. Lisa-Anne Julien visited three of them, in Tobago, Barbados and Trinidad, and asks...

A publisher par excellence: Charles Wereko on the life and times of Evander Mckay Milne, Kwame Nkrumah's publisher, whose wife, June Milne, became Nkrumah's research assistant. Known as Van to his friends and family, he helped put African literature on the world map by establishing Heinemann's African Writers Series.(Tribute)(Obituary)
May 1, 2006... The life and work of the late Evander Mckay Milne (1920-2005), publisher of Dr Kwame Nkrumah, the first president of Ghana, has been celebrated in traditional Ghanaian style in London. [ILLUSTRATION OMITTED] Van Milne, who died at 85...

Kenya: 'everyone knows NARC is dead'; With the unveiling of a new splinter party, NARC-Kenya, by President Mwai Kibaki's supporters, the opposition insists the ruling NARC coalition is dead, and the president should dissolve parliament and call fresh elections, writes Wanjohi Kabukuru.(Endtail)
May 1, 2006... The ruling National Rainbow Coalition (NARC) has a new offshoot called NARC-Kenya. The new party, which is largely composed of youthful ministers and politicians close to President Mwai Kibaki, has raised jitters in Nairobi and rekindled...