Author: The Editorial Team

JOHANNESBURG (Capital Markets in Africa) – In 1987, an anti-apartheid firebrand named Cyril Ramaphosa led South Africa’s biggest-ever mining strike. Some 300,000 miners—from a union Ramaphosa himself had founded—walked off the job, protesting pay and working conditions. The mining company “used fascist methods to destroy workers’ lives,” Ramaphosa declared. Over the three-week strike, nine people were killed, 500 were injured and more than 50,000 were fired. Still, it demonstrated the power that organized black labor…

NAIROBI (Capital Markets in Africa) – A Kenyan inquiry into dam construction projects worth $650 million has placed Treasury Secretary Henry Rotich at the center of a power struggle, with critics demanding he resign. The investigation not only threatens to hamper President Uhuru Kenyatta’s $25 billion plan to expand infrastructure and boost the East African nation’s economy, but also unity in the ruling Jubilee party. The race to succeed Kenyatta when his term ends in 2022 has pitted…

MAPUTO (Capital Markets in Africa) – A tropical cyclone that tore across Mozambique at the weekend may have killed more than 1,000 people, President Filipe Nyusi said as heavy rains continued to pound neighboring Zimbabwe where flooding left dozens more dead. “It’s clear that the next few days could be worse,” Nyusi said in comments broadcast on state radio. “If more than 1,000 lives have been lost, we won’t be surprised.” Mozambique’s worst-recorded flooding occurred in 2000,…