Alex Matthews

Several weeks ago, controversy ignited in South Africa when a Johannesburg gallery opened an exhibition by artist Brett Murray featuring The Spear -- a painting which depicted Jacob Zuma, the president of South Africa (and its ruling party, the ANC), with his genitals exposed.

There has been much gnashing...

You know a monarchy is feeling the heat when errant subjects face a beating with spikes. Last month, the prime minister of Swaziland, Barnabas Dlamini, threatened to use "sipakatane" -- the beating of the feet with of metal or wooden spikes -- to cow pro-democracy activists into submission. His comments...

On Friday, the BBC reported that Morgan Tsvangirai, Zimbabwe's prime minister and head of the opposition MDC, had declared support for Robert Mugabe's refusal to protect gay rights in Zimbabwe's new constitution. If his comments are accurate, they represent yet another step backwards in the long walk towards...

Recent reports that South Africa's President Jacob Zuma has fathered his twentieth child with a woman he is not married to has disturbing implications for the battle against HIV/Aids.

The three basic tenets of HIV prevention, used to great effect in Uganda in the 1990s, is "Abstain," "Be faithful" and...

I hate Starbucks. The ubiquitous coffee chain, with its sometimes mediocre beans, reputation for exploiting impoverished coffee growers and its carbon-copy cafés' design epitomises the onslaught of soulless American consumerism. The brand belongs in B-grade Sandra Bullock rom-coms and nowhere else.

Or so I thought - until I...

Last week it was announced that Mugabe's Kimberley Process cronies have decided to give him until June to withdraw the soldiers in the Marange diamond fields. The army runs smuggling operations and use forced labour in mines whose profits benefit Zanu PF.

Human Rights Watch exposed the horrors of...

Once upon a time there was an African country that after several years of instability seemed to be moving shakily towards reform and democracy. Its aging despotic president had signed a power-sharing deal with the opposition that created a unity government that would precipitate a new constitution and elections.

Sounds...

In South Africa, Women's Day on August 9, commemorates the march of thousands of women to Pretoria's Union Buildings in 1956 in protest against apartheid's evil pass laws that sought to restrict the movements of non-white South Africans.

Across the country, males will doubtless be wondering why can't there be...

Military control over diamond mining in Zimbabwe's eastern Marange district has resulted in a brutal mix of massacres, forced labour, beatings and rape.

This is according to a comprehensive report released last week by Human Rights Watch (HRW), the New York-based rights NGO, which interviewed over...

A year ago mobs rampaged through South African townships beating and in some cases killing the African immigrants living amongst them. Thousands who came to South Africa seeking the peace, freedom and economic opportunities lacking in their own often conflict-ravaged countries were forced to seek shelter from vicious attacks by...