This may sound either arrogant or forgetful, but I could not possibly remember the number of times I was in the same room or at the same protest as Desmond Tutu. And the main reason I know he was there is because I was there listening to him speak, often from a distance of not more than two meters or so.  I say this not to associate myself with the great man — though I’ll forgive you for thinking I’m a terrible, narcissistic name-dropper — but just to be sure we all know this all really happened, because I saw and heard it.

It seems very important to mention, because of the way this man is already being remembered by the world’s pundits and politicians.  As anyone could have predicted, Tutu is being remembered as the great opponent of apartheid in his native South Africa, who was one of the most recognized and most eloquent leaders of the anti-apartheid struggle there, for most of his adult life.

Being a leader in the movement to end apartheid in South Africa was probably the greatest achievement of the man’s life work, and it should come as a surprise to no one that this is the focus of his many obituaries, along with the Nobel he was awarded in 1984.  After Martin Luther King, Jr.’s assassination, he was remembered by the establishment in much the same way, as a leader of the movement against apartheid in the US.  The fact that he had become one of the most well-known and well-loved voices of the antiwar movement in the United States and around the world at the time of his death has largely been written out of the history books, a very inconvenient truth.

But as with Martin Luther King, many of the same political leaders commemorating Tutu today would have been unlikely to mention him a day earlier, lest Tutu take the opportunity to speak his mind.  This is certainly why he was not invited to commemorate his friend and comrade, Nelson Mandela, at Mandela’s funeral eight years ago.

Like King and so many others, we can be sure that all the praises of Desmond Tutu as the great moral compass of the world will be made safely, after he’s dead.  Before then would have been much too dangerous, and he was best ignored until then — at which point his passing can be used as an easy way for liberals and conservatives alike to talk about how they also opposed South African apartheid, eventually.

Looking back at Desmond Tutu’s life, searching for various references to protests I recall him speaking at, there’s a headline from the Washington Post on February 16th, 2003 — “thousands protest a war in Iraq,” in New York City the day before.  There were at least half a million people at the rally, on one of the coldest winter days anyone could remember.  What I recall most vividly is being behind the stage, which was even colder than most anywhere else at the protest, because it was also in the shade.  Huddling amid the frozen metal scaffolding were a variety of leftwing luminaries, including Desmond Tutu, Danny Glover, and Susan Serandon, who were getting all the attention from the media, allowing me to hang out with Pete and Toshi Seeger, since no one else wanted to talk to them, or me.

The following year there was a rally in Copley Square in Boston, Massachusetts against Israeli apartheid.  It was very windy, and there were hundreds of people filling the area in front of the big church there on Boylston Street.  I don’t remember who else spoke, but Tutu was the main speaker, and he spoke at length, after I sang “They’re Building A Wall” and other songs related to the anti-apartheid struggle in Palestine, as it was an event in solidarity with Palestinians.  Being such a well-known leader in the struggle against South African apartheid, when he would compare Israeli apartheid to the South African version, this was just the kind of support the movement to boycott Israel needed, and Tutu did his best to provide it, over and over again.

There were three overlapping social movements in the early 2000’s that I was involved with as a musician, all of which Tutu was deeply involved with.  I apologize for speaking of these movements in the past tense, but none of them are anywhere near as big or active as they were in the early 2000’s.  I’m talking about the global justice movement and the movement to cancel debt in the Global South, the movement against Israeli apartheid, and the movement against the US/UK invasion of Iraq.

At the time I wondered how it was that Desmond Tutu was showing up at so many of the same protests, conferences, and other events I was attending, promoting, or singing at.  There was a lot going on, and at the time I didn’t know Tutu was actually living in the United States much of the time in the early 2000’s, as a visiting professor in both Georgia and Massachusetts.  There were a lot of other South African radicals at so many of the rallies, especially around the global justice movement, such as representatives of the South African trade unions.  The South African poet, the late Dennis Brutus, was everywhere back then as well.

Journalism, they say, is the first draft of history.  The journalists, when given the job to cover Desmond Tutu, generally did so when it had something to do with South African apartheid, the Truth and Reconciliation Commission which he chaired, etc.  The journalists aren’t present elsewhere.  Their bosses didn’t send them to cover the protests Tutu was speaking at in Boston or New York, for the most part.

Lots of other drafts of history are then rewritten, for the text books, and for the obituaries, when once again Desmond Tutu’s centrality to the struggle against South African apartheid will be highlighted, with most everything else papered over or ignored entirely.  Others will recall Tutu’s service to the global social movements that arose in the decades after apartheid, to which he gave the full weight of his moral standing — whether these movements were covered by the corporate press or not, whether most of us knew these movements existed or not.

Yes, for those of us who were involved with the social movements that were active when Tutu was a spry young man of 70 or so, we will remember him as a fierce critic of capitalism, of Israeli apartheid, and of US and British wars of aggression.  And we know why he is being praised now by media outlets and politicians who have had no time or space for him since 1998 or so.

Desmond Tutu failed to remain in his historical place.  Had he played his cards differently in the post-South African apartheid period, he could have been a very rich and even more venerated man, winning lots more awards and schmoozing with the world’s power brokers.  Instead, before his official retirement from public life at the age of 79, he spent his seventies campaigning around the world as part of social movements for equality, dignity, and peace, and being a thorn in the side of so many of the rich and powerful people praising him today.

Dead people can’t speak out in their own defense, which makes them much less dangerous than when they were alive (especially if they died of natural causes).  So it’s up to those of us who are still here to speak, and to remember.  Long live Desmond Tutu.  Long live Desmond Tutu’s vision of a world free of oppression — a world in which so many of the politicians praising him today would be in front of a truth and reconciliation commission tomorrow, if Tutu were calling the shots.  Amandla awethu.  Our time will come.

counterpunch.org

By Joe LAURIA

Former President Harry Truman told reporters two days after Dag Hammarskjöld’s death on Sept. 18, 1961 that the U.N. secretary-general  “was on the point of getting something done when they killed him. Notice that I said ‘when they killed him.’”

The mystery of the second U.N. secretary-general’s death festered until the 2011 book Who Killed Hammarskjöld? by British researcher Susan Williams, who uncovered new evidence that pointed to the likelihood that U.S., British and South African intelligence had a hand in his death in a plane crash in Northern Rhodesia, today’s Zambia. on his way to negotiate a cease-fire in Katanga’s separatist war from the Congo.

Williams’ findings led to an independent commission that called on the UN to reopen its 1962 probe in the killing, which ended with an open verdict. “The possibility … the plane was … forced into descent by some form of hostile action is supported by sufficient evidence to merit further inquiry,” the commission concluded.

The UN General Assembly on Dec. 30, 2014 passed a resolution establishing a panel of experts to examine the new evidence and called on nations to declassify any relevant information.  In July 2015, the panel reported that it received limited cooperation from U.S. and other intelligence agencies. 

UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon at the time noted that “in some cases, member states have not provided a substantive response, have not responded at all or have maintained the classified status of the documents in question despite the passage of time.”

To this day the U.S. and other governments have continued to stonewall the U.N. investigation. The National Security Agency says it has files but are refusing to turn them over, 60 years after the event. In November last year, The Observer in London revealed that a Belgian mercenary pilot, who died in 2007, confessed to a friend that he had shot down Hammarskjöld’s plane.

Consortium News Editor Joe Lauria wrote a series of three articles for The Wall Street Journal, including the first story in the United States about the new evidence.  We are republishing the series here on the 60th anniversary of Hammarskjöld’s death.  

U.N. Considers Reopening Probe into 1961 Crash that Killed Dag Hammarskjöld New evidence of possible foul play has emerged

By Joe Lauria
The Wall Street Journal
May 19, 2014

UNITED NATIONS—The United Nations is considering reopening its investigation into the mysterious 1961 plane crash that killed then-U.N. chief Dag Hammarskjöld after new evidence of possible foul play emerged.

The U.N. General Assembly put the case back on its agenda in March at the recommendation of Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon after more than half a century of speculation that the Swedish diplomat’s plane was either sabotaged or shot down.

UN Seeks Clues on 1961 Death of Secretary-General Dag Hammarskjöld Panel of Experts Will Evaluate New Evidence

By Joe Lauria
The Wall Street Journal
Dec. 30, 2014

UNITED NATIONS—The U.N. called on any nation with information that may shed light on the 1961 death of Secretary-General Dag Hammarskjöld to disclose it after evidence emerged in the past few years suggesting foul play.

The request was part of a resolution adopted by all 193 nations in the U.N. General Assembly on Monday, which also establishes an independent panel of experts to examine the new evidence.

The inquiry aims to resolve one of global diplomacy’s most enduring mysteries: What caused a Swedish DC-6 airliner carrying one of the era’s most renowned statesmen to crash into a forest on its way to the former British colony of Northern Rhodesia?

Mr. Hammarskjöld, a Swedish diplomat, had been en route there half a century ago to negotiate a peace deal with separatists in the mineral-rich Katangan province in newly independent Congo, whose forces U.N. troops were fighting. At the time, both Sweden and Northern Rhodesia blamed the crash on pilot error, and a 1962 U.N. investigation ended without conclusion.

Evidence suggesting that the diplomat was shot down by mercenaries fighting for Katanga emerged in a 2011 book, “Who Killed Hammarskjöld?” That sparked new interest in the case. The book led to the formation of the independent Hammarskjöld Commission, made up of veteran international jurists.

In a September 2013 report, the commission examined both new and previously ignored evidence, including witness accounts of a second plane firing on Mr. Hammarskjöld’s plane.

“The possibility…the plane was…forced into its descent by some form of hostile action is supported by sufficient evidence to merit further inquiry,” the report concluded.

That notion was bolstered by Charles Southall, a former U.S. naval officer who was working at a National Security Agency listening post in Cyprus on the night of the crash. He raised the possibility that the Central Intelligence Agency has a tape-recorded radio communication by a mercenary who carried out the alleged air attack on Mr. Hammarskjöld’s plane.

Mr. Southall told the Hammarskjöld Commission that about three hours before the crash, he was called to work by a supervisor who delivered a cryptic message, telling him to expect an important event. Mr. Southall said he then heard a recording—intercepted seven minutes earlier—of a pilot carrying out an attack on Mr. Hammarskjöld’s plane.

Mr. Southall told The Journal that the intercept he heard was over a Central Intelligence Agency—not an NSA—circuit. The CIA refused to confirm or deny the existence of any intercept following a Freedom of Information Act, or FOIA, request by The Journal. The agency upheld its decision after The Journal appealed it.

The General Assembly resolution followed Mr. Ban’s call earlier this year for the assembly to ask governments to “declassify any relevant records in their possession” related to Mr. Hammarskjöld’s death.

General Assembly resolutions aren’t legally binding. But by consenting, President Barack Obama’s administration has committed to make available any material it may have related to Mr. Hammarskjöld’s death from the CIA or any other party.

A senior American official said this month that the U.S. had already shown two classified documents to Carl Bildt, the Swedish foreign minister until this year, who called them “trivial” and “immaterial.” Those were NSA documents, another U.S. official said.

In response to a FOIA request by the Hammarskjöld Commission, the NSA said it doesn’t have a transcript or an audio recording of what Mr. Southall says he heard. But the NSA asked the State Department to release a cable sent by then-U.S. ambassador to Congo, Edmund Gullion, just hours after the crash. The State Department complied.

“There is possibility [Mr. Hammarskjöld] was shot down by the single pilot who has harassed U.N. operations,” Mr. Gullion wrote, identifying the pilot as Belgian mercenary Jan Van Risseghem, who died in 2007.

The Hammarskjöld Commission report attempted to explore a motive for a killing. It set out the geopolitical context in which powerful interests saw Mr. Hammarskjöld’s defense of African nationalism as a threat.

The Federation of Rhodesia and Nyasaland and South Africa supported Katangan independence to keep the province as a buffer against the southward wave of African nationalism, the report said.

The Belgian mining company, Union Minière du Haut Katanga—now called Umicore—supported independence to prevent Congolese nationalization of Katanga’s rich uranium and cobalt resources, the commission said. At the time Katanga supplied 80%of the West’s cobalt, which is widely used in batteries, jet engines and in the medical industry.

The province’s uranium was used in the manufacture of the Hiroshima and Nagasaki atomic bombs, and keeping the uranium from a pro-Soviet Congo was also a CIA priority, the commission said.

Dag Hammarskjöld at Idlewild Airport upon his return to New York from the Republic of the Congo. Aug. 6, 1960. (UN Photo)

U.N. Secretary-General Presses Probe Into Former Chief’s Death in 1961 Ban Ki-moon cites new evidence surrounding the crash that killed Dag Hammarskjöld

By Joe Lauria
The Wall Street Journal
July 6, 2015

UNITED NATIONS—U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon asked the General Assembly to open a full-scale probe into the plane crash that killed former U.N. chief Dag Hammarskjöld in 1961, after an independent panel reported Monday that evidence recently uncovered was worth investigating.

The panel reported that the continued refusal by intelligence agencies of the U.S. and other governments to declassify documents may be hindering the “final revelation” into what caused the crash. The panel recommended Mr. Ban continue to urge governments to disclose or declassify the documents, or allow him “privileged access” to information the governments may possess about the circumstances of Mr. Hammarskjöld’s death.

“I note … that in some cases, member states have not provided a substantive response, have not responded at all or have maintained the classified status of the documents in question despite the passage of time,” Mr. Ban said in his letter to the General Assembly. “I intend to follow up with the member states concerned.” The secretary-general said he’s appointed a special counsel to interact with U.S. and other intelligence agencies.

Mr. Hammarskjöld was killed on his way to Northern Rhodesia—now Zambia—when his Swedish DC-6 airliner plunged into a forest 9 miles from his destination in the city of Ndola on Sept. 18, 1961.

He was on his way to negotiate a peace agreement there with Moise Tshombe, leader of the separatist Katanga province in the newly independent Congo. Mr. Hammarskjöld supported the spreading anti-colonial movement in Africa at the time and opposed mineral-rich Katanga leaving the Congo. U.N. troops were fighting Katanganese mercenaries about 100 miles away as Mr. Hammarskjöld was about to land.

Why the plane crashed has never been established.

A 2011 book “Who Killed Hammarskjöld?” by British researcher Susan Williams revealed significant new evidence about the crash and inspired an independent commission that recommended in 2013 that Mr. Ban either reopen an inconclusive 1962 U.N. investigation or start a new one. The secretary-general asked the U.N. General Assembly to create a panel to look into the new evidence, which the assembly did in December. Both Mr. Ban and the assembly, in a resolution backed by the U.S. and U.K., urged governments to declassify any information pertinent to the case.

The panel reported that it received only limited cooperation from U.S. intelligence agencies. It said the truth about what happened to Mr. Hammarskjöld’s plane would still require the U.N. to further “critically address remaining information gaps,” including what may be contained in classified material and other information held by member governments.

The panel’s report dismissed an array of the new evidence, including information suggesting that the plane may have been hijacked, accidentally shot down by a pilot trying to divert it, or that a bomb was placed on board. Using medical records from the time, the panel also rejected accounts that Mr. Hammarskjöld and the other 15 people aboard who were killed had been shot either on the plane or on the ground.

But the panel didn’t dismiss evidence that the plane may have been deliberately shot down. The three panel members traveled to Ndola to interview witnesses of the air disaster who told them they had seen a second plane near Mr. Hammarskjöld’s, and that the DC-6 had been set on fire before it went down.

The panel also examined accounts by Charles Southall and Paul Abram, two American servicemen working for the National Security Agency on the night of the crash, who said they heard intercepted radio transmissions indicating Mr. Hammarskjöld’s plane was shot down.

Although he worked for the NSA, Mr. Southall told The Wall Street Journal the intercept was over a Central Intelligence Agency circuit. The CIA declined to confirm or deny the existence of any intercept following a Freedom of Information Act request by The Journal. The agency upheld its decision after The Journal appealed it. The NSA told the independent commission that reported last year that it had no record of the Southall incident.

The NSA had one related file declassified. It was a cable sent by then-U.S. Ambassador to Congo Edmund Gullion hours after the crash, saying there was a possibility Mr. Hammarskjöld was shot down by a single pilot who had “harassed” U.N. operations, Mr. Gullion wrote. He identified the pilot as Belgian mercenary Jan Van Risseghem, who died in 2007.

The panel learned from the Belgian government that Mr. Hammarskjöld was aware of the danger posed by Mr. Van Risseghem. The secretary-general sent a telegram to Brussels two days before his fatal flight asking the foreign ministry’s help in “putting an end to Van Risseghem’s criminal acts against the U.N.,” the report says. Belgium then investigated and discovered that Mr. Van Risseghem had left Belgium to return to Katanga on Sept. 16, and wouldn’t have arrived in time to carry out the attack, the report says.

consortiumnews.com

Inaccurate Assumptions About Algeria

Algerian President Bouteflika’s surprise about-face in going back on his previous decision to run for a fifth consecutive term in office has been the talk of Africa the entire week, with this announcement taking many off guard but nonetheless largely being met with universal applause as the most responsible recourse to avoid an outbreak of violence in this strategically positioned North African state. The country had been experiencing an unprecedented wave of peaceful protests in reaction to his originally declared candidacy fed by the majority-youthful population’s indignation at high unemployment and a stagnant economy, to say nothing of how insulted they felt that an elderly leader who is speculated to be physically and perhaps even mentally incapacitated after suffering a 2013 stroke would be put forth once more as the face of the nation by what are thought to be his powerful military-intelligence “deep state” handlers.

A lot has already been written about what might come next in Algeria, but most observers are either analyzing events in a vacuum or are making predictable comparisons to the 2011 “Arab Spring” theater-wide Color Revolutions, neither of which are entirely accurate because they both miss the fact that Algeria represents the eighth non-electoral regime change in Africa in as many years and is therefore just the latest manifestation of a larger trend that has hitherto not yet been brought to the public’s attention. It’s true that there are shades of the “Arab Spring” in what’s presently taking place in Algeria, but simply stopping there doesn’t do the country justice because it misleadingly implies that foreign powers had a predominant hand in guiding the course of events there. It also overlooks everything else of regime change relevance that took place in the continent over the past eight years and therefore inaccurately assumes that this is a one-off event unrelated to anything prior.

Rolling Regime Changes

For simplicity’s sake, here’s a breakdown of the most pertinent events apart from the Algerian one that was just described, including the two non-electoral regime change attempts that failed, two electoral ones that deserve mention for reasons that will be explained below, and a short international intervention in support of a mostly forgotten regime change operation:

* 2011-2012 “Arab Spring” Events In Tunisia, Egypt, And Libya:

The whole world is aware of what happened during that time so there isn’t much need to rehash it other than to point out the author’s interpretation of those events as an externally provoked theater-wide regime change campaign that was originally intended to replace long-serving secular governments with Turkish-aligned Muslim Brotherhood ones prior to the inevitable leadership transition that would eventually take place after their elderly leaders pass away.

The whole point in preempting this process and artificially accelerating it was to ensure that their successors would remain geopolitically loyal to the US, which couldn’t be guaranteed if this “changing of the guard” was “allowed” to occur “naturally”. Moreover, the US thought that it could weaponize the semi-populist appeal of political Islam in those countries in order to portray its proxies as having the “genuine” support of the public. This nevertheless backfired in Egypt but was ultimately manageable.

* 2014 Burkina Faso:

The sudden onset of progressively violent protests in response to long-serving President Blaise Compaoré’s attempts to change the constitution to run for yet another term quickly resulted in a regime change that was briefly challenged a year later by loyalist special forces in a failed coup. Some observers predicted that the “Burkinabe Revolution” would trigger an “African Spring” against other rulers who had been in office for decades and also were speculated to soon announce their intent to follow in Compaoré’s footsteps and change their own constitutions as well, though this forecast didn’t unfold as expected.

Still, the 2014 Burkina Faso regime change could in hindsight be seen as evidence that genuine (as in, not externally provoked, guided, and/or hijacked) protests are capable of unseating entrenched governments and the permanent military, intelligence, and diplomatic bureaucratic structures (“deep state”) behind them. It should also be noted that the international community recognized Compaoré’s resignation and subsequent decision to go into self-imposed exile (thought to be motivated by his desire to evade justice for his alleged corruption and other crimes by the post-coup authorities) whereas they were against the military coup attempt by his loyalists a year later.

* 2017 The Gambia:

Most of the world has forgotten about it and barely anyone paid much attention to it at the time anyhow, but a Senegalese-led ECOWAS military intervention toppled Gambian President Jammeh at the beginning of the year after he refused to step down from office following his electoral loss a month prior in December 2016. The leader of this tiny sliver of an African state was also becoming internationally reviled by the West even before the 2016 election because of his decision to withdraw from the Commonwealth of Nations and begin the process of doing the same when it came to the International Criminal Court. In addition, his 2015 declaration of an Islamic Republic also earned him the West’s consternation, not that they needed any other excuses given the aforementioned.

The Gambian case study somewhat mirrors the controversial French-led UN intervention that took place in the Ivory Coast in 2011 following a similarly disputed election a few months prior, though the Ivorian leader wasn’t as lucky as his Gambian counterpart in that he was captured by French-backed forces and extradited to The Hague, where he was charged with war crimes but eventually acquitted earlier this year. The lesson to be had from both the Ivory Coast and The Gambia is that international coalitions can be assembled to remove recalcitrant leaders from office who refuse to accept electoral results, though this is less of a “rule” and more of a trend, though one that might gain support at home and/or abroad if it follows highly publicized protests that give the intervention the pretense of legitimacy (whether genuine or not).

* 2017 Angola:

This rising power in Southern Africa experienced a democratic transfer of power that summer from revolutionary leader Jose Eduardo dos Santos to fellow MPLA member and designated successor João Lourenço in what was initially thought by many to be a carefully coordinated “shuffling of the cards” by the Angolan “deep state” but which eventually proved to be a “deep state” coup after Lourenço quickly went to work eradicating the power structure that his predecessor implemented and even going after the former “royal family” (in particular, his daughter [who’s also Africa’s richest woman and its first female billionaire] and son on corruption charges). Suffice to say, this was a shock for many, though generally a pleasant one for most.

The abovementioned events prove that sometimes the “deep state” is the most influential force driving regime change in certain countries, namely those with post-war revolutionary parties that still remain in power. It’ll turn out that Angola might have been an inspiration for what later took place in Ethiopia and just occurred in Algeria, albeit with both unfolding under slightly different circumstances and in varying ways, but the point is that the so-called “powers that be” might either be engaged in serious infighting among themselves and/or decide that the most responsible course of action in the name of national stability is either “shuffle the cards” or carry out a genuine regime change behind the scenes to preemptively or reactively quell (potentially) destabilizing (anti-corruption-driven or election-related) unrest.

* 2017 Zimbabwe:

The tail end of 2017 saw the Zimbabwean military carry out a de-facto coup against nonagenarian revolutionary leader Robert Mugabe during a period of rising civil society unrest in this economically destitute country. Barely anyone disputes that this was indeed a military coup, and one that was possibly partially inspired by Mugabe’s controversial grooming of his wife as his successor at the expense of the ZANU-PF political and military elite, but it wasn’t legally recognized as such abroad because otherwise the African Union and other actors would have been compelled to impose varying degrees of sanctions against the country in response.

This interestingly shows that some military coups are supported by the so-called “international community” while others such as the soon-to-be-described Gabonese attempt earlier this year aren’t, suggesting  that there might be certain criteria involved in determining whether such seizures of power (or attempts thereof) will be (even begrudgingly) accepted abroad or not. The 2005 and 2008 Mauritanian military ones and the 2010 Nigerien one weren’t endorsed by the world but serious actions weren’t taken to isolate them both because they uncontestably succeeded and also out of concern for destabilizing the security situation in the terrorist-afflicted West African region.

* 2018 South Africa:

Jacob Zuma was pressured to resign in early 2018 due to what many have interpreted as being a “deep state” coup against him carried out by a rival faction of the ruling ANC led by his eventual successor Ramaphosa. Party infighting heated up after the BRICS leader found himself ensnared in corruption scandals that may or may not have been tacitly facilitated by his rivals, with all of this occurring against the backdrop of rising anti-government unrest and the increasing appeal of opposition parties. Whether out of the pursuit of pure power and/or sensing that the party needed to change both its external branding and internal policies in order to remain in power, Ramaphosa eventually deposed Zuma and took the reins of this rising African Great Power despite the electorate never voting him into office.

The 2018 situation in South Africa showed that even the most outwardly stable of the continent’s countries and the one most highly regarded by the “international community” (both Western and non-Western alike, the latter in regards to BRICS) can experience a non-electoral regime change, albeit one that was mostly executed behind the scenes following an intertwined pressure campaign by the public and the ruling party’s rival faction that aspired to enter into power. In a sense, South Africa – which is generally considered to be one of Africa’s most vibrant democracies – set the tone for the rest of the continent because the message that it sent was that all of its peers could potentially do the same without any external criticism being levelled against them whatsoever so long as they pulled it off smoothly and labelled it an “internal affair”.

* 2018 Ethiopia:

Ethiopia captivated the world’s imagination after its post-war ruling party decided upon the relatively young 41-year-old former military intelligence officer Abiy Ahmed to be its new leader following the outbreak of violent unrest in 2016 that threatened to return Africa’s second most populous country to civil war. To make a long story short, Abiy is of the Oromo ethnicity that represents the country’s largest plurality but which has traditionally been underrepresented in its ruling class, especially following the rise to power of the Tigray-led EPRDF, but he swiftly got to work dismantling the party’s “old guard” in what can only be described as a “deep state” coup with overwhelming public support. Importantly, he also made peace with neighboring Eritrea and put the two fraternal people’s lingering tensions behind them as they jointly embarked on crafting a new regional future for the Horn of Africa.

Ethiopia set the precedent whereby large-scale unrest might serve as an incentive for responsible factions of the “deep state” to carry out a coup against their ruling rivals, building upon the Angolan antecedent in that the Southern African case didn’t occur in response to any significant protests or outbreak of violence like the one in the Horn of Africa did.  The events in Ethiopia are also evidence that even the most entrenched and militarily powerful “deep states” are comprised of diverse factions, some of which have radically different ideas than the ruling ones, as might turn out to be the case in Algeria too depending on how the situation there unfolds. The main point, however, is that “deep state” factions might use naturally occurring or externally provoked unrest as their pretext for rising to power behind the scenes and ultimately in public.

* 2018 Comoros:

It’s difficult to categorize what exactly took place last year in the island nation, but it can most objectively be summed up as a semi-popular and possibly externally influenced attempt to actively challenge the country’s regional center by a peripheral unit that felt disenfranchised by democratically instituted constitutional reforms that removed the coup-prone state’s rotating presidency clause. There was briefly fear that Anjouan would attempt to secede from the union once more and that this scenario might provoke another international intervention to restore national unity like what took place in 2008, but these were abated after the military quickly restored law and order after dislodging the couple dozen fighters who attempted to take over that part of the country.

What’s important to pay attention to is that intra-state regional disputes could dangerously create the pretext for nationwide or provincial regime changes depending on how the course of escalating political events develops. The Comorian President in this case is thought to have taken advantage of his home region’s demographic (and consequently, electoral) dominance to legitimize his bid to remain in power, demonstrating a variant of other reform methods that have been attempted elsewhere in Africa but custom-tailored to his country’s specific situation. Even though some members of the international community criticized last summer’s referendum, they still accepted it because his initiative did in fact democratically win, even if the odds were stacked in his favor per the demographic factor that was just described.

* 2018-2019 Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC):

There was global trepidation for the past year after former President Kabila delayed his country’s first-ever democratic transfer of power for logistical reasons that he would try to change the constitution to remain in power indefinitely, something that his traditional Western  backers pressured him not to do while his new Chinese patron remained silent about on the basis that its political process is an internal affair (though its strategic cobalt interests there might have played a role in its position to stay on the good side of the government). The country gradually slid into an undeclared state of low-level civil war that could more accurately be described as a hybrid one and which could have exploded on command into a much larger conflict had he not unexpectedly reached a speculated deal with one of the opposition leaders to supposedly allow Tshisekedi to replace Kabila while the former strongman would remain the “grey cardinal” after his party came out on top in the parliamentary elections.

International media and local activists decried this stunt as a blatant undermining of what should have been a democratic transfer of power that some observers said would have rightly resulted in Fayulu winning had the vote truly been free and fair, but that candidate posed the greatest threat to the Congolese “deep state” that owes its lucrative existence to Kabila and was – as the narrative goes – sidelined in favor of Tshsekedi, the son of a well-known opposition leader. This can be seen as a hybrid form of both an “internationally recognized” election and a “deep state” coup, the former of which was universally recognized probably because of the multilateral interests involved in retaining stability in the mineral-rich country (at least for the time being) while the latter was suppressed in order not to sully the optics of the DRC’s “first-ever democratic transfer of power” (and consequently the soft power of those who endorsed Kabila’s cunning plan).

* 2019 Gabon:

As was touched upon earlier, there was a failed attempt to stage a military coup in the economically stratified and politically polarized country of Gabon where an ageing and ailing leader continues to rule as part of a political dynasty that’s been in power for over half a century. The regime change operation was quickly put down by the rest of the military forces that didn’t join in the coup, though the event succeeded in shedding global light on the underlying tensions prevalent in this OPEC member country. It also temporarily raised concerns about whether the French would use their in-country military forces to aid the embattled government and “restore democracy” if the rebels succeeded in seizing power from their proxy.

Because of its sudden onset and abrupt end, the international community had no choice but to reactively condemn it like they always usually do whenever something of the sort happens, but it might have been begrudgingly accepted just like the Mauritanian and Nigerien ones that preceded it earlier along this timeline if it succeeded without any serious resistance. That wasn’t the case in Gabon because it seemed like the military faction of the “deep state” is satisfied with President Bongo, possibly due to some behind-the-scenes patronage relationship, and therefore wouldn’t want to sacrifice their own self-interests even in the name of settling a still-lingering electoral dispute that sharply divided the nation a few years prior.

Key Variables

In view of the insight that can be gleaned from the abovementioned ten examples, it’s possible to identify the key variables that pertain to each targeted leader, the trigger event for the non-electoral regime change operation, and the determining factors behind its success or lack thereof:

Targets:

The typical target seems to be a long-serving elderly leader with speculative health concerns who represents a power structure (whether his own or inherited) that increasingly large segments of the population and/or a faction of his “deep state” has come to believe (whether on their own or with foreign infowar and NGO “nudging”) doesn’t support their interests. They’re also usually plagued by accusations of corruption (whether real, exaggerated, or false) that serve to incite unrest during periods of nationwide economic hardship caused by either systemic mismanagement, Hybrid War, and/or a drop in the price of primary exports (oil, commodities, etc.).

Triggers:

It’s usually the case that something directly or indirectly related to an impending “changing of the guard” or political transition triggers the non-electoral regime change movement, be it efforts by the incumbent to change the constitution in order to run for another term, declaring their candidacy for the x-consecutive time after already serving for many years, fears by a “deep state” faction that the incumbent will lose the next election and therefore lead to their successor possibly dismantling the power structure they inherit (usually on “anti-corruption” grounds for populist appeal), a disputed election, or in the case of the “Arab Spring”, the perception of so-called “regional momentum”.

Determinants:

Most non-electoral regime changes succeed because of factors beyond the public’s view, namely the state of affairs within the “deep state” and in particular the loyalty of the military forces that enjoy a legal monopoly on violence by virtue of their being. It’s important, however, that there’s some “plausible” public pretext for the regime change, be it protests, a corruption scandal, or a disputed election, and the unity of the “deep state” is also another important determinant because rival factions might abuse the aforesaid for their own purposes. Sometimes the threat of sanctions against the incumbent and their clique for using force to quell unrest could widen “deep state” divisions and facilitate regime change.

Who’s Next On The Chopping Block?

All of this begs the question of which countries might be next to experience their own non-electoral regime changes, with the following ones most closely aligning with the author’s model elaborated on above and being presented in alphabetical order:

* Cameroon:

President Biya won his sixth term in office late last year following a serious breakdown of law and order in the separatist Anglophone region abutting the Nigerian border, which came on the heels of Cameroon finally seeming to surmount the challenge posed by Boko Haram in the northern part of the country. The primary geostrategic consequence of his ouster under the possible scenario of a nascent Color Revolution in the cities merging with the Unconventional War in the rural periphery might be the destabilization of what the author described as China’s plans to create a “West-Central African CPEC”, though if managed properly by the “deep state”, it might contrarily stabilize this megaproject’s viability if the choreography succeeds in placating the population.

* Republic of the Congo:

The other less-discussed Congo located between the DRC and Gabon, this one is presided over by one of Africa’s longest-serving leaders who recently joined OPEC and also put an end to a simmering insurgency in the Pool region surrounding the capital. Unlike Cameroon, it’s less clear what the geostrategic consequences of a non-electoral regime change here could be, but it might potentially be a factor in whether the country continues to remain within the joint orbit of France and China or decisively pivots to one or the other. In this sense, it could change the “balance of power” in Central Africa and contribute to the gradual retreat of Françafrique in the face of overall Chinese gains in France’s historic “sphere of influence” and Russia’s recent ones in the Central African Republic.

* Chad:

Occupying the pivot space between Saharan and Equatorial Africa, President Idriss Deby came to power on the back of a coup in 1990 and has remained in office ever since, mostly relying on the fact that his country’s military is regarded as one of the strongest in all of the continent and has an operational reach as far west as Mali. He’s not without his domestic detractors, however, some of whom have led large rebel formations towards the capital in several unsuccessful coup attempts that were at times thwarted through the intervention of his French ally, such as last month when Paris bombed an anti-government convoy that crossed into northern Chad from Libya. For all of its faults, Chad seems to be “too big to fail” for France and it’s unlikely that the former colonizer will ever let this prized piece of real estate slip from its grasp.

* Equatorial Guinea:

President Teodoro Obiang Nguema Mbasogo has reigned for nearly four decades and survived numerous coup attempts, some of which were planned by mercenaries in this tiny but oil-rich island-coastal nation in the strategic Gulf of Guinea.  Being located where it is and with the resource wealth that it has, it’s an important piece of the African chessboard that France might want to pry away from its American ally in order to reinforce its policy of Françafrique that’s facing its greatest threat ever from China and Russia in Central Africa. Apart from the “friendly competition” between those two Great Powers, there isn’t really much else that can be said at this time about the possible outcome of any non-electoral regime change in Equatorial Guinea.

* Mozambique:

The incumbent leader has only been in power for a few years, but he represents the corrupt and increasingly reviled FRELIMO party that’s been ruling Mozambique since independence, though to their credit, the authorities have been progressively implementing what appears to be a “phased leadership transition” to incorporate the former RENAMO rebel opposition into the country’s “deep state” as part of a peace deal. That said, this responsible arrangement could always collapse at any time, and the country is nowadays threatened by mysterious jihadists who’ve been wreaking havoc along the northern borderland with Tanzania, so “black swan” developments that might trigger a non-electoral regime change are more likely here than in most of the other predicted targets, which could have an impact on global LNG geopolitics given its sizeable offshore reserves (coincidentally located in close proximity to where the new terrorist threat emerged) and regional security.

* Sudan:

Sudan is undoubtedly in the throes of a multifaceted Hybrid War that the author elaborated upon at length in a previous piece late last year and which should be skimmed for reference if one’s interested in the strategic nuances involved, but the latest update is that its “deep state” might be preparing for a “phased leadership transition” in a manner which seemed to have influenced the Algerian one that suddenly followed soon thereafter. Simply put, Sudan is indispensable to China’s Silk Road vision for Africa and is also Russia’s gateway to the continent, so its destabilization and possible “Balkanization” like President al-Bashir warned about a year and a half ago would inflict very serious damage to multipolar integration processes all across the continent.

* Uganda:

Finally, the country that most closely fits the criteria of the author’s non-electoral regime change model is Uganda, the military heavyweight in the transregional East and Central African space that’s been ruled by President Museveni for the last one-third of a century. During the last few years, however, his mostly-youthful population (which is also one of the fastest growing in Africa, notwithstanding the large amounts of migration [sometimes illegal] that it receives) has become restive and most recently (and one can argue, quite naively) placed their hopes in the singer-turned-politician Bobi Wine because they see in him a comparatively younger face of anti-systemic change. However a non-electoral regime change might unfold in Uganda, its consequences would change the entire “balance of power” in this strategic part of the world at the height of the New Great Game and modern-day “Scramble for Africa” in the New Cold War.

Concluding Thoughts

Using the latest events in Algeria as the lead-in to discussing the other non-electoral regime changes and attempts thereof that took place in Africa since the “Arab Spring”, it’s clear to see that three separate – but sometimes interconnected scenarios – have unfolded, be they Color Revolutions like in the aforementioned 2011 events, genuine non-externally-influenced people’s movements like 2014 Burkina Faso, or “deep state” coups such as what took place in 2017 Angola and which later structurally inspired the subsequent ones in Ethiopia and Algeria (both of which were driven in part by the first two scenarios). All countries have power structures (“deep states”), but some are more flexible than others when confronting bottom-up pressure (which may or may not be externally influenced – and in the future, possibly weaponized against China’s geostrategic interests), which usually makes or breaks the regime change operation and will determine whether the forecasted targets will survive if they end up on the chopping block too.

eurasiafuture.com

President Cyril Ramaphosa of South Africa is now claiming that the unrest that has wracked his country since July 9 is an organized insurrection. “It is clear now that the events of the past week were nothing less than a deliberate, coordinated, and well-planned attack on our democracy,” he said in an address to the nation. Twelve “persons of interest” have been identified, he said, and at least one of these ringleaders has already been taken into custody.

It would be convenient for Ramaphosa if this eruption of lawlessness, which has left more than 200 dead and threatened food and gas supplies in the provinces of Gauteng and KwaZulu Natal, were the work of a dozen malcontents. It would even be tolerable if it were a political protest aimed at freeing former president Jacob Zuma, whose arrest in connection with corruption charges was the spark for the riots.

Unfortunately, talk of an “insurrection” is a distraction from the real cause of the violence, which is deeper and harder to solve. South African society has been lurching toward dysfunction for a long time. This month’s violence is a sign that the country’s chronic problems may have finally reached a breaking point.

Since the beginning of African National Congress (ANC) rule in 1994, South Africa has been the anticolonial movement’s great success story. While other African countries fell victim to coups and civil wars, South Africa carried on. Yes, it was a one-party state, corruption was rife, violent crime was out of control, and unemployment hovered between 25 and 33 percent—but somehow the country muddled through.

Alas, muddling through is a tactic that can only work for so long. There are about 14 million registered taxpayers in South Africa, out of a population of nearly 60 million. The bulk of income tax revenue comes from just 574,000 individuals. The ANC’s wager has always been that this tiny tax base could be squeezed for all it’s worth in order to fund lavish social benefits for the rest of the population.

Ramaphosa has articulated this gamble explicitly, according to the posthumous memoir of Mario Oriani-Ambrosini, a longtime MP for the Inkatha Freedom Party who died in 2014. During negotiations over the post-apartheid constitution in 1994, Ambrosini wrote, “Ramaphosa told me of the ANC’s 25-year strategy to deal with the whites: it would be like boiling a frog alive, which is done by raising the temperature very slowly.” Under majority rule, “the black majority would pass laws transferring wealth, land, and economic power from white to black slowly and incrementally, until the whites lost all they had gained in South Africa, but without taking too much from them at any given time to cause them to rebel or fight.”

Ramaphosa got the timing right, give or take a few years, but he forgot about the third option: Rather than fight or stay and be boiled, the white minority could always just pick up and leave. When Nelson Mandela came to power, doomsayers predicted a mass exodus similar to that of the Algerian pieds-noirs. Contrary to forecasts, millions of white South Africans stayed, either because they were committed to making the “Rainbow Nation” experiment work or simply because they were too settled to emigrate. That generation is now dying, and their children are constrained by no such inertia.

For a long time, South Africa’s natural resource wealth worked in the ANC’s favor. Gold and diamonds are where they are; you can’t outsource a mine the way you can a factory. However, in 2020, AngloGold Ashanti, a successor company of Anglo American, sold its last remaining operations in South Africa, which meant the end of an unbroken streak that had lasted since Ernest Oppenheimer founded the company a century ago. Even a mining firm’s patience has limits.

The taxpaying minority’s endurance might be greater if in exchange for their money they received basic services, but these days they cannot even count on the electricity staying on. Every suburban home in Johannesburg has a generator in case of “load shedding,” or unscheduled blackouts. Most also have high walls topped with barbed wire or motion sensors. With the police unable or unwilling to do anything about break-ins and robberies, home security has become a luxury for those who can afford to buy their own. South Africa has three times as many private security guards as police.

Last week, Defense Minister Nosiviwe Mapisa-Nqakula admitted that government forces did not even try to protect shopping malls from looters because they assumed private security would take care of it. “It never occurred to us that we should move to areas such as malls, particularly because in malls, anywhere, there is always a contract between business itself and private security companies,” she explained. Even if order is restored, a dangerous lesson has been learned about the state’s inability to perform the basic functions of government in a crisis.

When the historian R.W. Johnson published his book How Long Will South Africa Survive? in 2015, he was mocked for his sensationalist title. All of the problems cited in the book—corruption, tribal tensions, a bloated public sector, gangsterism, political assassinations—had been around for years without turning South Africa into a failed state, critics said. But time may yet prove Johnson right. Ramaphosa is a weak president, well suited to a caretaker regime. If he pardons Zuma, as some have urged him to do, he might be able to end the current violence and restore the pre-COVID status quo. The question is how long that status quo can last. It is not sustainable forever.

theamericanconservative.com

South Africa is disintegrating.

After the jailing of Jacob Zuma, supporters of the former president took to the streets, ostensibly to protest but actually to simply plunder at will. The official death toll already runs into the dozens, but in a country as violent as South Africa (57 murders a day) the real toll will likely never be known for certain.

JUST IN – At least 72 people have been killed, hundreds arrested, and countless properties looted so far in spiraling unrest in South Africa triggered by the jailing of former president Jacob Zuma.pic.twitter.com/9HNgZBotCz

— Disclose.tv (@disclosetv) July 14, 2021

Rioters have plundered shops and entire shopping malls. When they run out out of normal goods, they steal livestock. When it’s too heavy to carry by hand, they bring a forklift.

pic.twitter.com/LHrLpbnMRX

— K U L A N I (@kulanicool) July 12, 2021

South Africa did everything that is being done in America right now. As a hyperdiverse multiethnic, multilingual society, South Africa has followed almost every prescription embraced by the globalist ruling class.

The specter of doom hangs over South Africa. The optimism that peaked when the country hosted the 2010 World Cup is now gone. Despite being warned for years about failing water infrastructure, local governments ignored the problem and now the country has routine, severe water crises. South Africa began experiencing rolling blackouts in 2007, and has battled them ever since. Even the government says the blackouts will likely continue for at least five more years. Hint: Bet your money that they last even longer.

Despite being the “economic superpower” of Sub-Saharan Africa, South Africa’s brain drain is significant and accelerating. Those who have options are abandoning the country.  More than four percent of all deaths are murders, and the murder rate is somehow still rising; last year it rose by 8.4 percent. But it’s not just about day-to-day violence. It’s the expectation for what is to come.

But EFF isn’t a radical outlier in South African politics. It’s the natural endgame for the country’s post-apartheid ideology. For decades, the South African economy has been shaped by a policy known as Broad Based Black Economic Employment. Despite its name, there is nothing “based” about BBBEE. Instead, the policy uses the same tactics to achieve “equity” that activists in the United States are demanding.

BBBEE relies openly and explicitly on injecting racial preferences throughout the economy. Companies receive a BBBEE scorecard based on hiring black workers, elevating black management, and giving black South Africans a share of ownership. Companies with high BBBEE scores are given favorable tax treatment and preferences in government contracts. Corporate actors are strongly incentivized to give contracts to high BBBEE scorers as well.

Why is Eskom in trouble? Because it has high operating costs and it cannot meet its debt obligations. Why? It’s ambitious programme to build two big power stations has incurred substantial cost overruns and technical faults. Why? In part it was flawed from the beginning with a small bidding pool, meaning it was likely not cost competitive from the start. Why? There was political meddling. Why? Chancellor House. Why? Contractors needed to have a black partner in order to secure contracts. Why? BEE. [PoliticsWeb.za]

In her column, Ngwenya explains how BBBEE has fueled the decay of South Africa’s power utility at every step of the process. The country has two expensive, botched power plants because Hitachi’s African subsidiary secured contracts based on black empowerment criteria rather than actual expertise. Eskom has problems with coal supply because it gave favoritism to black-owned mining companies, and even pushed foreign firms to divest from the country. In one case, the CEO of Wescoal resigned his position solely because having a white CEO hindered the company’s ability to compete in South Africa.

Eskom has experienced a skills carnage for many years, and the long spectre of race-based policies has never been far from the crime scene.

A decade after the skills shortages plaguing Eskom at the time of the 2008 financial crisis, it still cites ‘people issues’ as one of its major concerns. This is startling for a company where the staff complement has increased by almost 50% in the last 10 years. As recently as 2015 Eskom was talking about reducing the number of white engineers by 1,081 and white artisans by 2,179 in professional and mid-management positions in order that the utility could more accurately resemble the demographics of the country.

Estimates vary but Eskom has lost thousands of skilled personnel since 1994, and often paid a premium for it via costly severance packages. Many were taken up by individuals who could smell the blood in the water and for whom retirement or employment abroad presented a more attractive offer than sticking around for the looming apocalypse. [PoliticsWeb.za]

But there is more going on than skills decay rooted in racial discrimination. Just like in the United States, rampant affirmative action is an invitation to naked cronyism, insider dealing, and corruption. Burdensome racial quota laws fall heaviest on small and up-and-coming businesses, while the largest mega-corporations have the easiest time complying. If a company is to be politically rewarded for handing out ownership based on race, why not gain even more security and let the politically connected into the ownership caste? If you have to hire unqualified hacks for senior management, why not give the jobs to politicians’ children? Corrupt behavior like this happens even in the best systems. But as one South African observer notes, in that country it’s by design:

Across state in-house institutions like the South African Revenue Service, the National Prosecuting Authority and the National Intelligence Agency, black-first narratives were used to effect ‘state capture’ which meant shielding those corrupt rent-seekers (black and white) who used BEE deals, slush-funds and tax dodging to fizz their champagne while flattening the rest of us.

In the private sector, BEE is one of many onerous costs of business that the biggest, well-established firms can bear while their up-and-coming competition is hounded off the grid or else simply bankrupted. This creates a winner-take-all economy while the sum of it all shrinks. The Small Business Project’s (SBP) landmark new analysis finds that contrary to former expectations there are not millions of formal Small and Medium Enterprises (SMEs) but only about 250 000. It also notes that formal SMEs ‘only account for 28% of the jobs’ while, ‘based on international trends, this should be about 60% or 70%’. [South African Institute of Race Relations]

As the country has broken down, race hate against white people isn’t used to reduce inequality but to increase it — much like in America. One of South Africa’s richest families is the Gupta family; Indian immigrants who arrived in 1993 to profit off the end of apartheid. The Guptas soon built a close relationship with the now-jailed Jacob Zuma. When Zuma became president, his actions benefited the Guptas to such a degree that it constituted state capture.

Public officials responsible for various state bodies say they were directly instructed by the Guptas to take decisions that would advance the brothers’ business interests.

It is alleged that compliance was rewarded with money and promotion, while disobedience was punished with dismissal.

Black First Land First remains a marginal political party, but one party that isn’t marginal is the Economic Freedom Fighters, South Africa’s third-largest party. Even after the exposure of the Gupta family’s methods, the party’s leader embraced the racial attack on South Africa’s white minority.

Addressing thousands of EFF supporters in red regalia and berets, [EFF leader Julius] Malema said Mbeki and former finance minister Trevor Manuel were wrong when they said there’s no white monopoly capital in the country.

“I know president Mbeki, you’re fighting your own factional battles. But when you fight your battles, don’t distort the truth. Whites are monopolising our economy,” he said.

He said that’s one reason why they don’t want to invest their money into the country’s economy through industrialisation “because they don’t trust South Africa’s democracy”.

“There is white dominance and control of our economy. Today when you remove the ownership by pension fund from the stock exchange, the remaining 90% belongs to white families,” he said, before asking “who owns the land, factories and monopoly industries in the country”? [News24]

Malema has also infamously declared that his party is not calling for the murder of white people, “at least for now,” a comment that was declared to not be hate speech by South Africa’s human rights commission.

In South Africa’s 2019 elections, the EFF received almost 11 percent of the vote. The party’s rise has driven the ANC to contain it by gradually moving toward a constitutional amendment that would allow the state to confiscate land from white farmers without any compensation. For a preview of how that works, just look at neighboring Zimbabwe:

But as South Africa’s CRT-driven economic policies break down, the country is likely to only get more radical. Much of South Africa has fully embraced the ideology of American critical race theory darling Ibram X. Kendi, which holds that if outcomes differ between two racial groups, the only possible cause is racism, and the only possible remedy is direct intervention to correct the “injustice.” The disastrous example of Zimbabwe barely matters.

As South African society frays apart, the always-dangerous country is returning to the levels of violence seen at the end of apartheid, when onlookers feared full-blown genocide was imminent. It’s not from lack of police. South Africa has one police officer for every four hundred people, a substantially higher figure than the United States. But the police are borderline useless at actually protecting the nation’s law-abiding citizens, who are forced to rely on private security or their own devices in order to keep themselves safe.

From the late 90s onwards, in the name of hitting diversity quotas, South Africa’s police adopted a “fast-track” promotion strategy while also gutting training requirements for new recruits. Senior police leadership became political appointees selected for loyalty rather than competence. The end result is a shoddy police force that kills people with hammers for violating COVID-19 lockdowns but abandons the population in the face of lethal riots.

Despite being the most consistently violent country on Earth, South Africa is unwilling to use real force to stand up for civilization. The death penalty was abolished in 1995 and hasn’t been in use since 1990.

But just like how American elites are increasingly obsessed with century-old riots while ignoring the anarchy they unleashed in 2020, in South Africa rising crime rates have been coupled with a growing obsession with the ever-more-distant legacy of apartheid. Just days before the riots began, South African law enforcment announced a new effort to investigate and prosecute decades-old crimes during the apartheid era.

The National Prosecuting Authority (NPA) and the Hawks [a police organization that targets organized crime, economic crime, corruption, and other serious crime] are bolstering resources to go after those responsible for apartheid-era atrocity crimes in the 1960s.

In a joint statement on Sunday, the crime fighting bodies said the NPA was in the process of setting up a specialist unit to investigate and prosecute these crimes.

…

The Hawks, meanwhile, had created a dedicated detective team of 34 “competent and highly skilled” former police officials to assign to such cases. [News24]

Nobody wanted South Africa to fail. It would have been nice if the hamhanded affirmative action and redistribution policies of the “Rainbow Nation” had quickly created a successful, wealthy, safe multiracial democracy. But they did not, because those policies are fundamentally not based in reality. A nation cannot raise up the weak by tearing down and ruining the strong. It does not become prosperous by despoiling the rich to simply hand their wealth to the poor (or by extorting them to give politicians a cut). It cannot achieve peace by letting the mob rampage, loot, burn, and kill at will.

For three decades, South Africa has avoided the calamitous implosion suffered by Zimbabwe. But because it has accepted the same basic assumptions about reality, it will soon suffer the same fate. And if America continues down the same path, the path demanded by anti-white doctrines such as Critical Race Theory and other identity politics hustlers, it too will collapse in turn.

revolver.news

From the materialist standpoint of Victorian England or 1950’s Atomic America it was probably very reasonable to consider Africa “poor”. Even as recently as 2000 the Economist called Africa “The Hopeless Continent”, implying that even with the help of the almighty West it is doomed to an eternity of geopolitical irrelevance and struggle for survival. This however at the start of the third decade of the new centuries is becoming an obsolete opinion.

Shockingly CNN’s series “Marketplace Africa” presents a version of the Heartland of the Global South in a light similar to what you hear from people who were actually born there, i.e. things are actually changing and developing. Obviously there is a very good chance that the motivation to do such a project by CNN is probably a form of White Man’s Guilt, cherry picking stories to make the region look nice. But since there is now plenty of real economic news to take from Africa no overinflating stories is necessary. Africa now is a real “marketplace” that has growing value and here are some reasons why.

Photo: Taking a virtual tour of Africa via Google Maps shows areas that are far from dirt poor like downtown Kigali, Rwanda.

Winning the Numbers Game

The United Nations projects that Global Population growth is beginning to slow down except for Sub-Saharan Africa which may further explode 20th century style.

Stereotypically we associate China and India with being the largest humanity producers on Earth with their billion+ populations, but this is simply no longer true as many regions of these two major civilizations have European birth rates. India and China are levelling off with even a real possibility of a gentle decline.

Numbers create markets, it is that simple. China is so big and so wealthy that Hollywood is now very concerned with not offending it. Fragmented post-Soviet Russia simply does not have the numbers to shape global media and thus envy Chinese sway. Africa however, although very diverse between languages and borders, as a whole may, start to be treated like China – too big to be ignored or offended.

Why is Africa growing? Well, if there is one thing that modern Liberalism is good at doing it is killing off the ability for people to have children and Africa remains very untouched from it. Pioneers leave with arrows in their backs and the Europeans who dabbled in Individualism and Free Markets first may be swept away from relevance by those who will do so last. Old school attitudes produce children, and despite the occasional Youtube video about crazy African pastors the continent has the right attitude towards human production.

The 20th and 21st century are showing that economics is a numbers game and Africa’s numbers will be the last to grow explosively. Numbers create big markets and big markets create wealth opportunities.

China will make Africa Great Again

The Chinese have been moving into Africa and rather than just taking the resources by hook or economic crook (like the Europeans of old) they have been leaving infrastructure as payment. Forbes is very paranoid about this asking “What China Is Really Up To In Africa” in one of their headlines. What they are really up to is fairly obvious. One solution to Africa’s corruption problem is being paid in buildings and roads, which are harder to make vanish into government servants’ pockets. The Chinese need African resources which they can pay for with cheap but decent infrastructure.

Every culture has its own nuances, and furthermore Africa is not mentally monolithic but for many places below the Sahara it is becoming understood that resources for cash results in nothing, but resources for infrastructure builds a future.

Russians often ask themselves why Silicon Valley didn’t happen in Moscow. Russian sources show that the Soviets were very capable of making revolutionary technology, the problem was getting it to the masses under a sluggish system. On a grander scale the question is, why didn’t Silicon Valley happen in Iceland, Caracas, Manila or anywhere else?

Because the human and physical infrastructure that was needed to make it happen was lacking. Silicon Valley came about due to like minded individuals moving to or being born in California with the excess resources of their WWII generation parents at their disposal to use on projects in garages. Shipping and tech in general were simply way better in the U.S. at the time and all these factors created the lightning in a jar that is the reason today Mac products say “Designed in California” on them.

So in that spirit it seems sad on the surface that only four in ten Africans have access the internet, but then again if the population of the continent rises to a billion (as projected) that means they will have an internet using market of 400 million people, spread over many major cities, which means Africa will have the critical mass needed to become a serious economic force.

Furthermore, it is hard to imagine that this 40% internet access will stay frozen in the upcoming decades as China’s massive 10,000 Villages program is spreading digital cable TV across many nations and will probably lay the groundwork for better internet penetration. If Africa gets to seven or eight internet users out of ten then it will be very much thanks to Chinese Communism and will put amazing economic opportunity on the table.

Photo: Although governments can hide their secrets Kigali, Rwanda looks like any major city from up high.

An AU to compete with the EU

More often than not Africa is written about by the same people who write about every region of the world never making contact with anyone from any of them. But if you ever get the chance to speak with people from Rwanda you’d be surprised how happy they are with the growth of their country and their hope that it may become the epicenter of regional integration (or atleast a not poor country).

Photo: At least for now Rwandan President Paul Kagame is transforming the genocidal nightmare zone of the 1990’s into the envy of many African nations.

Besides going from genocidal madhouse to attempting to become “Africa’s Singapore” the country has also created a regional block called the East African Community that is going to attempt to play the regional integration game in a similar way that the EU and the Eurasian Union are doing. Visa free travel, (i.e. open borders for members who share similar cultural and linguistic tendencies) is a key feature and has really created opportunities for tiny Rwanda to work with its neighbors.

With the floundering EU losing its first member, and Russia’s attempts at integration being ultimately stale (or purely economic) we shouldn’t be over optimistic that a giant East African Empire will form around Kigali… but it could. The six nations currently in the Community are vastly more valuable and influential as a whole than as tiny parts and would demand much more respect and attention. At least Kigali gets an A for effort in countries that stereotypically are not known for putting much effort into anything.

African needs reconsideration

Obviously we can still hear crazy stories of poverty coming from Africa, like how away from the big successes of urban Nigeria, gasoline generators are still being used to charge cell phones as big business in villages or how new employees in Uganda simply vanish after a few months because they made enough money “to get by for a while”, and how the nightmarish levels of racism and violence in Zimbabwe and South Africa have destroyed these countries’ futures. This is all terrible and real, but there is major change going on. That is why it is time to “rethink” Africa because perhaps it may be different, then again the more things change the more they stay the same.

In January 2018, when Trump referred to African nations as “shithole countries,” he was relishing the time when apartheid South Africa, Rhodesia, and South-West Africa were considered a pro-US bloc in southern Africa. The links between southern Africa’s exiled black African liberation political parties and movements to Communist- and Marxist-ruled nations, in the minds of Trump and his equally right-wing father, Fred Trump, Sr., made South Africa, Rhodesia, and South-West Africa model nations in the eyes of the Trumps.

Trump’s sympathies for the apartheid countries were crystal clear when, on August 22, 2018, Trump tweeted: “I have asked Secretary of State Pompeo to closely study the South Africa land and farm seizures and expropriations and the large scale killing of farmers. ‘South African Government is now seizing land from white farmers.’”

The South African government was keenly aware that Trump was using a trope from the apartheid era. White South African prime ministers, including John Vorster and P. W. Botha were fond of warning their own constituencies, as well as the West, that if blacks achieved majority rule in South Africa, white farmers would be massacred and their land expropriated. These were fear tactics, pure and simple. Mr. Trump, caught in some sort of time warp, continues to believe the apartheid propaganda.

In response to Trump’s tweet, the government of South African President Cyril Ramaphosa hit back at Trump: “South Africa totally rejects this narrow perception which only seeks to divide our nation and reminds us of our colonial past.” It turns out that Trump got his idea that the South African government was seizing land from white farmers from the disreputable Fox News. As for the claim that white farmers were being killed, that bit of bogus information came from a far-right group called AfriForum, consisting of mainly Afrikaners in South Africa and abroad.

The AfriForum disinformation about white-owned farms and farmers in South Africa was picked up by Trump through Fox News’s Tucker Carlson. Carlson’s father, Dick Carlson, was President Ronald Reagan’s chief propagandist as the director of the US Information Agency (USIA), since closed down. During 1985 and 1986, Dick Carlson ensured that a steady stream of right-wing propaganda emanated from the Voice of America, the anti-Cuban Radio Marti, and other platforms. This included support for apartheid South Africa. Other top Republicans involved in pro-South African propaganda included disgraced Republican Party lobbyist Jack Abramoff and Republican activist Lewis Lehrman. In 1985, USIA and the Voice of America, at Carlson’s direction, highlighted an anti-Communist summit meeting held in Jamba, Angola. The summit, called the “Jamboree in Jamba,” was attended by Abramoff, the Angolan UNITA rebel leader Jonas Savimbi, Nicaraguan Contra leader Adolfo Calero, Laotian Hmong leader Pa Kao Her, and Afghan Mujaheddin leader Abdul Rahim Wardak. Also present was Reagan National Security Council official Marine Lieutenant Colonel Oliver North, as well as South African and Israeli representatives. The South African Defense Force provided the security for the summit. Based on the success of the Jamba summit, the Republican right-wing even had hopes of restoring a proto-colonialist administration in Mozambique, the former Portuguese colony. By attempting to create a RENAMO-led government in Mozambique, the right hoped many Portuguese exiles could return to Mozambique to hold key positions in government and commerce. This, of course, was the same thinking behind the right’s support for Savimbi’s UNITA forces in Angola, also a former Portuguese colony.

One of the US groups backing the apartheid South African government was the Committee on the Present Danger, a fervently anti-Communist group. Extinct since the end of the Cold War, the Committee recently enjoyed a resurgence in Washington under the auspices of Trump’s former chief strategist Steve Bannon, Texas Republican Senator Ted Cruz, and former US House of Representatives Speaker Newt Gingrich.

In the 1980s, it was clear that far-right elements in the Reagan administration were trying to shore up white-rule in South Africa, prevent total black rule in South-West Africa, and roll back rule by Robert Mugabe in Zimbabwe – the former Rhodesia. The racist right-wing in the United States had hoped to prevent Mugabe from coming to power in June 1979 by backing the creation of a post-minority rule country called Zimbabwe Rhodesia. The use of the name Rhodesia was a concession to the white minority in the country, which, upon unilateral independence in 1965, was headed by Prime Minister Ian Smith. Smith was a hero to the far-right elements in the United States, including the Ku Klux Klan. Smith and his allies in South Africa decided the best way to maintain the status quo was to form an alliance with Rhodesian tribes opposed to Mugabe, including Ndebele leaders like Joshua Nkomo.

The first Prime Minister of Zimbabwe Rhodesia was Bishop Abel Muzorewa, who, like Mugabe, was a member of the northern Shona tribe. Muzorewa was an opponent of Mugabe as were other officials in the short-lived Zimbabwe Rhodesia, sometimes called “Rhobabwe.” Smith continued in the government as a minister without portfolio. White Rhodesians continued to serve as ministers of finance, justice, agriculture, and finance. When Britain re-established control over Zimbabwe Rhodesia and changed its name to Southern Rhodesia in December 1979 the writing was on the wall for the white-black coalition government. In 1980, Mugabe became prime minister of Zimbabwe. In the subsequent years, many white Rhodesians fled to South Africa, the United States, Canada, and Australia.

In 2015, Dylan Roof, the US white supremacist who massacred African Americans in a Charleston, South Carolina church, appeared on a website called “The Last Rhodesian” wearing a jacket emblazoned with the flags of Rhodesia and apartheid South Africa. Rhodesian expats have also been involved with several racist groups around the world, including Australia, Canada, Britain, and New Zealand. Donald Trump has rekindled hope among these stubborn nostalgists for white rule in southern Africa that what once seemed impossible is now quite thinkable: white-dominated governments in Harare, Pretoria, and Windhoek.

A similar situation was attempted by promoters of white rule in South-West Africa. In 1977, the Democratic Turnhalle Alliance formed a de facto government in Windhoek led by Dirk Mudge. Mudge, an Afrikaner, governed with the support of South Africa and representatives from various ethnic groups, including the Ovaherero, Coloureds (mixed race), Tswana, Damara, a few Ovambo, Caprivians, Nama, Kavango, San, and White Afrikaners and Germans, the latter concentrated on the coast around Swakopmund. The United Nations refused to recognize the Turnhalle government, opting for the exiled South West African People’s Organization (SWAPO) of Sam Nujoma, which was heavily supported by a majority of the Ovambo people. The attempt by whites and their allies to prevent Nujoma from becoming president of independent Namibia ultimately failed.

Thanks to social media, a de facto alliance of exiled white Rhodesians, South Africans, Nyasalanders (now Malawi), and Namibians, along with racists in Europe, North America, and Australia, see – with Trump as president of the United States and the equally racist Jair Bolsonaro as president of Brazil – an opportunity for them to set the calendar back to the 1960s. Just as minority white leaders like Smith, Vorster, Botha, and Mudge attempted to seek alliances of convenience with various African ethnic groups to maintain ascendancy – the Ndebele, Zulu, Venda, Tswana, Damara, and Ndau, among others – Trump, Steve Bannon, former Ku Klux Klan leader David Duke, and about a dozen hard right Republican members of the US Congress are hoping to restore de facto white rule in southern Africa.

Since Trump’s “Make America Great Again” trope has become a racist mantra, so, too, have merchandise bearing mottos like “Make Zimbabwe Rhodesia Again,” “Make Afrikaners Great Again,” and “Make Namibia German Again.” Some whites with roots in Malawi, where the second largest city is Blantyre – named after the town of Blantyre in South Lanarkshire, Scotland – would not mind it if they again enjoyed high positions of influence in the country formerly known as Nyasaland. Some of the descendants of the 75,000 whites who formerly lived in Northern Rhodesia, now Zambia, also pine for the days when whites ruled the country. Afrikaner nationalists also recall with fondness the desire of apartheid South African Prime Minister Hendrik Verwoerd wanting to turn Bechuanaland (now Botswana), Basutoland (now Lesotho), and Swaziland (now eSwatini) into South African ruled dominions.

Creation of a South Atlantic Treaty Organization (SATO) has long been a goal of neo-conservatives like John Bolton, Trump’s National Security Adviser, and Elliott Abrams, Trump’s “special envoy” for Venezuela. In March 2019, Trump, restarting this goal of the Reagan and Richard Nixon administrations, said during the visit of Bolsonaro to the White House, “I also intend to designate Brazil as a major non-NATO ally, or even possibly—if you start thinking about it—maybe a NATO ally.”

Pleased with the 1970s success of Operation Condor, an intelligence alliance of Latin American military dictatorships that targeted for assassination and arrest leftists in South America and beyond, Secretary of State Henry Kissinger foresaw a military alliance of the Condor partners of Argentina, Brazil, Chile, and Uruguay, along with apartheid South Africa and the United States, as firmly extending US military control over the south Atlantic region. Kissinger’s plan for a SATO continued under Reagan. One Reagan administration policy paper was titled “The Security of the South Atlantic: Is It a Case for ‘SATO’–South Atlantic Treaty Organization?” Just as with Trump and Bolsonaro today, in 1984, Reagan and Brazilian President João Figueiredo, Brazil’s last military dictator, had talks on the formation of SATO.

Influenced by the neo-cons in his administration, Trump was recently asked about Africa policy. Trump responded, “We’re looking at Zimbabwe right now.” Just as with the right-wingers gathered at the Jamba Jamboree in 1985, Trump and his racist supporters are looking at Zimbabwe in order to restore something akin to Rhodesia and get the ball rolling on the restoral of white rule and privilege throughout southern Africa and forcing many blacks back to their rural tribal kraals. Trump’s neo-con allies may seek to create a SATO, but the racist elements in Washington want it to be a military club for white governments. Those who sacrificed so much to eliminate the scourge of apartheid and colonialism from southern Africa should be on constant guard against the plans of Trump and his southern African and Brazilian allies. The United States under Trump is a distinct neo-colonialist enemy of the black African people.

Between 1982 and 1988 Birgitta Karlström Dorph was on a secret mission in South Africa. “Why didn’t they stop us? Probably they were not aware of the scope of the operation. The money was transferred through so many different channels. We were clever,” Karlström Dorph says. 

The work was initiated by the Swedish Prime Minister Olof Palme and the Swedish government, the details of which were not discussed in public.

Altogether, Sweden’s financial support for the black resistance against apartheid in South Africa between 1972 and 1994 amounted to more than SEK 4 billion ($443 million) in today’s value and that is an underestimation, according to figures reported by SIDA, the Swedish International Development Cooperation Agency.

“On my first morning in South Africa I went to Burgers Park, in the center of Pretoria. A black worker was cleaning a path in the park. Suddenly I came across a bench and on it was written: ‘Whites only’. And I looked at it. I was appalled. I gathered up my courage and spat on the bench,” Karlström Dorph recalls.

“My family didn’t know what I was doing.”

She followed what was going on in the resistance movement to see if she could find people and organizations who could receive Swedish aid.

“The documents that show what we did to support the underground resistance are still classified,” she explains.

Money from Sweden was transferred to leaders within the black resistance in South Africa. Sweden paid for Nelson Mandela’s lawyer, including while he was incarcerated on Robben Island. Sweden also provided the priest and anti-apartheid activist Beyers Naudé with funds when he was subjected to a banning order.

The South African government looked at Naudé as an enemy as he played a crucial role in supporting the underground resistance movement.

“I wanted to understand what was going on in the country. Naudé was my key to the whole opposition. He provided me with contacts,” Karlström Dorph explains.

Channeling the Money

Funds were channeled from SIDA to organizations and small groups in Sweden and then into accounts of community organizations in South Africa.

“I provided Swedish organizations with bank account numbers and contact information to organizations in South Africa, for example in Soweto,” she adds.

Karlström Dorph says she drove around and met people every day.

One of the most important objectives was to build a civil society that eventually could negotiate with the government; individuals and organizations that eventually could take over. 

People organized themselves and formed a more united opposition in South Africa. UDF, the United Democratic Front, was an umbrella organization for about 600 member organizations against apartheid. Many of the UDF leaders received money through the scholarships. 

“We gave money to those who were arrested and were tortured and interrogated. They needed legal help. A lot of money went to competent lawyers. I also met with wives of those who were imprisoned,” Karlström Dorph explains.

According to Horst Kleinschmidt, a former political activist, Sweden contributed between 60 and 65 percent of the budget of the International Defence and Aid Fund for Southern Africa, or IDAF, an anti-apartheid organization. Between 1964 and 1991 the organization brought 100 million British Pounds into South Africa for the defense of thousands of political activists and to provide aid for their families while they were in prison. 

The defense of political prisoners meant that when the prosecutor demanded capital punishment, the sentence was reduced to life in prison. Between 1960 and 1990 this effort saved tens of thousands of lives, according to the Swedish author Per Wästberg, who was involved in IDAF’s work.

Karlström Dorph got in touch with Winnie Mandela and visited her while Nelson Mandela was imprisoned.

“We sat down and talked a lot about her husband and the struggle, and various contacts,” Karlström Dorph says.

“I said: ‘If I give you the book, I am committing a crime,’” Karlström Dorph recalls.

But Winnie Mandela insisted and Karlström Dorph finally went to the car to get it.

“If our activities had been exposed, many of those who were involved in our work would have found themselves in a serious predicament,” Karlström Dorph says.

The apartheid regime killed affiliates of the ANC, the African National Congress, within the country and also in Zimbabwe, Botswana and Mozambique. Oftentimes during the national State of Emergency, the police and army were stationed or brought into the segregated, black urban living areas to rule with their guns. People, some of whom were unarmed, were beaten and shot for protesting against apartheid. Police even tore down the housing areas were black people lived.

They Went in with Bulldozers’

“They went in with bulldozers and people did not have time to collect their belongings but had to flee,” Karlström Dorp recalls.

She never visited ANC offices or attended anti-apartheid conferences.

“The ANC was forbidden. Members of ANC were imprisoned or killed,” she says making a throat-slitting gesture. 

“We never talked about ANC during all these years,” she adds.

Her very close association with Naudé would have made Karlström Dorph a prime target.

 “I was never scared. You just had to be careful,” she says. 

 There was one time when they had a very strange break-in in their house.

 “They had turned the house upside down, but they just took one of my dresses and one of my husband’s shirts. They had slept in our beds and left white fingerprints on the hairdryer. My friends said it was typical of the security police. They wanted to show: ‘We know who you are. We keep an eye on you.’”

 When they moved to a new apartment, she found a bullet on the floor in the hallway and there was a hole in the window. Someone had shot through it.

 “They obviously tried to intimidate us. I took the bullet and threw it in the bin,” she says.

 Once they were being followed on the motorway and a car tried to drive them off the road, but they managed to get away.

Many experienced the brutality of the apartheid regime. One of Karlström Dorph’s contacts, a 25-year-old young man in Pretoria, was found dead.

“We transferred some funds to his organization. Someone contacted me and told me that they had thrown him down an old mine shaft in Pretoria,” she says.

‘Palme’s Secret Agent’

In the Swedish documentary “Palme’s secret agent,” Popo Molefe, co-founder of UDF, explains Karlström Dorph’s role. 

“Without the support of a strong and committed personality like Birgitta Karlström Dorph I do not think we would have been able to form the United Democratic Front, a coalition of social forces,” he says. 

Molefe later became the leader of South Africa’s North Western Province.

Between 1972 and 1994 the exiled ANC received about SEK 1.7 billion, or $188 million, in today’s value. At the time the ANC was considered a terrorist organization by the governments in the United Kingdom and the United States. The financial support from Sweden was more or less kept secret until the beginning of the 1990s.

In 1994, South Africans took their first step together into a very new democracy after decades of white supremacist, authoritarian rule in the form of apartheid. Sweden’s involvement had been stronger and much more far-reaching than what was ever reported officially.

consortiumnews.com

President Trump was not wrong about the South African land-grab, according to the South African Institute of Race Relations (SAIRR), a liberal think tank. SAIRR said that the Trump had exposed the “damage” the policy was doing.

He did not, however, expose the extent of the damage. Nor the intent.

The current President of South Africa wrote an article for London’s Financial Times just two weeks ago defending the acquisition of land from white farmers by black South Africans without compensation: “This is no land grab; nor is it an assault on the private ownership of property. The ANC has been clear that its land reform programme should not undermine future investment in the economy or damage agricultural production and food security.”

It seems in this era of words not having any valid meaning that bad is good, war is peace, weakness is strength, and up is down. But thievery is still thievery even if done by government.

The Agri SA agricultural union in Pretoria, South Africa, released new figures that reveal black criminal gangs have killed one white South African farmer every five days so far this year! Is this “only” random crime taking place in a troubled and dark land or a plan to drive all farmers off their land by intimidation?

South African officials suggest that these killings are only “burglaries gone wrong” but informed and honest people (black and white) know the truth. The government stopped accounting for such deaths since it is too embarrassing. Hence, “burglaries gone wrong” headlines result in less negative press than “another white farm family wiped out by roaming black thugs.”

The head of Genocide Watch, Dr. Gregory Stanton in 2012 conducted a study in South Africa and came to an incredible conclusion: “There is a coordinated campaign of genocide being conducted against white farmers.” Many of the Whites surrendered their guns when the African National Congress (ANC) government passed gun laws to confiscate the farmers’ weapons.

Genocide Watch said, “Disarmament of a targeted group is one of the surest early warning signs of future genocidal killings.”

The South African government currently estimates there are 31 murders per 100,000 people per year, which comes out to about 50 per day. Outside groups suggest that it is double that! No one knows for sure because the ANC banned crime statistics from being accumulated, analyzed, and admitted because they scare off foreign investment and drive people out of the country. Does anyone blame people for their concern and fear?

The London Daily Mail, April 28, 2017, reported, “Unemployment is 90 percent in some townships, and riots–described as ‘service delivery protests’ by the ANC–are so widespread and frequent they barely get reported.” So, the numbers are as suspect as Bill Clinton’s vow of chastity.

Political leaders, however, are determined to take the farms from white farmers and intimidate others into acquiescence to make up for perceived and real discrimination under white administrations.

The nation’s leading politicians are involved in this genocide of Whites as their words and actions clearly prove.

President Zuma in 2012 was caught on tape singing, “We are going to shoot them with the machine gun, they are going to run/You are a Boer, we are going to hit them, and you are going to run/shoot the Boer.”

His followers may be stupid and Communist, but their protest signs scream the same message: “Kill the Boer! Kill the Farmers!”

Julius Malema, far-left leader of the Economic Freedom Fighters (EFF) charged that all whites are criminals and the ANC Youth League was going to take all the white farmers’ land without compensation. Big problem here apart from the organized thievery: the Rural Development and Land Reform Minister told Parliament that more than half of the farms that were purchased for black farmers by the government had either failed or were failing!

When Zimbabwe did the same thing in 1999–2000, it was followed by massive famine and astronomical inflation where hamburgers at the capital city of Harare sold for fifteen million Zimbabwe dollars.

Free housing, free college tuition, single-payer healthcare, doubling the welfare state and the minimum wage is the dream and plan of the leftists in the EFF. The EFF is the third largest political party in South Africa led by Julius Malema who said at a rally, “Go After A White Man…We Are Cutting The Throat Of Whiteness!”

Malema declared, “Through land expropriation, we are forcing white people to share the land which was gained through a crime against the humanity of black and African people.” They are not sharing the land; it is being taken from them by force and they did not acquire the land via a “crime.”

Malema said the time for “reconciliation is over.” News24 quoted him saying, “Now is the time for justice.” He told the Parliament, “We must ensure that we restore the dignity of our people without compensating the criminals who stole our land.”

One cannot restore what never was, so restoring dignity will not happen. Watch the daily activities of their Parliament to know what I mean. Plus, ANC leaders having witch doctors living in their homes giving advice about abortion and how to enlarge a penis, etc., does not add to one’s dignity or credibility!

And of course, the white farmers did not steal anyone’s land. Much of it has been in the same families for generations and others are paying high-interest payments while working literally from daylight to dark in order to make their payments.

Malema promised, “Only death will stop us, not Trump, not sanction, not all of them. We know the consequences that are coming.”

So do I! I’ve seen this movie before starring Robert Mugabe with a supporting cast of grasping, ghastly, gloomy Communists filmed on location in Zimbabwe just next door to South Africa.

Few informed people doubt that South Africa, like many African nations, is headed into total chaos; but are the murders a part of the strategy to totally eliminate the white farmers?

In an interview with TRT World News, Julius Malema said, “We have not called for the killing of white people. At least for now. I can’t guarantee the future.” When the reporter mentioned that some people might view these remarks as a call to genocide, Malema responded, “Crybabies. Crybabies,” but later warned white South Africans that “the masses are on board” for “an un-led revolution and anarchy.”

That dude should not be in Parliament but in prison.

A widely reprinted letter that originally appeared in the Business Day newspaper also highlighted the feelings of despair. “South Africa is in a serious moral crisis. We are a violent society disintegrating by the day. Ghastly murders are committed daily,” wrote Farouk Araie from Johannesburg. “We have become delusional. Forgetting that life is absolutely intrinsic and inviolable, our country is awash with demonic monsters in human garb, savages fit only for the wild, and satanic beasts ill-equipped for civil society.

“One child raped every three minutes, three children murdered each day,” Araie added. “We are sliding towards the edge of the abyss and our people are crying out for sanity to prevail.”

Approximately half-a-million rapes occur on an annual basis, of which only one-in-nine are reported. This amounts to 132.4 rapes per 100,000 people per year, far and away the highest total in the world. And for every 25 men brought to trial for rape, only one is convicted.

A study conducted by the Medical Research Council, for example, found that more than one in four South African men — 27.5 percent — admitted to having raped at least one woman or girl. Almost half of those said they had raped multiple victims. Another survey by the same organization later found that 37.4 percent of men admitted to perpetrating a rape with more than one in four women saying they had been raped.

The South African ANC government gave whooping cheers for Zimbabwe when they stole white farms and the world watched as Zimbabwe spiraled into anarchy, murder, and rape, destroying their economy.

The dangerous policies in South Africa have resulted in Whites fleeing the country, chaos in the streets, debased currency, and job losses while manufacturing output has stumbled, the rand is in a freefall, and people have slowed their spending either because of unemployment or fear of the future.

When the South African economy grinds to a halt under the leadership of black Reds; when the treasury has been looted and funds safely stored in secret Swiss bank accounts; when crops rot in the fields and inoperable tractors stand rusted and idle; when the phones, johns, elevators, and trains refuse to work; when the banks, insurance companies, and mines have been nationalized; when whites have fled the nation or have been butchered in Mau-Mau type uprisings; and when the dream of black rule has turned into a nightmare; then will the busy-body globalists in Britain, Canada, and the U.S. be satisfied?

I think not — because their attention will be focused on some other “noble” cause. Globalists have almost choked on many an African bone but they usually cough it up, spit it out, and grab another one.

Sanctimonious liberals never learn and they have a compulsion to feel noble. Honest people have a compulsion for truth even though it stings at times and it’s a truth, a stinging truth, that the legally chosen government in South Africa is stealing white farms and has plans to decimate white families.

Their own words testify to that tragic truth. And truth does set one free.

dailycaller.com

Photo: Twitter

Moscow has recently ramped up its military assistance to the Central African Republic (CAR) upon the request of the country’s government. Last month, Russian President Putin met CAR’s President Faustin Archange Touadera in St. Petersburg to hold talks on boosting bilateral ties, including military cooperation. It’s done in strict compliance with international law. In December 2017, the UN Security Council approved a deal allowing Russia to send arms and military instructors to that crisis-hit country. The UN was provided with the serial numbers of the transferred weapons to enable international observers to track them. The arms deliveries are gratuitous.

The Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC), a traditional ally of the West, has begun shifting its foreign policy priorities looking for other partners. Last month, the DR Congo’s government announced its decision to revive the 1999 military agreement with Russia. It wants Moscow to deliver armament and train military personnel of the DRC. It also hopes to expand the bilateral economic cooperation, covering the mineral production, agriculture and humanitarian contacts.

In 2017, Russia signed a $1 billion defence cooperation agreements with Angola and Nigeria. Moscow and Luanda are in talks on increasing the scope of military ties.

Russian Rosoboronexport has long-term relations with Angola, Mali, Mozambique, Nigeria, Uganda, Zimbabwe and several other sub-Saharan nations that include arms sales and equipment maintenance. Since 2013, the construction of service centers has been in full swing. In 2017, Russian weapons were delivered to the following sub-Saharan African nations: Kenya, Nigeria, Mali, and Angola (Su-30K jets). A contract was confirmed with Equatorial Guinea for purchase of Pantsyr-S1 air defense systems. In August 2017, Burkina Faso ordered two Mi-171 helicopters. Russia is the leading arms importer to the region, accounting for 30% of all supplies.

Russia’s weapons are in high demand being cheap and effective as has been proven by their use during the Syrian conflict. The thriving military cooperation goes hand in hand with developing ties in other areas. Trade with African countries located south of the Sahara desert was $3.6 billion in 2017. For comparison, it was $3.3 billion in 2016 and $2.2 billion in 2015. Russia is involved in exploration, mining, and energy projects. ALROSA, a diamond-mining company, operates in Angola, South Africa, Sierra Leone and Namibia. The talks are on the way to reach an agreement with the African partners to avoid double taxation and protect intellectual property.

Transport and agriculture are promising areas for joint projects. The construction of nuclear science centers in Zambia and Nigeria, as well as a nuclear power plant in South Africa, a BRICS member, are on the talks’ agenda. In April, the government of Sudan invited Russia to take part in its energy projects. Khartoum and Moscow enjoy special relationship. Last year, Sudan’s President Omar al-Bashir asked the Russian president for “protection from the aggressive acts of the United States." 28 out of 55 African nations have growing trade with Russia. Cooperation with Ghana, Tanzania has promising future. Angola, Mozambique, Namibia and Zimbabwe are historical friends with experience of doing business with Russian partners. The relations with the African Union are considered in Moscow as an issue of special importance.

In March, FM Lavrov toured Angola, Zimbabwe, Mozambique, Namibia and Ethiopia to boost multifaceted relationships. The same month, the African Continental Free Trade Agreement (AfCFTA) was signed to open new horizons for economic cooperation. In January, the Single African Air Transport Market was launched to be made even more attractive with coming in force of the Protocol on Free Movement of Persons, the right of Establishment and the Right of Residence. Russian businessmen will get more information on new opportunities when they visit the first Intra-African Trade Fair to take place in Cairo on December 11-17, 2018. The program of Saint Petersburg International Economic Forum (SPIEF) held in May included special sessions on business and investment opportunities within the framework of the “Russia – Africa Business Dialogue.” The SPIEF-2018 held two special celebrations to mark Africa Day and the 55th anniversary of the African Union.

The US influence in the sub-Saharan Africa is on the wane. In contrast, Russia is making strides to strengthen its position in the region. President Vladimir Putin announced the policy of boosting ties with the region in 2006 when he visited Sub-Saharan Africa. He kept his word. The region has become an essential vector for the foreign policy of Russia, which is becoming another major player on the continent.