Mail & Guardian
Mail & Guardian
Simon Mkina

Creator

Simon Mkina

(John McCann/M&G)
ALASSANE OUATTARA

The October election season: Guinea, Tanzania and Cote D’Ivoire head to the polls

October is election month as three presidents seek another term in office. For two, it will be their third

  • Sidy‌ ‌Yansané‌
  • Leanne de Bassompierre
  • Simon Mkina
8 min read
ACT WAZALENDO

Tanzania’s opposition leader on reggae, resistance and his own resurrection

Sixteen bullets and 27 operations later, Tanzania’s main opposition leader has recovered from a brutal assassination attempt – and is now in the middle of an even bigger fight

  • Simon Mkina
4 min read
Braving it: Tundu Lissu, Tanzania’s former MP with the Chadema opposition party who was shot in 2017, returns from exile to challenge President John Magufuli in elections later this year. (STR/AFP)
ACT WAZALENDO

Tanzania’s opposition finds that forming a united front is not so easy

Having missed the chance to form a coalition, a so-called ‘endorsement’ may be the next-best step

  • Simon Allison
  • Simon Mkina
3 min read
Tanzanian small-scale miner Saniniu Kuryan Laizer, 52, poses with two of the biggest of the country’s precious gemstones, Tanzanite, as a millionaire during the ceremony for his historical discovery in Manyara, northern Tanzania, on June 24, 2020. Laizer found the stones weighing 9.27 and 5.1 kilogrammes respectively in the northern Mirerani hills, an area which President John Magufuli had fenced off in 2018 to stop smuggling of the gem. He sold them to the government for 7.7 billion Tanzanian shillings (nearly $3.3 million/2.9 million euros). The broken biggest record of Tanzanite was 3.5 kilogrammes. Filbert RWEYEMAMU / AFP
AFRICA

The real story of the world’s biggest tanzanite find

In just three weeks, Saniniu Laizer uncovered the three largest tanzanite gemstones in history – earning himself more than $5-million. Who is he and how did he do it?

  • Simon Mkina
7 min read
Aerial view of a truck passing in the Konso hills and terraces, Omo Valley, Konso, Ethiopia on March 10, 2017 in Konso, Ethiopia. (Eric Lafforgue/Art In All Of Us/Corbis via Getty Images)
ARUSHA

On the road with East African truck drivers

In East Africa, truck drivers are being attacked, robbed and used as diplomatic footballs

  • Simon Mkina
  • David Mono Danga
  • Godfrey Kimono
6 min read