The ANC and the Democratic Alliance remain the country’s political poles, but they’re losing ground to more extremist parties on the left and right.

This is not a winner-takes-all kind of story. In an April 10 by-election in a Soweto ward, the ruling African National Congress (ANC) won comfortably with 72 percent of the vote. But in this ANC stronghold — and the largest township in South Africa — the victory actually marked a 5 percent loss in votes compared to 2016. Upstart conservative and church-backed African Transformation Movement (ATM), meanwhile, reaped almost exactly that 5 percent difference in votes.

Just over 600 miles away in a predominantly White Afrikaner ward in the coastal town of George, the Democratic Alliance (DA), the country’s official opposition party, retained its seat with 73 percent of the vote — down from 92 percent three years ago. There, the conservative Afrikaner-led Freedom Front Plus (FF+) saw its share rise from 3 to 17 percent. These margins of victory are wide enough to point to the likely result of national elections when South Africa goes to the polls on May 8, namely that the ANC is expected to win under President Cyril Ramaphosa while the DA is likely to retain its status as the main opposition party.

But they also indicate that a slow but definite shift is underway. The declining vote share of both major parties in recent bypolls shows that the ANC and DA are losing ground to parties with more extreme positions.

In China, women are still shut out of politics … but in business, it’s a different story.

China has a long history of powerful women. The 18th-century pirate Cheng I Sao commanded the largest band of pirates ever assembled, thought to be around 40,000 strong. Empress Dowager Cixi was China’s de facto leader for almost half a century until her death in 1908. Jiang Qing, wife of Chairman Mao, was a leading political figure in her own right and played a hugely significant role in the country’s disastrous Cultural Revolution from her seat on the Chinese Communist Party’s Politburo.

One look at a lineup of China’s top political body today suggests that opportunities for women in China have gone backward since then. Sun Chunlan, vice premier of the State Council, is the only woman on China’s 25-seat Politburo. But drawing the conclusion that there’s a sizable gender gap in China would be doing the country a huge disservice.

A Rohingya Muslim travels thousands of miles and risks his life to be with his loved ones.

The day I was released from jail in Buthidaung, I took the jungle route home. I could have taken the main road, but I was scared of seeing the Myanmar police. They weren’t kind to Rohingya Muslims, and I’m a Rohingya Muslim. A journey that could have taken me just an hour or so on a bus took me eight or nine hours through the forest.

I had never before been away from my wife and children, and it had been so long since I’d seen them. The journey was exhausting, but I was happy that I could finally be with them. My parents also lived with us. We had our property, houses, everything in Maungdaw. But when I reached home, exhausted, I saw only my father. My mother had died while I was in jail. And my wife and children were gone.