This week sees the British release of Days of Glory, a war film that focuses on a hidden fact of the Second World War – the contribution of hundred of thousands of North African soldiers recruited from France’s colonies, known as "indigènes" in French.
Fierce fighting has resumed in Mogadishu, the capital of Somalia, giving the lie to claims that the US-backed Ethiopian invasion would bring an era of peace.
March marks the 200th anniversary of the act of parliament that officially ended direct British involvement in the transatlantic slave trade. The act of 1807 made it illegal for a British ship to transport captive Africans across the Atlantic for sale into slavery.
Africans resisted slavery at every point. There were rebellions on board the ships that carried them across the oceans, which often resulted in the cruelest retaliation. But it was on the plantations that the most serious challenges to the slave economy took place.
Very few people these days would question the barbarity of the Atlantic slave trade. Nor can anyone easily deny that vast profits were made from slave labour in the plantations.
Thirty-year old Nelson is waiting and hoping for a mass riot. Like many other residents of the Highfield township in Harare, he knows Zimbabwe is on a knife-edge.
