South Africans will flock to the polls on May 29 for the country’s most important general election since the advent of its non-racial democracy in April 1994. According to most opinion polls, the ruling African National Congress (ANC) party, Africa’s oldest liberation movement, is expected to fall below a 50% majority. The reasons for this shift are clear. South Africans are largely disappointed in the ANC’s performance, with 80% believing the country is heading in the wrong direction and over

Nineteen-thirty-eight is an apposite metaphor for 2024, of a world poised on the brink of a devastating war. The pieces are all there: Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, tensions across the Taiwan Strait, the U.S. increasingly divided and isolated, the Middle East divided along sectarian and tribal lines, a resurgent populism in Latin America, and an Africa slowly sliding off the map into state failure, military juntas, and regional wars. This state of affairs should not be someone else’s business.