Archbishop Desmond Tutu - Arch to his friends - must be the only person in the world who could say such touchy things in public. He chose a huge dinner for bankers and businessmen, organised at Tate Britain by Investec, to explain the psychological impact of apartheid on black people. Tutu recalled the first time he got on a plane piloted by Africans. At first he was delighted at their [...]

The river, wider than the Thames in London, had been dammed and diverted, leaving the river bed a brown scar across a landscape of endless scrub and bush. Bulldozers, excavators and trucks roared back and forth through a haze of red dust and smoke. At the bottom of the river bed a small crowd, whites and blacks, waited in the shadows, intently watching a few Africans stripped to the waist [...]

A common experience of people travelling to Africa for the first time is the shock of realising it is nothing like the Africa you see on television. From the outside, the future of Africa sometimes seems to depend on western generosity. The close interdependency of aid agencies, journalists and government in Britain gives us a particular view of it: hungry, suffering, dependent. But travel around the continent and a different [...]

On the eve of the 100th anniversary of the Battle of Omdurman in 1998, I asked the British ambassador to Sudan whether he was prepared to apologise at next day's memorial ceremony. It was barely a battle, more of a slaughter in which British howitzers and Maxim guns killed and wounded some 27,000 Sudanese. There were 175 British casualties. "Yes, of course," he replied, "but then we'd also have to [...]

The political reasons for the near-fatal split in the Commonwealth over Zimbabwe have been widely reported: African countries still deeply resent being lectured by the "old white" Commonwealth, particularly Britain, and Tony Blair won few friends over Iraq. For these reasons, even British allies on Zimbabwe, such as Ghana and Kenya, did not speak as forcefully as Blair wanted or expected.

But there may be a deeper cultural reason [...]

Sometimes you want to say to a writer: "You shouldn't have written this. And if you woke up one morning and found you had written it, you should have burnt it or buried it in a bottom drawer for your biographer to dig out years later. Believe me, he would have praised you for your restraint and humility in not imposing it on your public, who still enjoy your novels."

As the role of the American and British armies in Iraq turns from attack to occupation, deep differences will emerge in their styles of operation and in the training that lies behind them. Put simply, if Iraqis turn against the occupying forces, the Americans will kill far more civilians in accidental shootings and overreaction than the British.

British soldiers are generally regarded as better peacekeepers because of their experience in [...]

At first it was obvious how the war on Iraq would affect Africa: a rise in the oil price, though nice for African petroleum producers in the west and south, will seriously hurt other impoverished economies that have no oil. The tourism industry will diminish. Aid will be diverted to the humanitarian needs of Iraq. Earmarked funding may protect Africa in the short term but in the longer term she [...]

Siphiwe Hlophe is so huge that when I came to give her a hug to say goodbye I couldn't get my arms round her. "Well, at least you don't have Aids," I said. That sounds an appalling thing to say, but in Swaziland Aids is such an overwhelming fact of life - and death - that people who work on Aids projects make jokes about it all the time. Hlophe [...]

To borrow the Duke of Wellington's thought: I am not sure what imperialism may have done to the natives, but by God it messed up the imperialists. When she was about 40 years old, Carolyn Slaughter woke out of a dream that sparked a memory of her childhood in Africa. The memory that had lain hidden was that her father had raped her when she was about six and several [...]