From Monrovia, AllAfrica's Boakai Fofana blogs on a recent experience with crime and of how a new initiative is helping to offset worries that it is growing.
At 2am, I received a call from a friend warning me to "be awake - armed robbers are in Mrs. Clarke's house." I was so frightened that I jumped out of bed immediately, knocking my head against a table in my room. Everywhere was dark. The generator, which stays on only until midnight, was off.
Totally confused, I stepped out into the living room and peeped out of the window. I couldn't see anything, and no one was around. The friend who called me lives a few meters away. I couldn't see his house at this point and didn't know where the robbers were headed next. He sounded very alarmed - was he in trouble?
The question of why Barack Obama has chosen Ghana rather than Kenya, his father's homeland, or Nigeria, Africa's giant, for his first trip to Africa as President of the United States, is exercising newspapers from Nairobi to New York.
Nairobi's Daily Nation said Monday that "in skipping Kenya, the first African American president is signalling that he puts political values over ancestral allegiances."
Although the Nation quoted Kenyan foreign minister Moses Wetang'ula as denying that Obama had snubbed the country, it also referred to recent U.S. criticism of the country's struggling coalition government.
WILL the new South African president, Jacob Zuma, break into spontaneous dance whenever he delivers a speech to the international community?
So far (as far as I know), he has managed to keep his rousing rendition of the now out-of-context Umkhonto we Sizwe war cry Mshini Wami confined to national fora such as political rallies and other platforms he has been provided with to defend his innocence against the many charges levelled against him in the recent past.
The reason I ask is simple. Beyond his amazing agility and moves to rival Michael Jackson in the prime of his musical career, Zuma does not seem to offer much else. I have serious problems in looking beyond the misgivings of a man who claims that taking a shower after unprotected sex with an HIV-positive person can prevent transmission of the virus. That statement will forever stick in my mind whenever Zuma's name is mentioned to me.
The ruling African National Congress (ANC) has been confirmed the overwhelming winner of elections in two major South African provinces - the economic centre of the country, Gauteng, and ANC leader Jacob Zuma's home province, KwaZulu-Natal.
Early Saturday morning, South African time, final results in only one province - the Western Cape - were outstanding. But the opposition Democratic Alliance (DA) has already wrested control of the province from the ANC, in the only opposition victory in the national and provincial elections.
On Saturday morning, the ANC had won 11.6 million votes, the DA 2.9 million and the Congress of the People (COPE) - formed by leaders who broke away from the ANC last year - had received 1.3 million votes.
3h45pm (SA Time): The Democratic Alliance has won the Western Cape province with 50.18 percent (713,661) of the vote according to electoral commission results.
The party's leader Helen Zille and mayor of Cape Town is reportedly in talks to form a coalition with smaller opposition parties. The African National Congress came in second with 31.10 percent (442,340 votes), third was the Congress of the People with 8.83 percent and the Independent Democrats clinched fourth place with 5.13 percent.
12h50pm (SA Time) In what has been coined the most contested election since liberation in 1994, the ANC has already secured a two-thirds majority.
Results sourced from Politicsweb show that the African National Congress has crossed the nine million voter mark securing 67.12 percent of the vote. The Democratic Alliance remain the official opposition with over two million votes and 'new kid on the block,' the Congress of People, have secured the third spot reaching over one million voters.
According to a South African radio station, SAFM, the province of Kwa-Zulu Natal is still lagging behind in vote-counting and the Western Cape results which should have been announced at noon today has been delayed after the electoral commission was forced to vacate the premises they hired for the purposes of vote counting. The radio station reported that the results will be released later this afternoon after independent auditors verify the vote count.
With 12.6 million votes counted, the ANC had 8.3 million votes. The Democratic Alliance had 1.9 million, the Congress of the People 951,000 and the Inkatha Freedom Party 486,000.
Voter turnout was 77 percent
In the economic powerhouse of the country around Johannesburg and Pretoria, the province of Gauteng, with more than 80 percent of votes counted, the ANC had 60 percent of the vote, the DA 26 percent, COPE seven percent and the IFP 1.1 percent.
9.05pm: The African National Congress has lost support in the region of the country popularly held to have been the crucible of the struggle against apartheid.
Electoral officials in the Eastern Cape declared tonight that the party had won the election in the Eastern Cape with a majority of 68 percent, the independent television news channel, e.tv, reported. This is an 11 percent drop in support since the 2004 election.
The party formed by leaders who broke away from the ANC after the firing of former president Thabo Mbeki last year, the Congress of the People (COPE), drew 13.6 percent of the vote, becoming the official opposition in the provincial legislature.
6pm (SA time): The ruling African National Congress has exceeded the five million mark and stays in the lead with opposition Democratic Alliance receiving over one million votes, according to voting results published on Politicsweb.
Congress of the People (COPE), the 'new kid on the block', hangs in there for third spot with 651,045 votes followed by the Inkatha Freedom Party with 265,370 votes.
COPE was struck by tragedy last night when one of their officials in Motherwell, Eastern Cape was shot and killed 'in what appears to be a politically motivated assassination,' says a COPE media statement.
4.20pm (SA time): A presiding officer at a polling station in the former heartland of the Inkatha Freedom Party faces criminal charges after a ballot box was found stuffed with votes for the IFP before voting began on Wedneday.
But the chief electoral officer of the Independent Electoral Commission said he was not interested in the investigation, reported Independent Online.
The local officer is facing charges of electoral fraud.
