Henning Melber

When following the events unfolding in Zimbabwe as from mid-November (see the separate time-line), the Revolution of the Carnations of 25 April 1974 came to my mind. In a peaceful coup, the Portuguese army then toppled the dictatorship of the Caetano regime.

The African middle class is of huge interest to business. This was confirmed again recently by well attended seminars in South Africa’s big cities to discuss “African Lions: groundbreaking study on the middle class in sub-Saharan Africa”.

These days the African middle class is widely discussed as a phenomenon considered indicative of social change.

According to a common saying, a cat has nine lives. Jacob Zuma has at least the same amount. He just survived the eighth vote of no confidence in his illustrious political career.

According to figures recently presented by a research project at the Southern Africa Labour and Development Research Unit (SALDRU) at the University of Cape Town, South Africa’s population classified as middle class increased from 12.8 percent in 1993 to 16.6 percent in 2012.

Politics are in shambles across the world. Populism and political gambles are making headlines from London to Washington. Southern Africa is no exception.

The middle classes in the Global South gained growing attention since the turn of the century, mainly through their rapid ascendancy in the Asian emerging economies.

Visitors to “the land of wide open spaces”, as Namibia is successfully promoted to tourists, will be impressed by what they see.

The middle classes in the global South gained growing attention since the turn of the century mainly through their rapid ascendancy in the Asian emerging economies.

The International Criminal Court (ICC) was created to investigate and prosecute war crimes, crimes against humanity and genocide.