Nolen to India

Stephanie Nolen, surely the Globe's best reporter these days, is leaving the Africa beat. The farewell article makes it clear why five years is enough, but it's too bad -- good reporting on Africa is a really scarce commodity. The stories she emphasises are mostly the obvious ones (AIDS in South Africa, Congo civil war), but the ones I remember best were a series on Mugabe this spring and summer, when it looked like the evil old bastard might actually go. God knows why they would have talked to her, but her articles gave you a vivid sense of listening in on debates among the Old Man's cronies -- far more detailed and telling than anything I read anywhere else. Likewise her attempts to explain the awful anti-foreigner riots in South Africa last spring. And, above all, a great article about how the current movement to prosecute former tyrants at the ICJ, and the prosecution of Charles Taylor in particular, was having the unintended consequence of pressing Mugabe and similar to cling to power for as long as possible. It was impeccably reported, fairly written, and unanswerable -- the most disturbing piece I've ever read in that great genre, 'Westerners with good intentions once again pave road to hell for Africans'.