"Malawi is at a crossroads today and action in three to six months may be too late," said Andrew Mitchell, UK Secretary of State for Development.

The UK was among those which suspended direct aid to the government last year.

Now it is scrambling to bring forward some £30m ($47m) - not due to be handed to the Malawian treasury until later in the year - in the next few weeks, and is urging other donors to do the same.

"We need a lot of support, very quickly - in the region of $500m," acknowledged Joyce Banda, Malawi's new president, who grappled her way to power last month after her predecessor Bingu wa Mutharika died of a heart attack and his aides briefly attempted to subvert the constitution to keep her from taking over.

"Look at me - I'm not panicking," said President Banda, in an interview at State House in Lilongwe.

She argued that much of the cash has already been pledged by foreign donors, then suspended last year because of the increasingly autocratic behaviour of her predecessor, and could be released to Malawi swiftly once the IMF gives her new government's economic programme its blessing.

"We have moved quickly. The situation was self-made therefore things can be corrected - and the good thing is that we know what to do," said President Banda, pointing out how swiftly her team has moved to restore diplomatic relations with Britain, and to invite the IMF back to Malawi.

The 33% currency devaluation - although widely recommended by economists - has put huge strain on the treasury, and on many ordinary Malawians, as the price of imported goods has soared.

Privately, western diplomats here are warning of the possibility of economic collapse, and a backlash against President Banda, if the situation isn't handled firmly and fast.

"An inflationary spiral is a real threat - if the economy collapses, Banda will lose support and political instability could follow. The cost of rescuing Malawi will be much more expensive than supporting it now," said one diplomat, speaking on condition of anonymity.

I've always preferred the view and the clientele in the "half-full" camp, and tend to greet the latest statistics about exam failures and unemployment with the disclaimer that, long-term, things can go up as well as down.

But there is one issue that sometimes nudges me towards the pessimists, with their smugly folded arms and "told you so" smiles. And right now that issue is making all the headlines here.

The Richard Mdluli scandal is murky, complicated and unresolved. At a basic level, it is about the state's struggle to pursue serious allegations of fraud and corruption, and possibly murder, against one of South Africa's most senior policemen - the head of the crime intelligence unit.

Lt Gen Mdluli is accused of stealing funds from a secret service account and hiring his relatives as secret agents. He also faces older allegations that he arranged the death of a lover's husband.

In response, Mr Mdluli has claimed he is the victim of a sophisticated plot by powerful enemies who unfairly accuse him of being President Jacob Zuma's political attack dog. He has been suspended from his job, then reinstated, and finally shuffled to a less prominent post.

Perhaps this will all blow over. The optimists will reasonably point out that the authorities tend to move slowly and clumsily here, but often reach the right conclusions in the end. Give them time. Let justice take its course - after all, other senior policemen have ended up in jail, and plenty of other democracies have experienced worse growing pains. Surely South Africa has too boisterous a political culture to allow things to get out of hand?

But the pessimists argue, convincingly, that the Mdluli scandal is further proof of the politicisation of South Africa's police and prosecuting authorities; a contamination that began during the presidency of Thabo Mbeki was strengthened by the controversial decision to drop corruption charges against his successor, Jacob Zuma, and is now being entrenched as Mr Zuma and his allies seek to secure a second term in office by ensuring that the security services are not only loyal to their man, but willing to do whatever it takes to ensure victory.

"This is how a democracy becomes a police state," said one commentator, in a country already alarmed by the ruling party's draconian moves to restrict press freedoms.

No-one - well, no-one credible - is suggesting that South Africa is poised to follow Zimbabwe's descent into the abyss. But as many countries have found to their cost, the corruption of institutions is dangerous and hard to reverse.

The families' water buckets are usually empty after days - sometimes weeks - trekking through the searing heat.

On Wednesday, 616 people reached the Yida refugee camp in South Sudan - the highest number yet recorded - escaping hunger and conflict across the border in South Kordofan, a bitterly contested region of Sudan better known as the Nuba Mountains.

"Hunger," was all 15-year-old Gisma Kafi could muster, sweat beading on her forehead, as she put down the pots and bedding she had been carrying on her head. "We ate bark and leaves," she added, after catching her breath.

Gisma joined a bedraggled crowd slumped on the dry earth outside a straw hut where South Sudanese officials registered each new arrival and weighed the younger children - some with distended bellies and painfully thin limbs.

"When they arrive, the children are very sick due to malnutrition and complications. Every day we are receiving more and more. Others are dying on the way," said Mohammed Sadik, a nutritionist working with the US aid organisation Samaritan's Purse.

Halima Haroun, 30, who arrived two days ago after a 14-day walk, appeared to speak for most of the refugees when she explained why they had decided to abandon their villages in the Nuba Mountains and the nearby caves where many had spent months hiding.

"The Antonovs [Sudanese military planes] bomb us every day. We could not go to work, or to the fields. A bomb killed my husband," she said.

"There are no schools, and no food. I had to leave behind my two youngest children because they could not manage the journey."

More than 23,000 people now live at the Yida camp, and that number is likely to rise sharply in the coming weeks before the annual rains turn the hard earth into swamps and make all movement impossible.

"We are concerned. We're pushing against the clock to get enough food in for the rainy season," said the World Food Programme's Geoff Pinnock, roaming through the camp to check on the new arrivals.

He said he was confident they would be able to feed people at the camp, but was more worried about those remaining inside the Nuba Mountains.

"We're reaching them here. What we are concerned about is the condition north of the border. Over the last two weeks we've seen an increase in the number of arrivals and a deterioration in the conditions of some of those arriving - we're seeing… more people in a relatively bad state of malnutrition."

Mr Pinnock said the conflict was "certainly disrupting livelihoods - they wouldn't be here if they were able to plant crops".

Multiple accounts from refugees and others still inside South Kordofan appear to confirm that the Sudanese military - particularly through its bombing campaign - is seeking to target, terrorise and displace civilians as part of a wider, but currently floundering, attempt to defeat the rebel SPLM-N forces and reassert control.

"We are in a process leading to war," said 24-year-old Moses Akon, thoughtfully.

Trucks and pick-ups crammed with troop reinforcements, weapons, and a surprising amount of beer - crates of Red Horse beer to be precise - raced past.

"We do not want to fight, but we shall," said Mr Akon.

The front line itself consists of shallow foxholes dug into the hard earth, tank and heavy machine guns hidden under trees, and a mood of frustration and belligerence among many of the soldiers who were forced - under the most withering international pressure - to withdraw from the Heglig oil fields they'd recently seized from Sudanese forces to the north.

"We are now at war," said Major General James Gatduel, freely admitting that he and his men are itching to advance once more to recapture Heglig.

On Saturday afternoon, Sudanese planes bombed the frontlines here, and about five minutes after we left another brief skirmish erupted as Southern forces fired on what they say were two helicopter gunships, and then came under attack from a fighter jet.

The tensions here are the result of failed diplomacy and brinkmanship during the long process that led to South Sudan winning independence last year without any final agreement on its exact borders or how to share the vast oil fields that straddle those borders, and on which both north and south now depend for their economic viability.

For years international sympathy has rested firmly with the southerners - victims of northern aggression and of a seemingly endless succession of humanitarian calamities - but in recent months South Sudan has begun to alienate many of its key backers with a series of rash reactions to northern provocations.

"Talk about shooting yourself in the foot," fumed one prominent western official, speaking on condition of anonymity, in South Sudan's capital, Juba.

"It's so frustrating - they've squandered everything in 10 months."

The South's most controversial move was to halt all oil production, after failing to agree on transit fees for the pipeline that runs north through Sudan.

Oil revenues account for some 90% of the government's budget, and the money will start to run out in six weeks.

The local currency is already under severe pressure, petrol queues are beginning to form, and President Salva Kiir's handling of a series of spiralling economic, diplomatic and military crises has left many foreign observers shaking their heads in disappointment.

And yet, in the crowded wards of Bentiu's civilian hospital, where wounded soldiers and bandaged children lie side by side, there is no sense of panic.

"We cannot share our oil - we are proud to die for it," said Karani Mayok, 28, who says he lost his left leg when a bomb was dropped from a Sudanese warplane on his village on 15 April.

"When we came to be independent from the north we knew there would be suffering, but we are ready to defend our land," said the medical director, Dr Peter Gatkuoth.

Still, he urged both sides to return to negotiations.

"We need to believe in peace. We share one name 'Sudan' in both north and south. Let us not go back to war. It is not good for all," he said.

Three-year-old Dauda Mahmoud has a tube attached to his nose, a hacking cough that shakes his fragile body, and a cocktail of ailments that include suspected tuberculosis. Two years ago, his brother died "from a fever, overnight," says his 22-year-old mother, Halima.

The annual hunger season is beginning once again in the vast, arid strip of land just below the Sahara desert, and the medics at Ouallam - a small town an hour's drive north of Niger's capital Niamey - have seen a sudden leap in admissions in the past week and are bracing themselves for an exceptionally tough few months before October's harvest.

"Life was wonderful here," says Maya Halida, 50, squeezing water from a pot of pounded millet, and remembering her childhood in Kassi-Tondi, a tiny village of mud bricks and straw thatched roofs deep in the arid, scorching sand and wind-blasted plains three hours drive north-east of the capital Niamey.

It's not so wonderful anymore.

Maya's husband died last year "of a stomach ache," she says matter-of-factly. Over the years, six of her 10 children have died too, "from fever". The water in the well outside the village is almost too deep to reach now, even with a long rope, and the last harvest - which should have fed what is left of her family for most of this year - produced enough grain for just six days.

"Now I am a widow, some relatives far away gave me money to buy this sack of grain. But it is so expensive now," says Maya, deftly feeding sticks into a small fire to heat porridge.

It is quickly apparent that there are almost no men of working age anywhere in Kassi-Tondi. All have gone to Nigeria or Cameroon, or to Niamey, in search of work. Some had been in Libya, but were forced out by the war.

Maya is a tough, garrulous, cheerful woman in a country where people accept hardship with a shrug. She yearns for the old days, when no-one needed outside help, and the government "left us to be free". But now she acknowledges that her family's survival this year may depend on a "food for work" programme set up by the United Nation's World Food Programme.

I'm told Kassi-Tondi means "big stones" and this morning Maya and several hundred women from the district have been busy picking up rocks and stones and carrying them on their heads to shore up the sides of a giant series of intricate ditches scratched into the hard ground.

The idea is that these water catchments will trap the next rains, preventing the water from skidding wastefully off the plateau, and bringing the fields back to life. "Maybe it will work," says Maya, pausing for a moment in the baking sun.

But in the short term the scheme provides a more immediate benefit to the villagers. Each woman - and again it is shocking to note the complete absence of men - is paid the local equivalent, in either cash or grain, of $2 a day for their labour. "Thank God. With this we can survive," says Maya.

"It will be bad - of course we are worried," says the senior nurse, Mustapha Aishatu.

Already, international aid agencies are beginning to sound the alarm, publicising worst-case scenarios in an understandable bid to attract donations while there is still a chance to buy and stockpile food and supplies before the crisis reaches its expected peak somewhere between June and September.

The United Nations' World Food Programme expects that almost 400,000 children in Niger could find themselves so malnourished that they end up like those in Ouallam's hospital. Nearly one in 10 are likely to die as a result.

There is something shockingly and compellingly simple about the idea of a child dying of hunger. But here in Niger, the causes are often complex - and so are the solutions.

Those involved in fighting hunger here rattle off the contributing factors like ingredients in a grim recipe:

And lurking behind all these factors is the biggest, most important one of all - the single, exponential ingredient that is usually responsible for turning a wretched situation into a famine or similar catastrophe: bad leadership.

It was the behaviour of Somalia's militant group, al-Shabab, that transformed last year's drought into a famine in the Horn of Africa, and it was Niger's repressive government that failed to acknowledge the scale of hunger in the country in 2005 before it was too late.

Today, the Sahel region remains crippled by weak governments, coups and other forms of political instability.

But Niger has suddenly emerged, after a coup in 2010, as a welcome and unexpected exception in a rough neighbourhood.

The new, democratic government was quick to detect the first signs that this year's food crisis would be particularly severe.

There is now "great co-operation", according to insiders, between Niger's authorities and a range of international donors, UN agencies and charities. For the first time, a co-ordinated, flexible response plan has been drawn up in response to the looming emergency.

"It's a welcome change," says WFP country director Denise Brown. "It has created a dynamic that could eventually lead to long-term change in the country. It's not just about today's crisis. It's about where it will take us to down the road."

That does not mean that children won't starve here this year. It does not mean that foreign donors will step in early enough to fill an 80% shortfall in the WFP's planned budget for the months ahead, and ensure that food supplies are in place in time.

But it is an encouraging start, in a wretchedly, chronically poor country.

It was June 2003 and rival militia groups were trying to overrun the town. I could hear shooting, getting closer, on three sides of the building. A few bullets hit the walls.

"Just kids," said the Belgian priest, Father Jo, who was still striding cheerfully around his garden listening to sounds of approaching conflict.

And they were just kids.

For months I had run into them at roadblocks around town - dull eyes, shoeless, automatic weapons slung on narrow shoulders - or on muddy jungle paths.

And I'd seen their victims - some their own age, often slashed with machetes.

Nine years later, and the man who recruited - perhaps press-ganged is a better phrase - some of those child soldiers, Thomas Lubanga, has finally been found guilty by the ICC in The Hague.

I remember challenging Mr Lubanga about the age of his soldiers, at his headquarters in Bunia.

He insisted: "We have no child soldiers in our ranks - some of them look younger than they are."

He sought to portray himself as a sophisticated politician, rather than some rag-tag militia leader.

As we prepared to film him, his "chef de protocol" asked me which door we wanted Mr Lubanga to enter through, and then pointedly moved his chair away from the bullet holes on the wall behind.

The ICC trial of Mr Lubanga has been slow and complicated.

He is a relatively "small fish" on a continent where men with far more blood on their hands remain in hiding, or continue to enjoy impunity.

But with this verdict, and the upcoming judgement in the UN-backed trial of former Liberia leader Charles Taylor, a precedent has been set.

Here are links to some more of the reports I made at the time:

French impose DR Congo gun ban

New troops for DR Congo flashpoint

Deep in the Sahara desert, in the vast emptiness of northern Mali, several hundred rebel fighters have overrun, and outmanoeuvred a small number of army garrisons.

So what, you might ask?

So a lot.

The humanitarian impact of the conflict is already being felt not just in Mali, but in neighbouring Mauritania, Burkina Faso, Algeria and Niger, as tens of thousands of civilians - many are nomads, but that's beside the point - flee the fast spreading insecurity that has erupted close to Mali's borders.

The refugees are putting extra pressure on communities already struggling with high malnutrition rates and the likelihood of a devastating "hunger season" in the coming months.

As for the Tuareg rebellion itself - it has evolved into more than a purely local quarrel.

Its latest eruption is a direct consequence of last year's events in Libya. Some Tuareg tribesmen fought alongside Muammar Gaddafi's troops. Others may have fought with the opposition.

They have since returned home, armed to the teeth with looted weapons, and seemingly determined to transform a half-hearted rebel movement into a serious - if probably unrealistic - drive for an independent Tuareg state, which they call Azawad.

The rebels are a coalition of different factions and agendas united under a new name - the National Movement for the Liberation of Azawad (MNLA). In a complex environment, the catalytic factor appears to be the arrival of so much new weaponry from Libya.

"Why do we need to fight for independence? We already own the desert," a Tuareg friend of mine in Timbuktu grumbled down the phone this week.

It is not clear yet how much popular support the rebellion enjoys.

But the Sahara is not what it used to be. As the world has found quicker, cheaper ways to move goods around the continent, the Tuareg and their increasingly redundant camel trains have been left to survive on the dregs - gun-running, drug smuggling, and ferrying would-be immigrants north towards Europe.

And now even the tourist trade has been taken from them. Al-Qaeda's local affiliate (Al-Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb; AQIM) has found that the desert makes a convenient place to hide and to raise money.

The extent and nature of AQIM's links to the MNLA is hotly disputed - some Tuareg groups appear to be close, financially if not ideologically, to the Islamist militants.

But al-Qaeda's presence and its growing appetite for kidnapping foreigners for ransom have left the region even more isolated.

AQIM's influence can now be seen in Algeria, Mauritania, Niger and Nigeria.

As for Mali itself, the rebellion is aggravating old tensions between northerners and southerners to potentially explosive levels.

The army's military failures against the MNLA rebels could also have serious political repercussions, not least on the upcoming presidential election, scheduled for next month.

President Amadou Toumani Toure insists he will still step down as planned, but analysts and diplomats are quietly starting to wonder whether the generals will allow him his dignified departure at such a precarious moment.

Foreign interest in Mali's future extends far beyond the crackdown on terrorism and smuggling in the Sahara, with rich gold, oil and uranium deposits at stake.

But I'm not talking about Joseph Kony's Lord's Resistance Army which, despite its sudden brush with global infamy, has not been seriously active inside Uganda for some six years.

I'm referring instead to a mysterious disease that I first encountered in the region in 2003. It is called Nodding Syndrome, and I was shocked to discover this week that nearly a decade since it was first detected, almost no progress has been made in identifying, treating or containing the disease.

Nodding Syndrome targets children exclusively, causing its victims to spasm uncontrollably and eventually to waste away and die. Many thousands of children are believed to be affected.

Scott Dowell - an American doctor I was in contact with in Asia where he was involved in the global battle against bird flu - is now helping the Ugandan authorities to fight Nodding Syndrome.

"It's frustrating not knowing the cause. I was hopeful for a quick answer when we first started studying the disease in 2009," he told me, on the phone from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) in Atlanta, USA.

Instead, like several other neurological disorders, Nodding Syndrome remains a complete mystery. "It could take a while to crack this," he admitted.

Initially, the CDC suspected it might be a psychogenic episode - something like mass hysteria. But brain scans quickly confirmed that they were dealing with a disease that causes measurable brain atrophy.

Has the outside world been slow to investigate? It is fair to assume that if a disease were killing children in Europe with such brutal efficiency, more attention would have been paid to it by now.

The World Health Organization, Unicef and the Ugandan Health Ministry are closely involved, but a Ugandan official in the north of the country, William Oyet, expressed concern to me that "the number of cases is increasing".

Dr Dowell says he cannot speak for what happened before 2009, but insists that Nodding Syndrome is now "high on the short list of about half a dozen" mystery diseases that the CDC is targeting.

"We'd really like to get to the bottom of this… because it's got a big impact on public health. It's hugely important to the children and families affected.

"It's also interesting from a scientific point of view - the fact that we can't figure it out. And thirdly, we are kind of hooked. We've worked with the population over a couple of years and so we're really committed to these communities," he said.

The CDC has confirmed 194 cases, but has heard credible reports of "many thousands" more affected children.

Unlike bird flu, Nodding Syndrome shows no indication of being transmitted from person to person, so "we don't have the sense that it is likely to be a threat to the rest of the world in the way bird flu is", said Dr Dowell.

"We have the funding we need to do our investigations. We are pursuing a number of leads and haven't run out of leads," he said.

But when it comes to helping communities affected by the disease, Dr Dowell is less optimistic. "The affected villages… are now facing a future with large populations of disabled kids, with all the cost implications for families and communities. That part is clearly not funded."

The extraordinarily sudden success, if that is the right word, of the social media campaign by three American advocacy groups aimed at shining a big spotlight on the notorious Ugandan rebel leader Joseph Kony has prompted some scathing reactions from plenty of well-informed quarters.

I will link to some of them below, but here is an outline, each introduced with a relevant tweet, of what strike me as the main arguments being made against the film and the campaign.

There are plenty of forthright arguments against all these points - and the relative success of a social-media driven campaign like Stop Malaria shows that the established aid industry can often benefit from a good shake-up.

The organisation leading the StopKony campaign issued a response on its website to these points, and it must be stressed that the group has been pushing the White House on this issue for some time.

There are many blogs that elaborate on the wider issues at play, like Michael Deibert's on the Huffington Post that tackles the Ugandan government's errors, and the Unmuted blog that focuses on the disempowerment of Ugandans.

And there are other critiques of Invisible Children itself, like Michael Wilkerson's piece on the Foreign Policy website.

And a UN forum has even chipped in with an opinion piece.

As for my own view, let me not dwell on the merits of the film itself.

It's slickly made and has clearly struck a chord with its intended audience - people who knew nothing about the LRA or, consequently, Uganda.

The more immediate question is: will all the fuss it has generated make a positive difference? The campaigners behind it have written a detailed and well-reasoned letter to President Obama outlining various demands.

If, as a result of the campaign, the US takes further steps to ensure Joseph Kony is brought to justice, then I would consider it a success.

At the same time, there are broader issues at stake here, and I do share the concerns articulated in some of the blogs and tweets above, particularly when it comes to the importance of African governments, leaders, institutions and individuals taking control and responsibility.

The outside world has a role to play, but it is patronising and above all cripplingly counter-productive to believe we have all the answers.

It is a Saturday morning and the wind-blown streets are half empty. You have three children in the car, one playing on a small games console.

As you pull over, close to the railway station, looking for somewhere to park, a man appears at the car window and demands money.

How many of you, reading that last sentence - particularly those outside South Africa - are thinking this is going to be a story about mugging?

I ask for two reasons - first because I seem to have encountered more than the usual number of opinionated foreigners in the past few months, all terrified by the thought of even stepping foot in such an obviously murderous city - one Englishman refused to be best man at his friend's wedding here, convinced that the invitation would lead to certain death.

And secondly because that was me in the car, last Saturday, heading for brunch and a spot of shopping at the newly opened Neighbourgoods Market in Johannesburg's Braamfontein district.

The man asking for money was a uniformed city-parking attendant, who gave me a smile and a printed receipt.

Never mind the triumphant, incident-free 2010 World Cup, and the rising tourism figures for South Africa - the big, gritty city of Johannesburg still seems to have a monstrous image problem.

"We love Cape Town," said a talkative British Airways steward to me last month. "But Joburg scares us."

And there is a wider point to make here. Last week the US ambassador, Donald Gibbs, bemoaned the jitteriness of outsiders at the inaugural Africa Strategic Growth Forum.

"In America one bad headline from Africa can set back five years of good work in promoting the continent," he said.

"I find there's a big gap between investors who are already operating in the African market who are very positive and those who've never invested in Africa who are quite negative and scared."

But back to Joburg. I promise I am not in the pay of city's Development Agency, nor am I ignorant of the serious and enduring crime levels here.

But I do feel that Johannesburg's reputation is slouching someway behind the fast changing reality.

And the Neighbourgoods Market - now six months old - is part of that change.

There were oysters on ice - served by a couple who could not keep their hands off each other - fresh cheeses, home-made pies, cocktails and long communal tables packed with middle class South Africans, all housed inside a converted multi-storey car park overlooking the Nelson Mandela bridge.

By the early afternoon the terrace bar was an eclectic mix of twenty-somethings. Sporty white men in shorts sat next to elegantly coiffed black women students.

Cocktails and giggles followed along with a glimpse of the "rainbow nation" that is still flourishing in parts of South Africa, when it is not being buried beneath a mountain of bad headlines and divisive political rhetoric.

Unlike a few other "yuppy" oases in more grimy corners of Johannesburg, the market in Braamfontein seems a natural extension of the energy on the streets outside, where new art museums compete for attention beside coffee shops and glass fronted restaurants.

I bought a beef pie and a bottle of delicious South African mead.

If I am in town, I will be going back next weekend.

Julius Malema - the swaggering, articulate, comic, bullying, Hugo Chavez of South African politics - had come to believe in his own hype.

It is a neat irony that he has now been expelled from the party that created him for refusing to accept that the ANC had the right to suspend him.

So what next?

Nothing precipitous, I suspect. The police and tax inspectors who have been carefully investigating Mr Malema's affairs will no doubt be quietly asked to wait a decent interval before moving in - just to avoid the appearance that any of this might have been stage-managed.

As for President Jacob Zuma - he must be purring with satisfaction at the way his most public enemy has been neutered. But perhaps he should be counting his blessings instead. It could have ended very differently.

Mr Malema was a creature of his times - a man who articulated the rage and frustration of South Africa's poor, marginalised black community, while embodying some of the aspirational hopes of a country littered with shiny new shopping malls, and also representing the uglier post-Mandela realities of a corrupt, show-your-bling political culture that barely notices the contempt in which it is held.

He was over- and under-estimated in equal measures - as bullies so often are.

The last time I went to interview him at the ANC headquarters in Johannesburg, I'd just come from one of the open-sewers-and-corrugated-shack townships outside the city. Most people I spoke to there seemed torn between sheer enjoyment of Julius's barbed wit and brazenly populist agenda - he had a genius for grabbing the headlines - and embarrassment at his divisive racial taunts and Mugabe-esque rhetoric.

When I mentioned my impressions to him, he brushed them aside. He was a formidable debater, and no fool. And he had an agenda - built around nationalisation and the seizure of white-owned land.

In a country led by a party that, by trying to hog almost every corner of the political spectrum, often seems to stand for nothing but the preservation of its own power, Mr Malema stuck to his ideological guns. No wonder President Zuma - a consensus politician who seems genuinely alarmed by the prospect of trying to end a policy debate - found Mr Malema so threatening.

It is too early, of course, to know whether Mr Malema will be found guilty of abusing his position, cheating his taxes, or any of the other allegations which President Zuma's friends have been aggressively briefing the media about. But the battle is over. Mr Zuma is virtually assured of another term as president.

And yet, Mr Zuma must surely wonder - what if Julius Malema had been less swayed by the lure of quick wealth? What if he had emerged as an unstoppable political force? And what will happen now if someone less absurd, less hypocritical, picks up that baton and runs, hard and fast, at the head of an angry crowd?

Today 45-year-old Mohammed Haroum is trying his luck with a whistle.

It is not easy, he concedes gently, as a pick-up truck loaded with armed men tears past him on a dusty bend in the road, overlooking the ruins of the old port.

Mohammed is a traffic policeman - in a clean white shirt and beret - it is a job he resumed last year after a two-decade break while Somalia was busy collapsing.

"These days", he says, "people do not know what a drivers' licence is. They have never seen one. No-one has even heard of insurance.

"We are learning to be normal again."

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Normality has emerged as an option here in the past few months, since the militant Islamist group al-Shabab was pushed out of Mogadishu, and the raging front line that ran through the city centre shifted to the nearby countryside.

The constant chorus of gunfire has been replaced by the hammering of building sites, the roar of commerce, and the whistling of Mohammed and his colleagues.

Instead of scurrying from one bombed out building to the next, Somalis have reclaimed their pavements.

Cafes and stalls have sprung up.

Because so few people can read these days after years without education, those walls that are still standing are now daubed with colourful cartoon adverts - some just for cans of food or shampoo, but I have seen giant teeth being pulled out, and an elaborate illustration of a gynaecologist at work.

A strong wind has been blowing in from the sea all week. It stirs up the dust, and tugs at the patchwork tents that cluster in almost every open space.

For all the recent changes in the city, this is still a pretty desperate place.

All over Mogadishu, tens of thousands of families live in these tiny shelters - some in the spectacular, skeletal ruins of their old homes.

Others have fled here, over the years, from famine or conflict elsewhere.

The city has become a safe haven. Whether it stays that way is another matter.

Technically, Mohammed the traffic policeman now works for Somalia's transitional federal government. Emphasis on the world "transitional."

Depending on your point of view, that government is either the latest flawed but brave attempt to forge a new state out of anarchy.

Or it is a Frankenstein's monster - a corrupt, illegitimate body, created, paid for, and protected by foreign governments, packed with clan warlords, and far removed from the lives and the wishes of ordinary Somalis?

Mohammed suggests the truth lies somewhere in between.

He gets paid $100 (£63) a month. "It is not enough," he says, "but I think the government is getting better.

"People are beginning to listen to it - and to me. I still get plenty of threats at the roadblocks. But my whistle works well now."

Mohammed's salary is paid, indirectly by Western nations, and it is worth pointing out that, although the Somali transitional government has now been up and running in one form or another for eight years, it is still not trusted to handle the cash.

The United Nations does that instead. Somali politicians seem to have a particular habit of pocketing most of their ministerial budgets.

This week, in far away London, some of those politicians have been gathering with foreign leaders to try to put the whole of Somalia back together again.

The country has long disintegrated into a jumble of rival administrations, clans and warlords. Mogadishu is just one piece of that jigsaw.

There is good reason to expect another failure. Trust is in short supply here.

But in Mogadishu, there are at least hints of optimism.

You can smell the city's fish market long before you reach the doorway.

Inside, Bashir Youssouf Barre is shouting down his mobile phone - haggling over the price of shark meat.

He is 44-years-old - a tall, boisterous man with a wispy, greying beard.

He has just come in from a night's fishing on his small fibreglass boat. I ask him about pirates. "They are scum," he says. "But we haven't seen any around here for a while."

Bashir is vaguely aware that something happened in London this week.

"I'm no politician," he says, "but after 20 years I think we've all had enough chaos. Our soldiers must defeat al-Shabab. Now they've joined with al-Qaeda, there can be no negotiations."

As for the transitional government, Bashir is not sure. "I only trust bits of it," he says.

"You mean you trust ministers who are from your own clan," I suggest. He laughs and nods.

A man walks past us with a huge hammerhead shark balanced on his shoulder.

He lets it drop with a thud on the floor. The flies move in, and three scrawny kittens emerge from a corner and start to lick a pool of dark blood.

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But on a windswept hilltop along the coast a few miles south of the capital, Mogadishu, a giant, almost ludicrously neat, brand new tented camp for displaced families stands as a monument to what foreigners can achieve here with the right approach.

"We've had no security problems yet," said Alper Kucuk, deputy head of the Turkish Red Crescent delegation to Somalia, as we toured the camp surrounded by our own guards and a contingent of soldiers provided by the local administration.

"We have 2,100 tents for 12,000 people. Somalis treat us like their family and we are sure that anyone who has the willingness to do something for them will be very welcome," said Mr Kucuk.

Will London conference help Somalia?

In the months since the militant Islamist group, al-Shabab, was finally pushed out of the city by African Union soldiers Turkey has emerged as the most visible foreign presence in Mogadishu - if you discount the green armoured cars belonging to the AU force (Amisom), which still growl their way through the busy streets.

While most foreign organisations remain cooped up at the heavily guarded Amisom base by the airport, some 200 Turkish nationals are now living and working in the city on a variety of projects, ranging from construction to logistics and aid.

"They are our brothers" is a common reaction from Somalis when the Turkish are mentioned.

"While some talk, they act," was how a man called Aden put it to me.

He said he had recently returned from Canada to help the reconstruction of Somalia.

So why aren't other countries, or the United Nations, more active, and is it fair to criticise organisations for taking big security precautions, given the number of aid workers who have been killed in Somalia over the years?

"They could do more," said Mr Kucuk simply.

The UK's new ambassador to Somalia, Matt Baugh, still based in neighbouring Kenya, acknowledged that "the Turkish have shown what it is possible to do operationally".

"They've brought a really strong political force to bear. They're intimately involved - a real force."

Turkey's boots-on-the-ground approach is having something of a catalytic effect on the aid community.

"The Turkish aid is setting a lot of pace," said Killian Kleinschmidt, the UN's deputy humanitarian co-ordinator in Somalia.

He acknowledged that organisations with Islamic backgrounds "can move better than we can".

"It's a constant challenge for all of us to adapt [to the changing security situation]," he said.

"We are now making dramatic steps in recent days to enhance our mobility. Some organisations are slow. Some are faster."

The humanitarian needs here remain considerable, with hundreds of thousands of people dependent on outside aid and living, in Mr Kleinschmidt's words, "just above survival".

The improved security environment in Mogadishu is an opportunity to be seized, but the toughest challenge remains to find ways to reach out to those suffering outside the capital, in areas still under the control of al-Shabab.

Our security guards urge us not to spend more than a few minutes outside the stone-walled compound where the Burundians and a group of Somali government troops are now based.

Vans and buses race past us in a constant stream, all heading into Mogadishu from the nearby town of Afgoye - a strategic junction still controlled by al-Shabab. Then we spot three men leading donkey carts piled high with possessions.

"People believe Amisom is advancing and going to that area and we're afraid there will be fighting," said Abdi Hassan, a refugee.

"Al-Shabab have made life very difficult. There is a shortage of food, insecurity, people being forced to work against their will. We were afraid so we fled from al-Shabab."

The men hurried on towards Mogadishu.

Will London conference help Somalia?

Hitting the beach in Mogadishu

Q&A: Who are Somalia's al-Shabab?

Late last year Amisom forces, backed by Somali government troops - many trained abroad in a scheme financed by the European Union (EU) - finally seized all but a few neighbourhoods in the city itself.

Now the frontlines have moved to the surrounding scrubland. Amisom's commanders are talking of a new push deeper into the countryside.

The next town along the road, Afgoye, is considered an early priority since it controls access to one of the few substantial roads running through the region.

"We have the advantage now," said Col Muhanga, a burly Ugandan who led some of the heaviest street-to-street fighting against al-Shabab.

In the ruins of an old stadium, captured in August, he showed me a large sandpit, transformed into a scale model of the neighbourhood, complete with cardboard houses, small trees and undulating terrain.

Urban warfare has traditionally favoured smaller, guerrilla forces like al-Shabab. But "it's getting easier now because we are moving into the open ground. Al-Shabab can't match us in open ground - we have more firepower than them," Col Muhanga said.

The Ugandans took us to their forward positions - trenches and sandbags on a ridge around Mogadishu University, overlooking miles of bush.

Col Muhanga said al-Shabab could now only take the occasional pot shots, mostly at night. A Somali government commander arrived with a group of soldiers. The government's forces have been plagued for years by clan divisions, corruption, and even defections to al-Shabab.

But Commander Akhmed Salat Ulusow brushed aside all doubts.

"Sure we can overpower al-Shabab. It will be child's play. In town it was more difficult. But we need financial support - we cannot afford anything," he said.

Back at the Amisom base on the seafront beside Mogadishu airport, I watched a small convoy of heavily armed, masked soldiers speed through the front gate - almost certainly led by American special forces who have reportedly set up camp at the end of the runway, presumably looking for al-Qaeda targets in the region and helping to co-ordinate attacks by US drones.

"We could have wished to get more," said Amisom's commander, Major General Fred Mugisha when I asked him if the extra African Union (AU) troops soon to be provided would be enough for the expanded operations he is now planning across Somalia.

The anticipated new arrivals should bring the force from 12,000 up to almost 18,000 men.

"We can always ask for more," said Gen Mugisha, spelling out his wish list.

"We need helicopters, and a limited maritime capability to do this job."

He insisted that al-Shabab was growing weaker, but said the time frame for defeating them "depends on how much the international community helps" and "how much we train" the Somali government forces.

"If we get what we have asked for it probably shouldn't be long," he said. The general confirmed that Amisom was looking to advance on the key port of Kismayo.

"I won't tell you when, but it won't take a long time."

For the next day or two, the focus is likely to switch away from the frontlines to London and Thursday's international conference on Somalia.

Gen Mugisha's hopes for the summit can be summed up in one word - "harmonisation." A polite way of suggesting it is time that Somalia's feuding elites, and an international community burdened with competing aims and interests, finally started speaking with one voice.

It's six months since I was last in the Somali capital - a city then ravaged by famine, swarming with gunmen, and fought over by a lethal assortment of African Union peacekeepers, Islamist militants and clan militias.

I won't pretend this is anywhere close to "normal" now. The endless ruins are still packed with displaced families, and behind each busy street thousands of people remain camped out in the most wretched makeshift tents. More are arriving every day - fleeing the fighting and the uncertainty that continues to plague towns outside the capital. There are regular car bombings here too, and suicide attacks by al-Shabab - the militant Islamist group that was finally pushed out of almost the entire city late last year.

But the experience of walking through the now bustling city centre - we are still guarded, admittedly, by half a dozen gunmen - has made me appreciate why so many Somalis here, and so many governments abroad, are suddenly talking eagerly of a "window of opportunity" for a failed state that has spent two decades slouching from one catastrophe to the next.

Thursday's brief but high-profile international conference on Somalia in London is a reflection of - and belated investment in - that new sense of hope.

"Somalis are risk-takers and entrepreneurs. Their lives are restarting," said the city's deputy Mayor, Iman Icar, strolling past the ruins of Mogadishu's cathedral and buying a lollipop from a small stall. A crowd of young children watched us talking, and then switched their attention back to a football game being played in the courtyard of what was once an elegant colonial-era restaurant. "It's sad they are not in school," said the deputy mayor, who went on to call for "billions of dollars - a Marshall Plan," from the outside world to rebuild the city.

The sense of calm that has settled haphazardly, over Mogadishu could, of course, vanish very quickly. Somalia has a history of false dawns. The country's feuding elites, ably assisted by a succession of misplaced foreign interventions, have rarely squandered an opportunity to put clan, or region, or profit before reconciliation and stability. But as Somalia's chaos has started to spread - in the form of terrorism and piracy - the outside world has finally shown signs of more concerted interest.

Over the next few days I'll be reporting in more detail from this city. I've already spoken to the president of the transitional government and spent some time on the new frontlines outside Mogadishu with Ugandan peacekeepers. I'll also be looking at Turkey's sudden emergence as a key foreign player here - its officials, aid groups and businesses establishing a significant presence in the city and putting many other nations to shame.

Who wouldn't be tempted by Mozambique?

"Here we can have a new life - a good life," says 32-year-old Marcio Charata. And he is not talking about a few weeks' holiday in the sun.

In his grey suit and tie, Mr Charata is one of a growing stream of unemployed Portuguese, fleeing the economic storms sweeping Europe and heading to their country's former colonies - Mozambique, Angola and Brazil - in search of jobs and opportunities.

"Here is the opposite of Portugal - each day you see the economy of Mozambique is growing," says Mr Charata.

"When you open the newspaper you see hundreds of millions of dollars are to be invested.

"So it's a great atmosphere to be here and I'll say a safe gamble to come here to work," he says, eating lunch at an outdoor cafe in Maputo, surrounded by other young Portuguese.

"Of course it is quite ironic for Portuguese people coming here. Portugal as a colonialist country in Africa - we did a lot of mistakes and people my age are not proud of that.

"But I think our mentality is very, very different. We are not here to conquer a country," he says.

After 18 months on the dole in Portugal, Mr Charata is now a financial director at a large Mozambique media conglomerate, earning "a similar" salary to what he could have expected in Lisbon.

He has no plans to return home: "In Portugal your effort doesn't matter. Unless you have a well-connected father there are no jobs in private companies."

But the exodus of skilled workers - 120,000 left Portugal in the past year alone, actively encouraged by their debt-ridden government - has attracted criticism.

"It's very distressing to see that Europe cannot make the right decisions to overcome the crisis and is again forcing the people of Portugal to emigrate," says Ana-Maria Gomez, a socialist member of the European Parliament.

"Portugal… is exporting the best, the ones that we need, our scientists, our teachers, our engineers - the best and the brightest that Portugal and Europe really need.

"It's a tremendous impoverishment to the country."

Looking out across the blue ocean in front of the Portuguese embassy in Maputo, Ambassador Mario Godinho de Matos takes a more sanguine view, pointing out that the Portuguese have always been explorers.

"The world has really changed. We are facing many challenges in our country. We must be realistic and try to adapt," he says.

"This is a country of big opportunities for young Portuguese people - mostly very young with very high degree of education.

"It's an opportunity for them to change their lives."

With Chinese and Brazilian mining firms already queuing up to do business in Mozambique, the government here has imposed limits on the number of foreigners each company can hire, and there are plenty of stories of disillusioned Portuguese heading home without finding work.

There are also hints of a backlash from the Mozambique public, who have already taken to the streets recently to protest against rising prices and the country's growing wealth gap, and who now worry about a creeping re-colonialisation.

"They've been stealing jobs," says Carlos Litulo, a local photographer and entrepreneur.

"How can you bring someone from Portugal when you have qualified accountants here?

We have good universities - so they graduate people but when they go to these companies they don't get jobs."

He warns of trouble "in the coming years".

Much will depend on how Mozambique's government manages these boom years - whether they can spread the wealth widely enough and ensure that a soaring GDP translates into jobs for locals.

Daniel David runs the SOICO, the media conglomerate which recently hired Mr Charata.

He is also the chairman of the Mozambique Portugal Chamber of Commerce.

While some of his colleagues "laugh and joke" at the sight of their former colonial masters struggling, he sees this as "a learning process".

"What can we learn from this situation in Europe? What can we do so that in the future it does not happen to us.

"We must export, we must expose ourselves to good governance and accountability in order not to have the same problems that Europe is having now."

After a diplomatic career that has taken him to Iraq, Sierra Leone and the Balkans, Mr Baugh has just presented his credentials in Mogadishu to President Sheikh Sharif Ahmed - the head of Somalia's fragile transitional government.

"That was my third visit in 10 days," said Mr Baugh, safely back in Nairobi. "There are real opportunities in Mogadishu - signs of confidence. There are more people on the streets, more traffic, more bustle that a year ago we didn't see. This is a significant moment."

With a major international conference on Somalia in London later this month, growing interest in the country's northern oil fields, and cautious optimism in the air, Britain appears keen to take a lead role in the latest attempts to rescue the world's "most failed state."

And yet nothing underlines the enduring instability in Somalia than the fact that the British embassy will, for the indefinite future, remain based out of neighbouring Kenya.

The UK already has "a facility" at the heavily guarded base for the African Union Mission to Somalia (Amisom) at Mogadishu airport, and Mr Baugh said that would expand "in the very near term" to allow more embassy staff - political, development, defence - to be "based for longer and more frequently" in the city. "There's growing recognition of the importance of Somalia. We have committed to reopen the embassy as soon as local conditions allow," he said.

Britain is lagging behind Turkey, Ethiopia and a handful of other countries that have already reopened their embassies in Mogadishu.

The old British embassy building in the bullet-scarred city centre was badly damaged by a fire some years ago. It was leased from the Somali government and it's not clear if Britain would attempt to return to the same site. "The plot may not be big enough for the aspirations we have," said Mr Baugh.

Although the militant Islamist group, al-Shabab, has recently been pushed out of the city by Amisom, it continues to launch suicide attacks. Equally troubling is the threat posed within the city by various rival militias, loosely controlled by the weak, corrupt and divided Somali transitional government. Mr Baugh said that securing extra funding for Amisom, and persuading the Somali government to give "more attention" to their own security forces, would be key priorities at the London conference.

For now, Mr Baugh will continue to shuttle between Somalia and Kenya, leaving his three young children in Nairobi. "This is a firmly unaccompanied post," he said.

"It's like a big joke. The politicians are stealing billions - corruption is an incurable cancer," he declared.

As for Nigeria's economic growth - likely to be around 7% this year - "it's just a big propaganda by multinationals, the British government and African governments… to pretend that Africa is doing well," said Mr Kuti, pointing to the endemic poverty that surrounds his home in one of the distant suburbs of Lagos.

Like his famous father, Femi Kuti is a Nigerian icon who has woven his music and political activism into a powerful, compelling brand. He and his band played to the crowds who gathered earlier this month in protest against the lifting of Nigeria's controversial fuel subsidy. "We're kind of scared [to protest] - nobody wants to die here, but if people see my band then many people - and many middle class people… would be encouraged to come out," he said.

The government eventually bowed to public pressure and reinstated part of the subsidy. "I'm still very disappointed," said Mr Kuti, arguing that the protesters "shouldn't have backed down" until the price of fuel was lowered to its original price.

If you feel Mr Kuti is being too harsh on Nigeria, do take a look at the film we put together about Nigeria's "boom," which includes several other perspectives.

Sadly I didn't get a chance to see Femi Kuti perform at the Shrine - the famous Lagos club where his band plays twice a week. He's been nominated for a Grammy again this year, but says isn't planning to attend the ceremony. I left him at the gate of his comfortable, but fairly modest house, where he was waiting for his youngest children to return from school.

On a steamy morning in Lagos this week, I went to see Nigeria's Nobel laureate Wole Soyinka - a man who manages to be simultaneously irascible and avuncular - to get his perspective.

"I ceased using words like optimism and pessimism a long time ago," he warned me.

He had been giving a speech to a room full of uniformed Lagos students on the subject of human rights, during which he sought to contrast the twin, and sometimes fiercely contradictory, demands of peace and justice.

"The human hankering for equity," he called it with a nod to the mass protests that engulfed the country this month after President Goodluck Jonathan doubled - then almost un-doubled - most people's shopping bills overnight.

Like any sensible commentator on Nigeria, Mr Soyinka refused to buy into some grand scheme of success or failure.

He lashed out liberally - at the "madness" of Boko Haram's escalating "secessionist" violence and the "very real risk of disintegration" now threatening the nation.

"The government has got to take some very drastic action to contain this," he said, stressing the increasingly international dimension to "a very well-organised insurrection".

He was equally harsh on Nigeria's lavishly overpaid legislators: "We're being eviscerated by the maintenance of a top-heavy constitution… that breeds corruption" and a "warped and unworkable" centralised presidential system.

Instead of a cacophony of "monologues, we need to call for a national dialogue", he said.

But with the same breath, Mr Soyinka was celebrating the success of the recent fuel subsidy protests that forced President Jonathan to make a humiliating reversal.

"What we saw last week was not a process of disintegration. It strengthened society.

"Very few people have seen Nigerian people on the move like that - not asking for a change of government - just asking for equity, asking for the strengthening of economic and social justice.

"Sure it will [make a difference]. Government will see that society can mobilise - we've seen a concerted move for change."

Over the past week, in the slums and the suburbs of Lagos, from diplomats and businessmen, and in mosques and churches in the north of Nigeria, I have heard a similar, ambiguous chorus of fury, elation and uncertainty.

Nobody seems to believe things are beyond repair, but few buy into the simplistic notion of "Africa Rising" that so many Western investment firms are furiously peddling.

I will write more in the coming days - in the meantime I am signing off from a super-fast 3G connection in the back of a car trapped in one of Lagos's still notorious traffic jams, after spending a fascinating morning with the legendary musician and activist Femi Kuti.

It was the briefest of tours - perhaps because of security concerns. Crowds lined the streets in some areas but were kept back by armoured cars and soldiers.

At the airport, just before the president boarded his plane, I managed to speak to him for a couple of minutes. It struck me as a rather detached performance from Nigeria's leader.

He was evidently keen to put Boko Haram into an international context: "These suicide attacks are not really part of us - they are quite new to us."

"Unfortunately the whole world is passing through terror attacks - a very ugly stage of our history. We know that we will get over it. We will continue to fight - the security services will not rest till we clean up the country," he said.

President Jonathan said the security forces were now "trailing" Boko Haram, and that "some arrests have been made." But he admitted he had no idea how many militants were involved in Friday's attacks.

"Nobody can say for now - they are not organised armed forces," he said - a slightly odd assessment given that Boko Haram, in carrying out a sophisticated and well co-ordinated series of attacks, have just given a very clear display of quite how organised they can be.

President Jonathan said he was determined to find Boko Haram's sponsors: "Terrorists all over the world have their source of income. We are also looking to those areas to make sure that so-called Boko Haram… those who are encouraging them, those who are sponsoring them, will shortly be brought to book."

The president recently claimed that the militant group had infiltrated Nigeria's government and security services. When I asked him whether - given that - his forces could defeat the organisation, he said "of course - that will even make it easier for us to win."

I did not have a chance to ask him to explain what he meant before he turned and headed towards the plane.

Earlier in the day I visited one of the police stations destroyed on Friday. The commander, who did not want to be named, said about 50 militants had attacked simultaneously from three directions.

They threw explosives at the walls, and then stormed the building, freeing a number of people being detained. The commander said some of those released were Boko Haram supporters involved in bank robberies to fund the group.

He said the police withdrew when they ran out of bullets and escaped over a rear wall. The compound is in ruins, surrounded by burnt motor-bikes and cars.