Welcome to the first edition of the post-Trump era. It’s certainly going to be … different. This week, as Joe Biden moves to restore normality to the US presidency, Fintan O’Toole looks at the 46th president’s life and wonders if it is Biden’s private persona – one shadowed by loss – that will help to restore his country. We also look at the moves Biden’s team has committed to making in the administration’s early days. To say farewell to the outgoing president – who last week became the first to be impeached twice – Richard Wolffe looks at the ragged state of the Republican party. The GOP has been pronounced dead before and always fought its way back. But could the pro/anti Trump rupture in the party prove fatal?
Despite a pitiful sharing of vaccines with low-income countries so far, some richer nations continue to power forward with Covid vaccination programmes. In India, one of the nations worst hit by the virus, the world’s largest vaccination programme has begun with officials hoping to inoculate 300 million of the nation’s 1.3bn people by August. Hannah Ellis-Petersen and Amrit Dhillon look at the Indian plans – and the concerns of those who think corners are being cut.
It was election week in Uganda last week and, as expected, Yoweri Museveni defeated singer turned politician Bobi Wine to continue his 35-year reign. The result has been contested by Wine’s party but Museveni looks to be going nowhere. Patience Akumu wonders if change will ever come to her country.
This week we also feature two really terrific features. The first, by Zimbabwean academic Simukai Chigudu, tells the story of growing up in his home country under the shadow of the British empire and, particularly, Cecil Rhodes. Chigudu has been a key voice in the British #RhodesMustFall campaign at Oxford and in his essay he relates the pain of being surrounded by the ghosts of empire at the university. We also have the wrenching story of Gulbahar Haitiwaji, a Uighur living in France who was lured back to China and ended up spending two years in Xinjiang in a ‘re-education’ camp. It is an incredibly stirring read.
In culture, we speak to Camille Cottin, star of the fabulous French comedy-drama Call My Agent! which is just coming to its fourth and final series.
