Leaders are watched. They are scrutinised. If you don’t like the idea of being held accountable and having to answer for your actions then a leadership role is probably not for you.
Giorgia Meloni, the leader of the populist radical right party Brothers of Italy (Fratelli d’Italia), may have emerged as the victor in Italy’s recent elections, but she did so at the head of a delicately balanced coalition of parties – one that included Matteo Salvini, the man once spoken of in the same terms as Meloni herself.
Il y a 60 ans, le 16 octobre 1962, la Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) présentait au président John Fitzgerald Kennedy des preuves photographiques que les soviétiques étaient en train d’installer secrètement des missiles balistiques à Cuba, une île située à 150 kilomètres seulement des États-Unis. Ainsi débutait une crise majeure durant laquelle le monde est passé très près d’une guerre nucléaire – et qui résonne fortement avec les menaces actuelles du président russe Vladimir Poutine dans le cadre de la guerre en Ukraine.
Alors que les députés viennent de faire leur rentrée le lundi 3 octobre, une menace pèse sur l’Assemblée nationale, celle de la dissolution. Le président de la République a brandi cette arme dissuasive en cas de vote d’une motion de censure du Parlement. Depuis, les nombreuses passes d’armes renvoient dos à dos le déni de démocratie auquel se livre Emmanuel Macron en l’absence de majorité absolue et l’incapacité de l’Assemblée nationale à trouver un large consensus.
The Hollywood movie The Woman King, released in mid-September, became an immediate box-office success. The triumphs of the Agoodjies, the women warriors of the ancient Kingdom of Dahomey in today’s Benin, west Africa, are as magnificent as the public had anticipated. In this epic historical drama, African women take centre stage.
Danielle Smith rode a wave of Alberta populism to win the United Conservative Party leadership on the sixth ballot.
Ever since Russia invaded Ukraine on February 24 this year, the Kremlin has sought by every means to minimise the reality of war. The description of the invasion as a “special operation” and persecution of anyone who dared call it by any other name is intended to underline the supposedly temporary and limited nature of the armed conflict. It seeks to blur the boundary between war and peace. This principle continued in Vladimir Putin’s speech on September 21, in which he announced a “partial mobilisation”.
Le film L’Événement (2021) d’Audrey Diwan est bien plus qu’une adaptation du livre éponyme d’Annie Ernaux (2000), qui vient de recevoir le prix Nobel de littérature. C’est à la fois une expérience corporelle, celle d’un corps à corps entre le public et la jeune protagoniste qui doit choisir entre interrompre sa grossesse ou ses études, et une invitation à penser notre présent à la lueur du passé.
The passing away of South Africa’s Zulu king Zwelithini kaBhekuzulu in March 2021 refocused attention on the role of royal women in Zulu leadership. After the official mourning period, and to the surprise of many observers, the late king’s will appointed his senior wife Queen Mantfombi Dlamini Zulu to hold the throne for his successor.
The stakes could not have been higher as Liz Truss delivered her first party conference speech as prime minister. Against a backdrop of economic chaos, open party warfare and polling that shows she’s on course for a spectacular election loss, Truss insisted she was “determined to get us through the tempest”.
When an artist is welcomed into the monumental interiors of a structure such as the Zeitz Museum of Contemporary Art Africa for a retrospective of their work, it suggests the levels of recognition they enjoy. The gallery, crafted from old dockyard silos in Cape Town, South Africa, opened in 2017. It is built to have such a pedigree; a solid foundation for African artists to gain global visibility and scrutiny.
The people of Masafer Yatta are determined to hold on to their cave-dwelling lifestyle. “I was born in this cave and gave birth to all 12 of my children here,” says Hajja Halima Abu Younis, an 82-year-old woman from Jinba, one of 33 villages in this semi-desert region at the southern tip of the occupied West Bank.
For nearly three decades, the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) has been embroiled in violence. Millions of people have been killed and an estimated 5.6 million others displaced by civil wars, local feuds and cross-border conflicts. The neighbouring countries of Uganda, Burundi and Rwanda have been locked into this ongoing cycle, too.
The Conservative party is heading into its annual conference amid the catastrophic fallout from Chancellor Kwasi Kwarteng’s mini-budget. The decision to cut tax without a plan to pay for it caused a sharp fall in the value of the pound on currency markets, which reached an all-time low against the dollar in Asian markets, and a rapid rise in costs of government borrowing. Both are indicators of the strongly negative reaction of financial markets to the mini-budget.
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