ISRAEL – BEYOND REBUKE: I must say, these American oligarchs and tech bros are starting to work on my nerves. They are devious, conniving, hypocritical, holier than thou self righteous assholes. If you are wondering why this is personal, look no further than Elon Musk and his Apartheid style entitled bs.
The bullies are picking on South Africa because we dared to call out Israel’s persistent breaking of International Law. They have committed multiple war crimes with zero repercussions. Calling someone a terrorist while behaving like a terrorist is classic Trump/Bush/Putin/Netanyahu projection syndrome.
I’m not pretending that South Africa is perfect, I have been annoyed with my government for not being more outspoken about Russia. Yet, Trump is a Russian asset so give me a fckng break. The GOP is siding with Putin against Zelensky, all the while pretending that China, North Korea and Iran have not been the sole reason Russia managed to gain the upper hand in Ukraine. So spare me the moral high ground.
All this is gong to achieve is to cause a rift between black and white South Africans. Many whites like myself can’t stand MAGA, yet a few loud voices have finally found a president that’s willing to amplify their lies, fears, and perceived victim hood. White Male Christians unfortunately revel in portraying themselves as the persecuted, when history teaches us otherwise. All they’ve done is break and take, so back the fuck off and go and feel sorry for yourselves on Mars.
Keep in mind that Apartheid was instituted in 1948. The Sharpeville Massacre occurred in 1960, followed by the Soweto massacre in 1976. It took America and Reagan until 1986 to very reluctantly impose sanctions on South Africa, 38 years after Apartheid was legalized. By this time Nelson Mandela had already been in prison for 23 years.
JUDGED HARSHLY BY HISTORY: The Comprehensive Anti-Apartheid Act of 1986 was a law enacted by the United States Congress. The law imposed sanctions against South Africa and stated five preconditions for lifting the sanctions that would essentially end the system of apartheid, which the latter was under at the time. Most of the sanctions were repealed in July 1991, after South Africa took steps towards meeting the preconditions of the act, with the final vestiges of the act being repealed in November 1993.
Democrats in the Senate initially tried to pass the Anti-Apartheid Act in September 1985, but could not overcome a Republican filibuster. President Ronald Reagan viewed the act as an intrusion on his authority to conduct foreign policy (constructive engagement) and issued his own set of sanctions, but Democrats considered them to be “watered down and ineffective.”
The bill was re-introduced in 1986 and brought up for a vote despite Republican efforts to block it to give Reagan’s sanctions time to work. It initially passed unexpectedly in the House in June 1986 after Republicans agreed to a voice vote in the hope that the bill would die later on in the process, thus ending any possibility of sanctions. Reagan publicly opposed the bill. In August 1986, the Senate passed a version of the Anti-Apartheid Act with weaker sanctions by a veto-proof margin of 84–14. Democratic leaders in the House agreed to accept the weaker Senate version of the bill for it to have sufficient bipartisan support to override any attempt to veto.
Reagan vetoed the compromised bill on September 26, calling it “economic warfare” and alleging that it would mostly hurt the impoverished black majority and lead to more civil strife. He again offered to impose sanctions via executive order, while also working with Senate Republicans on concessions to avoid them overriding his veto. Reagan’s veto was attacked harshly by anti-Apartheid leaders like Desmond Tutu who said Reagan would be “judged harshly by history”. In the week leading up to the subsequent vote, President Reagan enlisted South African foreign minister Pik Botha to call Republicans on the fence, though this was seen to backfire.
– Wiki –
Keep in mind that South Africa has been part of BRICS, Brazil, Russia, India, China, South Africa, since 2010.
FULL OF SHIT DOESN’T EVEN COME CLOSE: Officials in the United States Congress have introduced a bill to sanction senior South African government and ANC officials who support their “adversaries”.
US Congressman Ronny Jackson introduced the US-South Africa Bilateral Relations Review Act of 2025, which calls for a full review of the bilateral relationship between the US and South Africa.
Jackson’s office said the bill will help advance US President Trump’s foreign policy agenda by giving him the tools necessary to impose sanctions on South African officials who support America’s adversaries.
The adversaries include China, Russia and Iran.
“South Africa has brazenly abandoned its relationship with the United States to align with China, Russia, Iran, and terrorist organizations, a betrayal that demands serious consequences,” said Jackson.
“This legislation ensures we conduct a comprehensive review of this supposed ‘ally’ while also holding accountable any corrupt officials.”
Jackson is a firm supporter of Israel and serves as the Co-Chair of the Congressional Israel Allies Caucus.
“The era of governments undermining American interests without repercussions ends now,” he said. The bill has also received support from US Congressman John James.
“The South African government and the ANC have continued to consistently undermine US national security interests and in recent years have intentionally aligned with Beijing, Moscow and Tehran and pursued an anti-Israel agenda,” said James.
“The United States must examine all of our bilateral relationships around the world and investigate all options to hold those countries and leaders who align with our adversaries responsible.”
The bill states that no later than 120 days after enactment, the President, in consultation with the Secretary of State and the Secretary of the Treasury, shall submit to the appropriate congressional committees a classified report including:
A list of senior South African government officials and ANC leaders that US the President determines have engaged in corruption or human rights abuses.
The report will also include a detailed explanation describing the conduct forming the basis of the person’s inclusion on the list, and the expected timeline for sanctions.
The bill states that the South African government’s foreign policy actions have long ceased to reflect its stated stances of nonalignment, with it favouring Hamas, the Russian Federation and China.
It identifies eight key problem areas with the ANC and South Africa:
The ANC’s policies are inconsistent with South Africa’s stated policy of non-alignment in international affairs.
The South African Government has a history of siding with malign actors, including Hamas, a United States-designated Foreign Terrorist Organization and a proxy of the Iranian regime, and continues to pursue closer ties with the People’s Republic of China (PRC) and the Russian Federation.
The South African Government’s continued support of Hamas.
Members of the South African government delivering “antisemitic and antiIsrael” statements and actions following the October 7 attacks by Hamas.
The South African Government and the ANC maintain close relations with the Russian Federation, which has been accused of perpetrating war crimes in Ukraine and indiscriminately undermining human rights.
The South African Government’s interactions with the PRC Government and ANC interactions with the Chinese Communist Party (CCP), who are committing gross violations of human rights in the Xinjiang province and implementing economically coercive tactics around the globe.
The ANC-led South African Government’s history of substantially mismanaging a range of state resources and often being “proven incapable of effectively delivering public services, threatening the South African people and the South African economy”.
The most recent comments by former ambassador to the US, Ebrahim Rasool, describing President Trump as ‘‘extreme,’’ and characterising him as a white supremacist. – Luke Fraser – 4 Apr 2025 – Businesstech.
MISSION SOUTH AFRICA: US government planning to set up refugee centres. Briefly News reported that the US government is reportedly planning to rent out office space in Pretoria. The plan, which falls under an initiative called Mission South Africa, seeks to set up refugee centres for Afrikaners. South Africans slammed Trump and accused him of causing further division in the country and even undermining Afrikaners.
HEAL THE STEAL: “One day, my grandfather is said to have walked up the hill where the lion was roaring with his spear and shield,” says Bernard. “The lion charged at him, but my grandfather speared him to death and was made Headman for his bravery.”
As a Headman, or traditional leader, Bhobho owned cattle and land. Then one day in the mid-1950s, it was all taken away from him with no compensation under a law introduced in 1950 called the Group Areas Act. This stated that South Africa’s apartheid government could choose certain areas to be used by a single race.
In the early 1990s, democratic South Africa’s new constitution allowed for land taken from black farmers to be returned to them. But it did so with great care and the setting-up of new cross-community partnerships were encouraged. In this spirit, when Bernard, now 48, and his community decided to reclaim their land, they agreed to work in partnership with the white farmers who had been working on it.
“We did not say we want the white folks to leave,” says Bernard. “They are here, they are working with us, they are supporting us… we are saying that partnership is what’s going to take this country forward.”
But for some in the country, progress on land reform has been too slow. In January, President Cyril Ramaphosa signed into law a bill that allows, in some circumstances, land to be seized by the state without compensation.
Opponents argue it is a threat to the principle of private ownership. And among those opponents is Donald Trump. He has said the new bill was “hateful rhetoric” towards “racially disfavored landowners.”
SOCIAL JUSTICE: Mr Trump said he would pause all aid to South Africa, which could be worth around $320m (£253m) according to the US Agency for International Development. Some worry he might eventually exclude South Africa from a trade agreement, estimated by the office of the US trade representative to be worth $14.7bn (£11.6bn) a year.
The challenge facing Rampahosa is a knotty one: can he find a way to speed up land reform to appease his political friends and foes, without losing one of the country’s biggest trading partners?
Addressing historic inequalities. Professor Ruth Hall from the Institute for Poverty, Land, and Agrarian Studies of the University of the Western Cape argues the issue of access to land in South Africa dates back to before the start of formal apartheid in 1948. “If we think about the history of South Africa, this is what we can call a settler colony. It was a colony in which large numbers of European settlers, over many centuries, came and settled, displacing indigenous people,” she says.
By the end of the 19th Century, most of the land that is currently South Africa had been taken over by white people. The Natives’ Land Act of 1913 defined less than one-tenth of South Africa as Black “reserves” and prohibited any purchase or lease of land by Blacks outside the reserves.
She says the subsequent Group Areas Act only reinforced the division and further reduced economic opportunities for black people.
THE GAME IS RIGGED: Prof Hall calls it “structural apartheid geography” and explains that this is “very much intact,” today. She describes how even though there is a growing black middle class in South Africa, there are still fundamental problems for the majority of black South Africans “who either do not have access to well located land in the cities or who live in rural areas without secure rights.”
Agriculture remains one of the main sources of economic revenue for the country, but the majority of commercial agricultural land is still in the hands of the white minority which makes up around 7% of the population. A mission unfulfilled. In 1996, the South African government launched its land reform programme, promising to settle all claims for redistribution by 2005 and to redistribute 30% of white-owned commercial agricultural land to black South Africans by 2014.
The fact neither target has been met helps explain the pressure for last month’s toughened-up legislation. Prof Hall explains: “There’s a mandate on the state that it must actually redistribute land. It must deal with historical claims to land.”
AfriForum has conceded that no large-scale land seizures have taken place and that the majority of land still remains in the hands of the white minority.
But balancing the obligation to redistribute with property rights was never going to be straightforward.
MIND YOUR OWN BUSINESS: Trump and Musk weigh in. And now the debate around land ownership has gone beyond the borders of South Africa due to the recent intervention of US president Donald Trump, who issued an executive order on 7 February, just two and a half weeks after being sworn into office. The order claimed the expropriation act would “enable the government of South Africa to seize ethnic minority Afrikaners’ agricultural property without compensation”.
The executive order claimed the act was part of a number of discriminatory policies and “hateful rhetoric” towards “racially disfavored landowners”.
The American President also accused Pretoria of taking aggressive positions towards the United States and its allies, including accusing Israel of genocide in Gaza at the International Court of Justice (ICJ), and strengthening its ties with Iran.
As a result of these actions, Trump said he would pause all aid to South Africa and offered to resettle all “Afrikaner refugees escaping government-sponsored race-based discrimination”.
South Africa’s case against Israel is seen by some as evidence it supports Hamas, in addition to the close ties it maintains with Iran. Trump is not the only figure in his administration to have taken an interest in South Africa’s internal affairs. So too has Elon Musk, who’s been tasked with managing government efficiency in the US. Musk, who was born in Pretoria, has been trying to license his Starlink telecommunications business in South Africa.
But under the country’s Black Economic Empowerment (BEE) policy telecom firms are required to have 30% ownership by black people. Musk called BEE “racist”. Currently, only 3% of the country’s top companies are controlled by black South Africans.
A BLUNT TOOL: Every year, the US president reviews which African countries should continue to be part of the African Growth and Opportunity Act (AGOA). It allows some African countries to export goods to the US duty free and is credited with creating thousands of jobs across the continent, including in South Africa.
But now there are fears Donald Trump’s promise to cut all “future funding to South Africa” may see South Africa excluded. Doing so may, however, be a bit of a blunt tool – Prof Hall points out that coming out of AGOA would ironically disproportionately affect the white farmers Donald Trump says he wants to protect.
“I can assure you that most white farmers are far more worried about this punitive act on our trade deal with the US than they are about land expropriation,” she said.
Can the circle be squared? So can the South African government, and President Cyril Ramaphosa’s ANC specifically, satisfy those who believe further land reform is a must without being frozen out economically by the US and losing foreign investors?
South Africa is already feeling the effects of US’ diplomatic pressure: both the US secretary of state and the treasury secretary have refused to join their counterparts at this month’s G20 meetings hosted by South Africa. And there are concerns Donald Trump could also be absent from the leaders’ summit later this year.
President Ramaphosa has promised to send envoys to the US and other countries to explain his country’s positions on the expropriation act, the war in the Middle East, as well as some of its other foreign policy decisions.
Whether South Africa can soften the current hostility coming from Washington, without compromising on its national priorities is a huge test for this fledgling democracy. – 23 February 2025 – Mayeni Jones and Nobuhle Simelane for BBC.
South African president Cyril Ramaphosa and Jesus incarnated.
Apr 04, 2025 8:04:25 pm
