It was all going too fast and too well in Mali, wasn't it?
France's devastatingly effective charge across the north of the country. The spectacular collapse of all resistance. The convenient splintering within the rebel movements. The peaceful fall of Kidal. And in the capital, Bamako, all the right noises finally emerging from a notoriously sluggish transitional government about the need for elections, human rights etc.
At first it looked as though President Hollande's triumphant visit to Timbuktu was going to be something of an anti-climax: Fierce security, a huge scrum of French journalists, a half-empty town, and only a handful of local dignitaries lining up politely in the shade outside the mud walls of the ancient mosque to welcome and thank him.
But then the presidential convoy moved deeper into Timbuktu, swung up a sandy road towards the main square and suddenly, there they all were: A rapturous crowd of perhaps 3,000 people, dancing, drumming, singing, holding placards and craning their necks for a glimpse of the man they credit with liberating the ancient town from months of brutal occupation by Islamist militants.
"If I could I would get rid of this skin. It's like I have 'terrorist' written on my forehead," said a Tuareg friend of mine - let's call him Boubou - here in Mali's capital, Bamako, as he pinched the light brown skin on his arm.
At the checkpoint on the northern edge of Niono, a group of Malian soldiers sat in the shade, watching the news - about their country, about Oprah interviewing Lance Armstrong, or whatever - on a battered television.
Some of the soldiers had been part of the force routed several days earlier, when Islamist rebels attacked the garrison town of Diabaly, an hour's drive on a dirt road to the north.
The 22 year old was still sitting inside the makeshift bar in Soweto, when the police came for him. It was a few days before new year.
According to witnesses, the man had just attacked and raped a 17-year-old girl at his table, but apparently considered the incident so trivial that he had not even tried to flee.
"Events, dear boy, events…" Harold Macmillan's overused and quite possibly apocryphal warning - supposedly given in response to a question about what British prime ministers fear most - still holds true for anyone attempting to peer into the year ahead in search of something sensible to predict.
2012 reinforced the point in Africa. Who could have anticipated Mali's spectacular fall from grace and stability? Or the shocking milestone of South Africa's Marikana killings? Or the capture of the eastern DRC town of Goma by rebels? Or even Somalia's peaceful and surprising election?
With the African National Congress party's figurehead Nelson Mandela in fragile health and the country facing a series of difficult problems, this is a critical period for South Africa.
It was late afternoon, and they were still cheering. Every few seconds another name was read out, and the families - some overflowing into the lobby outside the hall - jumped up from their chairs with delight.
Stunning beaches, impoverished townships, vast potential and a persistent sense of crisis - welcome to Bitou, a place that seems to encapsulate many of South Africa's enduring contradictions.
But could this isolated, sun-drenched, struggling municipality also represent something more intriguing? Might it just be a weather vane for the nation's future political direction at a time of growing uncertainty?
It is an uncomfortable meeting. Ten rival gang leaders - including several convicted killers - are sitting on plastic chairs in a community centre in Lavender Hill, making strenuous attempts to avoid eye contact.
For years these men have turned their neighbourhood - a collection of drab brick apartment blocks clustered round a patch of grass known locally as "the killing fields," in the shadow of Cape Town's Table Mountain - into something resembling a war zone.
In the sun-bleached corner of Nelson Mandela's old prison yard on Robben Island, the desiccated remains of a tiny, weed-ridden garden lie exposed and sadly neglected.
Groups of tourists, fresh off the ferry from Cape Town, pass by with barely a glance.
It is conflict with genocide in its rear-view mirror; a conflict of bewildering complexity, deeply rooted in issues of identity and land, aggressively manipulated by external forces, and haunted by a lingering sense that eastern Democratic Republic of Congo's status quo - violent, unpredictable, and locked in a cynical and seemingly unbreakable cycle of chaos - is much more convenient to those with armies to flex than some sullen, restrictive peace.
Is it too much to suggest that the war-infested hills of eastern DR Congo have, after almost two decades of unbroken misery, become Africa's version of the Arab-Israeli crisis?
In a cluttered office in the centre of Mogadishu, a dozen men in suits squeeze round a table to haggle politely over the price of business licenses. An elderly air conditioner wheezes quietly in the background.
In a ruined city famous for its warlords and anarchy, this modest, humdrum meeting of Mogadishu's new Chamber of Commerce feels like a milestone - proof that Somalia's capital is slowly returning to a loose approximation of normality after two decades of spectacular self-destruction.
It has become one of the defining truths about modern South Africa and its economic and social struggles: Soaring, endemic, potentially explosive levels of unemployment.
The official figures paint a resolutely grim picture of a country where a quarter of the workforce cannot find a job, and where almost half of young South Africans are without work.
Helen Zille treads a narrow path. She's a white woman, leading the main opposition party, against a former African liberation movement, in what you might call a "developing democracy".
In many countries, the leader of the opposition can afford to rail and spin and generally throw mud at the ruling party without too much caution, while those in charge of running the government are held more firmly to account.
Some people on this continent expected more from the son of man who grew up herding goats in a village in western Kenya.
President Barack Obama made only one, cursory trip to sub-Saharan Africa during his first term, and at the time made it fairly clear that he would not be smothering the continent with attention.
After the most damaging months that South Africa's economy has experienced in two decades - with foreign investment and confidence shrinking alarmingly (and perhaps excessively) following the Marikana killings and subsequent industrial unrest - President Jacob Zuma had come to address the world's media at a televised breakfast meeting in Johannesburg.
The authorities in Zimbabwe have been painting a rosy picture of the country's economic prospects but concern is mounting about the forthcoming elections, following the imprisonment of supporters of the Prime Minister, Morgan Tsvangirai.
The jacaranda trees are in bloom here - bright purple smudges looming over the broad, hot, drowsy streets of Harare.
Africa correspondent since 2009, covering the continent's highs and lows - from the World Cup, Africa's economic boom, and the literary treasures of Timbuktu, to the pirates of Somalia, the conflict in Ivory Coast, and the struggles of Zimbabwe.
Twenty years as a foreign correspondent, based in the former Soviet Union, Africa, and Asia.
Reported on the 1993 parliamentary rebellion in Moscow, two Chechen wars, the Asian tsunami in 2004, and conflicts in Iraq, Afghanistan, Burma, Congo, Sudan, Liberia and beyond.
Born in the UK, grew up in Belgium and boarding school. Married with three children.
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