“Social media post leads to DUT chaos” and the closing of all Durban campuses- https://youtu.be/Vfz-rBP9ixo

“The Durban University of Technology has closed five campuses, following an invasion prompted by a fake social media post.”

“DUT fake social media posts lead to campus invasion” - https://www.thesouthafrican.com/news/dut-fake-social-media-posts-lead-to-campus-invasion/. Below are a few excerpts.

Students swamped Durban University of Technology (DUT) seeking help with online registration following several fake social media posts.

The Durban University of Technology (DUT) has denounced fake social media posts instructing students to report to its Berea campus for registration which resulted in a massive influx of registrants on Tuesday.

DUT management said in a statement released on Tuesday night that it appeared that “there were a number of unauthorised social media posts inviting all applicants to come to the campuses today, 6 April 2021”.

“Student Protests Latest: DUT campuses closed until further notice” - https://www.thesouthafrican.com/news/student-protests-latest-dut-campuses-closed-until-further-notice/

Durban University of Technology (DUT) has closed all of its campuses until further notice following student protests regarding registration the university announced on Wednesday.

DUT senior director of corporate affairs, Alan Khan said the campuses had been closed after “a large number of people” invaded the Sports Centre on the Steve Biko campus in Durban on Tuesday.

This was after they had reacted to fake social media posts, inviting walk-ins to register at DUT.

“The University did not invite walk ins to register on campus,” Khan said.

“Following the risk to health, safety and security, the university suspended the on-campus support for online registration yesterday, indefinitely. However, normal online registration will continue in the manner it has been all along but without on-campus support,” Khan said.

He said the influx of uninvited people on campus had continued to violate the COVID-19 protocols and that some of the people had not left the DUT campus on Tuesday.

“Overnight, a significant number of people continued to occupy the Sports Centre and refused the request to leave campus. Over the course of this morning, the situation escalated with protestors milling around outside the Steve Biko campus, hurling stones at buildings, damaging university property, barricading public roads, including several attempts to invade more buildings on campus,” he said.

“The university has called on all of the relevant law enforcement agencies to assist in calming this potentially dangerous situation. It has become clear that the situation is tough to contain and it is being exacerbated with increasing numbers of people trying to force their way onto many other parts of the Durban campuses. This also poses a bigger threat for COVID-19 infections,” Khan said.

“As a result, all five Durban campuses of the University (DUT) will be closed until further notice. All online university functions and activities will continue. This means that online registration for first time entering (FTEN) students with firm offers will proceed as previously announced,” he said.

“'Are we betraying the cause of freedom?' - ANC commemorates Solomon Mahlangu” - https://youtu.be/bY1HEf0KaDk

“ANC pays tribute to Solomon Mahlangu – who was he?”- https://www.thesouthafrican.com/news/anc-pays-tribute-to-solomon-mahlangu-who-was-he/

Pretoria-born ANC struggle activist Solomon Mahlangu has been hailed for his bravery and commitment to the country's liberation

The African National Congress (ANC) is commemorating the death of Solomon Mahlangu, who was active in the struggle and was hanged at Pretoria Central Prison, now known as Kgosi Mampuru on 6 April in 1979.

Mahlangu joined the ANC in 1976, and left the country to train and become a member of the Umkhonto we Sizwe (MK), the ruling party’s armed military wing. He received his military training in Angola and Mozambique.

Mahlangu returned to the country as a cadre, heavily armed, through Swaziland to assist with student protests.

“My blood will nourish the tree that will bear the fruits of freedom. Tell my people that I love them. They must continue the fight.”

Solomon Mahlangu, ANC apartheid struggle activist

Just two days after arriving back in the country, Solomon Mahlangu’s life would change forever as and he and his two friends, Mondy J Motloung and George Mahlangu, were accosted by police in Goch Street, Johannesburg. Mahlangu (George) managed to escape from the authorities however the remaining two young men (Solomon Mahlangu and Mondy Motloung) were both arrested.

His trial lasted between November 1977 and March 1978. Mahlangu was then charged in connection with the attack. He faced two counts of murder and several charges under the Terrorism Act. Mahlangu pleaded not guilty to the charges. His council stated that he entered South Africa in June 1977 as part of a group of ten, bringing arms, ammunition, explosives and ANC pamphlets into the country.

According to SA History Online, Motloung was declared unfit to stand trial as he had been severely beaten and suffered brain damage. The judge had accepted that Motloung was responsible for the actual killings.

“However, as common purpose had been formed, Mahlangu was therefore found guilty on two counts of murder and three charges under the Terrorism Act. He was sentenced to death by hanging on 2 March 1978”

“On 15 June 1978 Solomon Mahlangu was refused leave to appeal his sentence by the Rand Supreme Court, and on 24 July 1978 he was refused again in the Bloemfontein Appeal Court. Although various governments, the United Nations, international organizations, groups and prominent individuals attempted to intercede on his behalf, Mahlangu awaited his execution in Pretoria Central Prison, and died on 6 April 1979”

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Solomon_Mahlangu further states; “The three comrades-in-arms, each carrying a large suitcase, were climbing into a taxi in Diagonal Street in the centre of Johannesburg. An ordinary policeman became suspicious and grabbed one of the suitcases. An AK-47 assault rifle and a hand grenade fell out. All three of them fled, Lucky Mahlangu in one direction and the other two in the direction of Fordsburg. There, in Goch Street, the two sought refuge in the storage facilities of the retailer John Orr's. One of them opened fire on the employees of the company, killing two and wounding another two. Mahlangu and Motaung were eventually arrested.[2][3]:592”

Is this the kind of freedom the ANC wants to celebrate?

“Mpumalanga soccer match turns deadly after mid-match argument”- https://www.thesouthafrican.com/news/mpumalanga-soccer-match-turns-deadly-after-mid-match-argument/

An argument over a soccer match in Mpumalanga turned into a bloodbath that left two dead and a vehicle torched in a hospital parking lot.

A soccer match in Mpumalanga turned deadly over the weekend when an argument between two teams led to two shooting incidents.

Mpumalanga police confirmed that an investigation into the shootings is underway with the source of the violence being a soccer match near Barberton.

An argument between two teams spilled over into violence and multiple shots were fired at the game itself.

After two cars brought gun shot victims to the Barberton Provincial Hospital, an armed group reportedly torched the car of one of the men, then proceeded to shoot the driver, who later died.

Mpumalanga police Spokesperson, Colonel Donald Mdhluli said that no arrests had been made at this time.

“We are now investigating a case of murder and malicious damage to property. We are also investigating two cases of attempted murder. As we speak, no one has been arrested but we will keep the public informed when we arrest the suspects.”

SAPS

Mpumalanga MEC for health Sasekani Manzini condemned the violent attack on provincial hospital grounds.

The MEC confirmed that an armed mob descended upon the hospital on Saturday determined to mete out their own justice.

“On arrival, they found the gate locked and they jumped over the palisade fence and went to the casualty ward. Fortunately, casualty security door was locked and police were already inside. They could not get access and went to the parking area and shot the driver, who was escorting one of the victims. The group also set his car alight,” Manzini said.

“We condemn the incident, the Mpumalanga department of health calls on the community to refrain from attacking patients who are admitted in our hospitals.

“It is very sad that our people resolve to taking the law into their hands. It is also not acceptable that our people now force their entry into our health facilities and seek revenge. This incident has seriously affected the staff and patients in Barberton hospital. We want to plead with our communities that they should not enter our health facilities and seek revenge as this endanger the lives of our staff and patients.”

“We want to thank the South African Police Services for their swift response on the incident and for handling the situation well. They ensured there’s no staff member that was affected,” Manzini added.

Police presence at the hospital has been ramped up in the wake of the disturbing incident.

>>13378600 - Don’t forget about gender based violence and many other violent crimes.

“Forensic psychologist Dr. Gerard Labuschagne is in the studio to chat more about crimes of passion” – gender based violence- https://youtu.be/qInmT39AYvk

“The merciless killing of Tshegafatso Pule sent shock waves through the country. The 28-year-old who was 8 months pregnant at the time was found hanging on a tree with severe stab wounds. The twists and turns in the case have turned attention to the profiling of individuals involved in crimes of passion. To unpack this further forensic psychologist Dr. Gerard Labuschagne is in the studio.”

“ANC branches must defend me: Magashule” - https://youtu.be/vqPM2q93260

“ANC Secretary-General Ace Magashule says ANC branches must defend him and says he is still consulting on whether to step aside. eNCA's Govan Whittles reports.”

“Ace Magashule defends ‘radical economic transformation’”- https://www.thesouthafrican.com/news/ace-magashule-defends-radical-economic-transformation/

ANC secretary general Ace Magashule has said that radical economic transformation is a party policy which was adopted at Nasrec and cannot be changed

ANC secretary general Ace Magashule has fiercely defended the use of the term “radical economic transformation.”

Magashule was in Kliptown in Soweto, where the ANC commemorated the life of struggle activist Charlotte Maxeke, who would have turned 150 years old on Wednesday, 07 April 2021.

Most recently – the term “radical economic transformation” or RET was used in labelling a faction in the ANC, which is aligned to Magashule and former president Jacob Zuma.

The ANC has consistently clarified that the transformation of the economy is a policy position of the party and not any faction. It is the project for the significant inclusion of black people – in the country’s economy.

“Radical economic transformation is the policy which was adopted at Nasrec. You can’t actually change it and turn it around and call it something else. The economy must be in the hands African people. There is no country in the world where the majority are not actually the owners of the economy. South Africa must change for the best”

ANC secretary general Ace Magashule

Ace Magashule has further said that women should play a significant role in the enforcement of the radical economic transformation policy.

“The women leadership of this country, the women’s league (ANC Women’s League) can actually play that important role, to change the lives of our people. The leadership of the church can still play that role of ensuring that our people are now living in a better South Africa,” Magashule said.

“That dream, which Mandela and many others like Charlotte Maxeke and many others, had for South Africa. The dream of making sure that all of us get out of abject poverty. That dream must be realised and it cannot take many years. It must be a dream which must be realised today and not tomorrow”

Magashule’s days in the ANC are numbered, as the NEC has given him 30 days to step aside from his post, in accordance to the party’s contentious step aside resolution. Under the resolution, ANC members facing criminal charges must step aside from their duties while the matter is before the court.

He faces a string of fraud and corruption charges in connection with a R255 million asbestos contract, awarded in the Free State in 2014, when he was still premier.

>>13378714

>Ace Magashule has further said that women should play a significant role in the enforcement of the radical economic transformation policy.

Yet.

“South Africa’s Secondary Pandemic: A Crisis of Gender Based Violence”- https://globalriskinsights.com/2021/03/south-africas-secondary-pandemic-a-crisis-of-gender-based-violence/. Below are a few excerpts.

In South Africa, sometimes known as the ‘destination of femicide’, more than 2,700 women have been murdered as result of gender-based violence (GBV) since 2000. Although grassroots organisations have persistently campaigned to end GBV, many women in South Africa continue to suffer abuse. Now, South Africa’s GBV problem is worsening, as lockdown measures have trapped women inside with their abusers.

The government’s GBV and Feminicide Command Centre, a call centre to support victims of GBV, recorded more than 120,000 victims in the first three weeks of the lockdown. Just weeks later in Pretoria, a similar call centre was receiving up to 1,000 calls a day from women and children who were confined to abusive homes seeking urgent help. Prior to the pandemic, femicide in South Africa was already five times higher than the global average and the female interpersonal violence death rate was the fourth-highest out of the 183 countries listed by the World Health Organisation in 2016. Evidence has now emerged that suggests cases of violence against women are increasing.

In 2019-2020, there was an average increase of 146 sexual offences and 116 specifically rape cases per day, predominantly rape, compared to the same period between 2018-2019.

Researchers from the Wits School of Governance suggest that the lockdown measures are likely to be the cause of this increase in GBV, as women were forced to stay home and left vulnerable to domestic abuse. In addition, the lockdown has prevented access to civil service groups dedicated to supporting victims of GBV. Yet, victims already faced issues seeking support and justice before the pandemic. In South Africa, reports of GBV are often dismissed by the police who perceive the issue as a private matter for families, rather than a criminal matter for the courts. There is also stigma associated with sexual violence. Together, these factors contribute to the underreporting of GBV cases.

Although South Africa’s experience with GBV is not unique, the extent and prevalence of the issue, compounded by the impact of the Covid-19 pandemic, has triggered a ‘secondary pandemic’ in the country marred by rising femincide rates and GBV. Unlike Covid-19 however, GBV is spread through social and political conditions that undermine the ability of women and girls to escape from abuse.

a 28-year old woman from Johannesburg, was found in the city’s West Rand district two years ago, thousands came out to protest against the government’s ineffectual approach to GBV. The perpetrators, Pule’s boyfriend and another man, were only charged in February 2021, unfortunately reflecting the slow response of South Africa’s justice system to many cases of this nature.

Although President Ramaphosa pledged $75 million to strengthen the criminal justice system and provide better care for victims of GBV, many women and children continue to suffer on a daily basis. However, the additional funding has failed to curb the exponential rise in cases of abuse and rape. According to a recent study by Amnesty International, there is public outrage about the institutional failures to deliver justice for GBV victims, given that South Africa’s Domestic Violence Act of 1998 explicitly states that victims may lay criminal complaints against offenders. Furthermore, funding intended for refuge centres for victims of GBV has either not been sufficient or not reached the centres who were due to receive it. By April 2020, many domestic violence shelters had already reached capacity even though the scale of the GBV crisis was yet to peak.

[“Why Gender-Based Violence is So Prevalent in South Africa (And How To End It)” dated July 1, 2020, at https://youtu.be/Up8_IKImo38]

“State Capture Inquiry | Karyn Maughn on David Mahlobo's testimony” - https://youtu.be/vNEbr7FxPYI

“The world according to David Mahlobo: everyone is a spy, everyone/everything is being watched, including the State Capture Commission”- https://www.dailymaverick.co.za/article/2021-04-09-the-world-according-to-david-mahlobo-everyone-is-a-spy-everyone-everything-is-being-watched-including-the-state-capture-commission/

As the former minister of state security in the Zuma administration and as a key Cabinet member implicated by several witnesses as a strategic enabler of State Capture, Mahlobo brought with him to proceedings the requisite air of paranoia and moments of a mental knit one, slip one.

At various junctures, Mahlobo seemed at pains to ram home that the “eyes of the world” were watching the commission.

When an issue arose with regard to his microphone Mahlobo cautioned Zondo that, “I can do profiling. How you speak, how you read… this is not on a closed session, someone is taking notes somewhere”.

Indeed, a multitude of journalists as well as South African citizens.

Later, justifying the direction that foreign counterintelligence measures took under his watch, Mahlobo was at pains to point out that South Africa was a strategic target for foreign intelligence agencies (unnamed) intent on “pursuing their objectives” (undeclared).

People, he warned, could be recruited by foreign agencies “knowingly or unknowingly, wittingly or unwittingly”.

No one was immune to these powers determined to pursue their own objectives including economic and political dominance (undefined).

“I repeat, no one is immune from recruitment. They can recruit a minister, they can even recruit a president. They can recruit a judge, they can recruit a parliamentarian. You can recruit as long as you know what kind of information and influence you need,” Mahlobo told Justice Zondo, balling his right hand into a fist.

Pretorius attempted to unpack the level and nature of Mahlobo’s oversight as minister of the State Security Agency which wielded enormous unaccountable power and which has been accused of establishing a parallel intelligence network at the service of former president Jacob Zuma.

These were findings not only by the High Level Panel review into the State Security Agency but also in testimony under oath to the commission by panel chair, Sydney Mufamadi and also then SSA acting DG, Loyiso Jafta.

Mahlobo took the opportunity to introduce other global agencies to his evidence and how they went about their work including “the Russians, the Chinese, the British and the CIA”.

“In other countries, they actually get presidents to interfere in another country,” said Mahlobo without providing any specific examples.

To which Pretorius responded that surely South Africa should apply and adhere to “our own policies and institutions” and not those of other countries.

“Let me assist you,” Mahlobo offered Pretorius, “that is an opinion”.

The biggest threat to the economy, Mahlobo said, had been identified as corruption in various areas as well as “negative” foreign forces seeking to influence the country’s politics.

Asked to identify these specific “foreign threats” Mahlobo responded, “let it be on record: Not everybody is a friend to South Africa. We do have enemies”.

Even countries that South Africa might regard as “friends” and with whom it shared “certain things” would not hesitate in “pursuing their own national interests even to their dominance economically”.

“Some, they live here, they are declared here. This country has these people but in the covert world, there are people you will never see and you must never see them,” Mahlobo offered.

No one was immune to recruitment by these foreign forces, Mahlobo warned, “not even presidents, judges or parliamentarians”.

>>13396852 - Rhino Trafficker in this video mentions David Mahlobo of the State Security Agency as a house guest from 17:00

“The Poachers Pipeline l Al Jazeera Investigations”dated Nov 13, 2016, at https://youtu.be/JMguWY99q6s. This is excellent investigative journalism. Government officials of South Africa, Chjna, Vietnam and North Korea seem to be involved.

An Al Jazeera undercover team penetrated the network of dealers, agents and traffickers who profit from the multi-million dollar trade in Rhino horn. An illegal business that is decimating the Rhino population close to the point of extinction.

Our reporters discovered that members of the Chinese President’s delegation went on an illegal spending spree in South Africa to buy ivory and rhino horn and smuggled the products back to China, according to revelations to be broadcast by Al Jazeera’s Investigative Unit.

In a six-month long investigation the Al Jazeera team also filmed a Chinese businessman, based in South Africa, describing his dealings in rhino horn and how he escapes prosecution. “Everything in Africa is based on money”, he says.

Al Jazeera shows exclusive footage shot secretly in a village near the Vietnamese capitol, Hanoi, which is a hub of wildlife trafficking. Despite a massive dossier of evidence on over fifty dealers in the village selling horn, ivory, tiger skins and lion bones, to the Vietnamese Government, no official action has been taken to close down the trade.

About twenty five thousand rhino are left in Africa. Six thousand have been killed in the last decade. The largest concentration of rhino is in South Africa and the Kruger National Park has become the major killing field, with two or three animals shot every night by local poachers.

“Kissinger Warns Washington: Accept New Global System Or Face A Pre-WWI Geopolitical Situation”- https://www.zerohedge.com/geopolitical/kissinger-warns-washington-accept-new-global-system-or-face-pre-wwi-geopolitical. Below are excerpts.

With the White House continually provoking tensions against Russia and China, the doyen of American foreign policy, Henry Kissinger, dramatically warned Washington last week to either agree to a new international system or continue pushing tensions that are leading to a situation similar to the eve of World War One.

In a recent Chatham House webinar with former British Foreign Secretary Jeremy Hunt, 97-year-old Kissinger called on the U.S. to create a balance with existing global forces, adding

“if you imagine that the world commits itself to an endless competition based on the dominance of whoever is superior at the moment, then a breakdown of the order is inevitable. And the consequences of a breakdown would be catastrophic.”

The veteran diplomat urged the U.S. to understand that not every issue has “final solutions” and warned

“if we don’t get to an understanding with China on that point, then we will be in a pre-World War One-type situation in which there are perennial conflicts that get solved on an immediate basis but one of them gets out of control at some point.”

However, the idea that the U.S. should stop imposing its will on everyone else will not be easily accepted in Washington. This is attested by the sharp rhetoric and personal insults that U.S. President Joe Biden continually levels against his Russian and Chinese counterparts, Vladimir Putin and Xi Jinping.

Kissinger’s career is washed in blood when we remember his backing of Pakistan during Bangladesh’s War of Independence despite the massacre of hundreds of thousands of people and mass rape; orchestrated a military coup in Chile to remove democratically elected Allende in favor of the Pinochet dictatorship; tacitly supported Indonesia’s mass killing of hundreds of thousands of East Timorese; and, blessed Turkey’s invasion of northern Cyprus that led to 200,000 Greek refugees without a right of return – among many other things.

Personal insults against Putin and Xi are an expression of American impotence, especially when we consider that the U.S. historically did not engage in this kind of rhetoric when it was at the zenith of its power. The U.S. is no longer the world’s sole superpower and its rivals are no longer accepting such aggression, which is exactly why the Chinese delegation that went to Alaska last month clearly stated that it does not accept any language of force.

Robert Gates, former director of the CIA and U.S. Secretary of Defense, admitted in a recent interview with the Washington Post that sanctions against Russia do not any good for the U.S. In The National Interest, Robert Kaplan describes Russia as a “problem from hell” because it cannot be subdued. Kaplan offered reasons why it is necessary for Russia to “move away from its one-sided alliance with China” and find balance with the U.S.

>>13404153 - I did not find a CIA connection however my search led me to this article. It is worh reading in full.

“Africa and international corruption: the strange case of South Africa and Seychelles.” - Longreach- https://www.thefreelibrary.com/Africa+and+international+corruption%3A+the+strange+case+of+South+Africa…-a018360260

The present article is an attempt to trace the development of corruption in one part of Africa in a global context. It demonstrates how the ease with which capital can be transferred and commodities bought and sold and the speed of modern communication in general have been given considerable impetus to the linking of corrupt practices across borders, and that this process of trans-national corruption was considerably encouraged by the Cold War.

[Craig] Williamson, cultivating his new persona as a trader, gave seminars to South African businessmen looking for new markets in the Far East and lectured on how to evade sanctions.(51) He seemed intent on creating a political niche for himself as well, and his political ambitions clearly had support from the very top of the ruling party. In 1987 he stood for parliament as a candidate for the National Party in a suburb of Johannesburg but failed to secure election. Not to be thwarted, President Botha appointed Williamson a member of the President's Council.

By this time, South Africa's relationship with Seychelles was thoroughly ambiguous. Seychelles was often represented in the South African press, and the Western press generally, as pro-Soviet and anti-apartheid. In reality, Pretoria had developed closer relations with the government in Victoria in the months after the 1981 mercenary coup attempt and had expelled Seychellois opposition leaders from South Africa, but the South African secret services at the same time conspired with a group of coup-plotters based in Britain through a diplomat at the South African Embassy in London. (52) The South African secret services eventually betrayed the coup plot to the Seychelles government in August 1986 and in effect aborted the plan. It seems that the South African strategy was to cultivate all sides in Seychelles with a view to cementing its own influence. After the August 1986 coup plot, South Africa's Military Intelligence had the Seychelles government under effective control, largely through Williamson and the relationship he had established with [Giovanni Mario] Ricci. GMR South Africa shared its Johannesburg office with another company controlled by Williamson, named Longreach, which acquired responsibility for government security in Seychelles after 1986. Years later, after the African National Congress had come to power, Williamson was to admit that Longreach was in fact secretly owned by Military Intelligence.(53) Seychelles was all the more useful as a Military Intelligence asset because of its government's pro-Soviet reputation. In matters of strategic deception, the South African secret services had made considerable advances since the ham-fisted bribery of the Department of Information and the 1981 mercenary fiasco.

Although Longreach purported to deal mainly in risk analysis, claiming officially to be advising businessmen on conditions for investment in southern Africa, particularly in Mozambique, Uganda and Burundi,(54) it in fact operated as an agent of Military Intelligence both inside and outside South Africa. Williamson once admitted that the company had engaged a French mercenary to carry out the attempted murder of President Lennox Sebe of Ciskei.(55) This, it transpired, was part of an operation by South African Military Intelligence aimed at incorporating Ciskei into a larger new homeland.(56)

GMR and Longreach were only two of the hundreds of companies set up or acquired by the South African security establishment in pursuit of the strategy of counter-revolution. Some of these companies were used to trade in products subject to international sanctions, including oil, but also in less legitimate products such as ivory and rhino horn.(63) One of Longreach's original board of directors, James Anthony White, a former member of the Rhodesian Selous Scouts, was reported to have an interest in the ivory trade.(64) Front companies were used to channel weapons or supplies to South African allies in Angola, Mozambique and elsewhere. Some, like the network run by the main SADF death-squad, the Civil Co-operation Bureau, were used to carry out assassinations, and others for money-laundering or for peddling political influence. Another Military Intelligence front with which Williamson was associated, the International Freedom Foundation, succeeded in enlisting senior members of the Republican Party in the US, including Senator Jesse Helms, later to become chairman of the Senate Foreign Affairs Committee, in the campaign to defend apartheid.(65)

After reading the below, I wonder about the recent knighthood of the Democratic Alliance Chief Whip. “Natasha Mazzone awarded star of Italy” - https://youtu.be/AgerNUnWTxg

“Africa and international corruption: the strange case of South Africa and Seychelles.” - Italy connectionat https://www.thefreelibrary.com/Africa+and+international+corruption%3A+the+strange+case+of+South+Africa…-a018360260:

“The bank's owner, a friend of Cabinet ministers Magnus Malan and Pik Botha, was in business with one Vito Palazzolo, an Italian who had worked as a money-launderer in the US and Europe for the important `Pizza connection' mafia syndicate and had subsequently settled in South Africa.(72)”

Others too were interested by Ricci's position in Seychelles. In 1980, a friend of Ricci's, the Roman banker Roberto Memmo, learned of Ricci's rights to incorporate offshore companies in the islands and established an offshore bank there, Roberto Memmo Investment Banking.(77) Although it was not publicly known at that time, Memmo was a member of the Italian masonic lodge P-2, a secret organization of leading figures in Italian business, the security and intelligence services and politics, which, when its existence was revealed, caused a sensation in Italy. A parliamentary commission of inquiry in Italy established chat the lodge had been closely connected with right-wing politics. In effect, during the 1970s P-2 and the Italian secret services had conspired in a strategy aimed at preventing the election of a communist government in Italy, including by inspiring acts of right-wing terror such as the 1980 bombing of Bologna railway station. Leading members of P-2 had also succeeded in infiltrating the finances of the Vatican.(78)

The full extent of corruption in Italian public life was to be fully laid bare only by the mani pulite (`Operation Clean Hands') investigations of the 1990s. At the heart of politics in Italy for several decades, it has now been proven, was a system whereby the main political parties received kickbacks in return for the awarding of public contracts from businesses and particularly from Italian parastatal companies over which politicians were able to exert influence. Secret networks like P-2 enabled obscure figures, such as the Venerable Master of the P-2 lodge Licio Gelli, to influence or even to blackmail politicians and government officials and also to negotiate with ocher important elements in Italian life, including the mafia and the Vatican.(79) The illicit payments negotiated through such networks between businessmen and politicians were illegally transferred to the bank accounts of various operators of the system and of individual politicians, usually through an elaborate series of transactions involving paper companies established for the purpose, and often by using offshore facilities in Switzerland, the Caribbean and elsewhere. The amounts of money involved were huge. One of the parastatal companies most deeply involved in this process was the Italian state oil company, the Ente Nazionale Idrocarburi (ENI), which was eventually found, as a result of the mani pulite judicial investigations, to have channelled over a billion and a half dollars to Italian political parties in illegal payments.(80) As part of the political spoils system, Italy's leading political parties had also divided along geographical lines the political oversight of the large Italian development budget, with the Italian Socialist Party taking Somalia, for example, and another party, Mozambique. Each party thus took its cut of kickbacks from contracts given to Italian companies, as did the relevant officials and politicians in Africa itself.(81) This system of political financing produced regular scandals in Italy whenever elements of the country's clandestine system of power-broking were made public. It was only in the early 1990s that circumstances permitted Italian judges to move against the political parties and influence-peddlers.

Among the most prominent scandals produced by this system was the 1982 collapse of the Banco Ambrosiano with unrecoverable loans of some $1.3 billion, at that time one of the largest bank collapses in history, and the mysterious death of the Bank's chairman, Roberto Calvi, found hanging beneath London's Blackfriars Bridge. The bad loans had been made to shell companies actually controlled by Calvi and by the Vatican bank, the Institute of Religious Works.

Fiorini went from strength to strength for as long as he enjoyed the patronage of leading Italian politicians. Through a series of companies, Fiorini, together with a partner, Giancarlo Parretti, who had only a few years earlier been convicted of fraudulent bankruptcy,(101) eventually succeeded in a major business coup, acquiring the Hollywood film company MGM-United Artists for the sum of $1.3 billion, after they had earlier been frustrated in an attempt to purchase the French film company Pathe.

“Africa and international corruption: the strange case of South Africa and Seychelles.” – US connectionat https://www.thefreelibrary.com/Africa+and+international+corruption%3A+the+strange+case+of+South+Africa…-a018360260

In view of this, it is noteworthy that one of [George] Bush's closest aides became associated with Mario Ricci in Seychelles. In February 1985, a partner in the US law firm used by Mario Ricci, former US Deputy Trade Secretary David R. Macdonald, travelled to Seychelles to discuss with Ricci and President Rene how the Seychelles government could best be represented in Washington. He then discussed the matter with Vice President Bush's press secretary, Peter Teeley. Teeley resigned his position at the White House on 1 March 1985 to open a public relations practice in the private sector. Within a week of his resignation Teeley had agreed to represent the government of Seychelles in Washington jointly with Macdonald, and the two of them undertook to introduce Seychellois ministers in Washington at whatever level they desired.(112) The bill for these services, $6,000 per month, was not paid by the Seychelles government but by Mario Ricci personally and correspondence concerning this lobbying arrangement was addressed not to the Seychelles' government but to Ricci personally.(113) In the circumstances, it is unlikely that Teeley would have resigned a senior position in the White House to take on this consultancy without informing his employer, Vice President Bush. It is testimony not only to the importance for the US government of developments in Seychelles at that time but also to the influence which Mario Ricci was acknowledged to have. It seems likely that senior US officials wished to cement their country's influence in Seychelles but also to outflank the more extreme anti-communists such as those of the World Anti-Communist League.(114) Neither the South African government nor mainstream US agencies actually sought to overthrow President Rene by the mid-1980s, and certainly not after the failed coup of August 1986, since they already had him under control. They were probably most afraid, by this time, not that Seychelles was becoming a Soviet client but that it would be destabilized by extreme anti-communists working with William Casey. This threat from the extreme right was to disappear after exposure of the Iran-contra networks in America and after South Africa had aborted the 1986 coup. The ending of the Iran-Iraq war was later further to reduce the sensitivity of the western Indian Ocean.

American and South African interests in Seychelles were quite similar. The various arms of the US security establishment were generally agreed on the need to support the Pretoria government in the context of the Cold War, although it was not politically acceptable for Washington to state its support for the apartheid government in Pretoria unequivocally. There were also more complex aspects to this relationship. The US and South Africa were both on the same side in the Angolan war, and needed to cooperate in the supply of UNITA. In the Middle East, the US was determined to prevent an Iranian victory in the Iran-Iraq War and was supplying massive quantities of arms to Iraq but was also arming Iran in secret in order to secure the release of US hostages in Lebanon. Since the South African weapons industry was selling weapons to Iraq and being part-paid in Iraqi oil,(115) the Americans had an interest in monitoring the flow of weapons from Pretoria to Baghdad so as to ensure the desired strategic balance between the two Middle Eastern rivals. At the same time Washington did not wish to disrupt Pretoria's oil supplies from Saudi Arabia and other Gulf states which supported Iraq in the Gulf War. As Indian Ocean islands, Seychelles and the Comoros stood in the middle of the sea-lanes and air-routes carrying weapons from South Africa to the Gulf and oil in the opposite direction.

As bureaucrats and businessmen hammered out these strategic arrangements in offices in Washington, Geneva, Pretoria and elsewhere, and in business meetings in hotels all over the world, and as vast amounts of money changed hands, an atmosphere of intrigue and skulduggery settled on Seychelles and among some Seychellois exiles. There were occasional political assassinations or disappearances in the islands, which although few in number, had an unsettling effect in such a small community.(116) Gerard Hoarau, the most effective of the Seychellois exiles, published a series of detailed, well-documented and highly embarrassing allegations concerning corruption by the Seychelles government and promised further revelations(117) which were never forthcoming: in November 1985, Hoarau was machine-gunned in a quiet London suburb. His killer, apparently a professional assassin, was never identified.

“Africa and international corruption: the strange case of South Africa and Seychelles.” – Final statementat https://www.thefreelibrary.com/Africa+and+international+corruption%3A+the+strange+case+of+South+Africa…-a018360260

In this way problems of political funding, crime and governance more generally in the rich world become inseparable from related problems in Africa itself. The networks thus established may become independent of their political instigators, creating power blocs with enduring interests which survive changes of regime in, for example, Rome, Paris or Pretoria. The impression gained by the French Member of Parliament Francois d'Aubert, chairman of the Anti-Mafia Commission of the French National Assembly and rapporteur of the Commission of Inquiry into Credit lyonnais, is worth citing as a description of the nebulous political-financial networks in modern democracies:(132)

I observed a shadow area, a zone of contact between legality and illegality,

between the licit and the criminal, between clean money and dirty money,

between honest people and out-and-out crooks. It is a no-man's-land

dominated by a demi-monde of intermediaries of every kind, of corrupters and

corrupted enjoying complete impunity for laundering money in investments

which are clean, safe and profitable.

In South Africa, the growth of political corruption was associated with a very special factor, namely the protracted struggle to defend apartheid. South Africa and southern Africa may feel the effects of methods used in the service of the total strategy for years to come as Pretoria's former secret servants continue their careers either inside or outside the public service. Trans-border trafficking of drugs and weapons is frequently seen by commentators, and by the South African government itself, as a major security threat in an age, and in a part of the world, where conventional wars between states seem to have become obsolete and to have been replaced by armed conflict carried out by factional interests, often associated with international trades in illicit products, including narcotics. Funds gained from enterprises of this type can be channelled into political finances, and in South Africa, as in Italy and elsewhere, the dividing lines between secret services, organized crime and political parties may be seen to have become blurred to a considerable degree.

In much of tropical Africa, the decline of state power in recent years has resulted in the emergence of networks of long-distance trade in high-value commodities including gems, weapons and drugs which are both sources of wealth and vectors of political-military conflict, such as in Liberia, Angola, Somalia and elsewhere.(133) This is an important development in which anti-corruption or good governance campaigns are of little relevance, since either these trades are outside the control of collapsed states, or the political powers which are emerging depend on them for their own finances. Such long-distance trades are producing new patterns of politics in Africa in which secret services or privatized security organizations like Executive Outcomes are playing an important role. There are examples of major banks which launder drug-money and facilitate more traditional forms of corruption such as bribery and capital flight for governments and for individual clients but which are also tolerated by major Western intelligence agencies which find it convenient to observe, but not to denounce, the illicit flows of financing for states, drug barons, political parties and terrorist organizations. BCCI, the Bank of Credit and Commerce International, whose collapse marked the biggest bank failure in history, is the best-known example.(134) The detailed reconstruction in the present article may serve as a contribution to a deeper understanding of the origins and nature of these contemporary phenomena which are inextricably associated with general questions of governance and politics.

“Ramaphosa’s appearance at Zondo commission changed to later date”- https://www.iol.co.za/news/politics/ramaphosas-appearance-at-zondo-commission-changed-to-later-date-40b34508-1568-434c-88ac-8366a5e43d02.

President Cyril Ramaphosa will no longer appear before the state capture commission on April 22 and 23 in his capacity as president of the ANC.

This was revealed by the chairperson of the commission into state capture deputy chief Justice Raymond Zondo.

Shortly before kicking off proceedings for the day, Zondo said he had received correspondence from Ramaphosa’s office stating that due to government-related commitments he would be appearing at a later stage.

>>13423371

My apologies I did not copy the full section, see below.

“Ramaphosa’s appearance at Zondo commission changed to later date”- https://www.iol.co.za/news/politics/ramaphosas-appearance-at-zondo-commission-changed-to-later-date-40b34508-1568-434c-88ac-8366a5e43d02.

President Cyril Ramaphosa will no longer appear before the state capture commission on April 22 and 23 in his capacity as president of the ANC.

This was revealed by the chairperson of the commission into state capture deputy chief Justice Raymond Zondo.

Shortly before kicking off proceedings for the day, Zondo said he had received correspondence from Ramaphosa’s office stating that due to government-related commitments he would be appearing at a later stage.

The commission had initially set down April 22 –23 for Ramaphosa to provide testimony before the commission in his capacity as the leader of the ruling party and on April 28 – 29 in his capacity as president of South Africa.

"That has changed in part because the president made a request in connection with the case of 22 and 23 April because of some commitments that have risen. I’ve acceded with the request to change those days,“ Zondo said.

He announced that Ramaphosa would now appear on April 28 and 29 to testify as ANC president and on May 13 and 14 as the government leader.

“Former prime minister David Cameron probed” – Greensill Scandal - https://youtu.be/mx2LQu3iYuY

“International Relatons Expert, Oscar van Heerden spoke with eNCA's Jane Dutton.”

“Flash Briefing: SA’s own Greensill implodes; Tencent troubles; Hammerson; Bolt”dated 14 March 2021 at https://www.biznews.com/global-investing/2021/03/14/greensill-tencent-naspers-bolt

• Greensill Capital, a start-up that provided short-term cash advances and spun off its loans into bond-like securities has filed for insolvency protection. This after Credit Suisse withdrew it’s $10bn credit line. Backers like Japan’s SoftBank stand to lose billions. Now South Africa’s Barak Fund, which has a similar business model to Greensill, is crumbling too. Bloomberg reports that Barak wants to go into liquidation as over half of the fund’s $4bn in assets are now stuck in coal mining, consumer goods and fertiliser production across Africa. Barak responded to Bloomberg inquiries saying it continues to operate as before, serving borrowers across Africa.

• Pony Ma’s Tencent has been put on notice by China’s antitrust watchdog, says Bloomberg. Asia’s largest conglomerate was fined as Beijing expands a crackdown that began with Jack Ma’s fintech empire. China’s top financial regulators see Tencent as the next target for increased scrutiny after the clampdown on Jack Ma’s Ant. On the local bourse, Naspers shares have fallen almost 6%.

• Meanwhile, Ant Group CEO Simon Hu resigned, as the company overhauls its business, an anonymous person told Bloomberg. Eric Jing, Ant’s current chairman, will become CEO as well, effective immediately. An Ant spokesperson confirmed Hu’s resignation.

• Hammerson, which owns shopping centres across the UK, France and Ireland, slashed the value of its properties by almost £2bn last year, according to a statement. Plummeting rental income caused the company’s worst loss in history.

• Bolt Technology, a rival to Uber Technologies in Africa and Eastern Europe, was valued at more than $2bn in its most recent funding round, according to founder and CEO, Markus Villig. The company raised $20m in funding from the World Bank this month, Bolt’s total fundraising to almost 600 million dollars. In Africa, Bolt plans to use its platform to add other services such as grocery and food delivery.

“Conviction of two farmers who were found guilty of killing a Coligny teenager has been overturned”dated Nov 27, 2020 at https://youtu.be/I3C4eq26Aw8

“Supreme Court of Appeal overturns convictions of duo in Coligny murder” at http://www.capetalk.co.za/articles/402788/just-in-supreme-court-of-appeal-overturns-convictions-of-duo-in-coligny-murder states;

Two men convicted of the murder of a 16-year-old boy in Coligny have had their convictions overturned by the Supreme Court of Appeal.

In 2018, Philip Schutte and Pieter Doorewaard were found guilty of murdering 16-year-old Matlhomola in Coligny in April 2017.

The pair were sentenced to an effective 18 and 23 years behind bars respectively for killing Moshoeu after accusing him of stealing sunflowers from a farm.

The teen's death triggered racial tensions in the small farming town.

The duo successfully approached the Supreme Court of Appeal (SCA) to challenge the conviction handed down in the North West High Court.

The application to appeal the convictions was brought by rights group AfriForum on behalf of Doorewaard and Schutte.

AfriForum has released a statement on Friday afternoon welcoming the SCA's decision.

"AfriForum bore the full cost of the appeal application because we believed in their innocence and today justice was done, ”said Kallie Kriel, CEO of AfriForum.

>>13447517 - Now there is another case made into a racial affair.

“Who is telling the truth? An investigation into (perhaps) another Coligny.” [concerning Mkhondo (Piet Retief) farm killings]- https://youtu.be/oTgcc5Kw2AM

Sources provided;

“Mkhondo farm killings: What really happened?” – https://citizen.co.za/premium/2472951/what-happened-in-mkhondo/

“FF Plus laments politicisation of Mkhondo farm killings” - https://citizen.co.za/news/south-africa/crime/2472980/ff-plus-laments-politicisation-of-mkhondo-farm-killings/

“MEC calls for ANC to ‘confiscate’ farms of farmers violating human rights” - https://www.news24.com/citypress/news/mec-calls-for-anc-to-confiscate-farms-of-farmers-violating-human-rights-20210413

“Piet Retief killings [Mkhondo]: Innocent men may be in jail – IRR” - https://www.politicsweb.co.za/documents/piet-retief-killings-innocent-men-may-be-in-jail–. Below are excerpts.

Innocent men may be in jail

Cronje said: “The police version, much cited in the media, may be flawed to the extent that innocent men are sitting in jail. If that is the case, a grave injustice is being perpetrated and we will do all we can to see to it that the men are freed.”

A repeat of the Coligny injustice

Cronje said: “The case may have echoes of the Coligny injustice when two farm employees were wrongly convicted of murder in part because of a racially charged, malevolent and inept police investigation that saw flawed evidence presented and accepted by a court. The Coligny injustice was only set right on appeal. Given the experience of Coligny, and the extent of corruption and plain incompetence in the police, we will be applying our own resources to verify the facts in this case. Of course, should it occur that our fears were misplaced, and that the police version is correct in all respects, we will go ahead and publish those facts in support of the police – but I am afraid that we have reached a point in this country where the police cannot always be taken at their word.”

A track record of racial nationalist incitement and stigmatization

Cronje warned: “Regrettably, over many years we have tracked a trend where politicians, activists, and some journalists have sought to incite racial nationalist conflict and division in our country. Often the tactic employed is to vilify and stigmatize racial minorities around explosive cases such as that at Mkhondo. The purpose of stigmatization is to desensitize society to the plight of the targeted community or individuals so that no-one will dare to come to their defence when they suffer injustices. The minority of black or white writers or commentators that expose the injustice are then vilified as arch-racists or race traitors.”

Justice fails and the rule of law is lost

Cronje noted: “When racial nationalist stigmatization succeeds and permeates the justice system through the police and the courts – as happened at Coligny – then justice cannot be delivered and the rule of law no longer applies. It is, therefore, critical to verify that everything the police has said, and that has appeared in the media about this case to date, is true and correct. This is not an issue that should split South Africans along lines of race because so many South Africans have experience of police ineptitude and corruption and know the devastation this causes in their own communities.”

What the IRR will be doing

Cronje said: “Our concerns are sufficiently great that we will be doing the following. The first will be to verify the facts as set out by the police and to gather whatever other information is relevant. The second is that we will ensure that all local and international media are held to a standard where they report on the facts of the case – and there is already a great deal of international media interest in this case. The third is that we will further act to ensure that any political or activist attempts at inciting racial division and conflict via misleading information and fake news will be challenged in public. The fourth is that where any law enforcement officer, agency, prosecutor, or court official is found to dabble in false information we will press for them to be disciplined or prosecuted together with any politicians they have engaged with. The fifth, of course – should it turn out that the police’s version is flawed – will be to ensure that the four accused are freed.”

>>13439588

“Mbalula warns Magashule-supporting Boss ‘You’re inviting trouble,’”- https://youtu.be/NjSFC1qPR7A

>>13424499

“LIAR! Gwede lies to the Zondo commission while the DA has credential struggles..”- https://youtu.be/IHLT0TvMNg8

“Corruption SIU Latest: JSE firm [EOH] reported incident to ‘pay back the money’”- https://www.thesouthafrican.com/news/corruption-latest-jse-firm-reported-wrong-doing-to-pay-back-the-money-siu/

Responding to an SIU report that EOH is paying back R40 million to the state, the firm says 'a handful' of former staff were involved.

The JSE list firm which has agreed with the Special Investigating Unit (SIU) to ‘pay back the money’, a whopping R40 million that it received unduly from the Department of Defence, says the “wrong doing” was perpetrated by former employees.

IT firm EOH was responding in a statement on Friday to the annuoncementt by the Special Investigating Unit, which is tasked to fight corruption, that it had allegedly benefited from an irregular contract and inflated Microsoft licensing fees in a R250 million deal. The firm subsequently signed an Acknowledgement of Debt to pay back the R40 million that was uncovered to have been unduly paid, during an SIU investigation.

EOH said in response to the SIU allegations that it had played a role in reporting the wrong doing to the authorities.

“EOH wishes to provide clarity on the events that led up to the signature of the Acknowledgement of Debt (AoD), which is referenced in the Special Investigations Unit (SIU) media statement of 21 April 2021, regarding the Department of Defence (DoD) contract, as well as the subsequent media reports,” EOH said.

“From inception of the ENSafrica forensics investigation in February 2019, EOH has transparently and proactively reported to the authorities, including the Directorate for Priority Crime Investigations (DPCI), the FIC (Financial Intelligence Centre), the SIU and the Department of National Treasury, regarding wrongdoing by a handful of former employees of the EOH Public Sector team,” EOH said.

EOH said that by 8 July 2019, the DPCI had received a section 34 report on the ENSafrica preliminary findings and the matter had been reported to the FIC.

“Prior to engaging in settlement negotiations with the SIU, on 31 May 2019 EOH reported the wrongdoing to National Treasury and proposed to compensate the State for identified irregularities including the DoD and the Department of Water and Sanitation (DWS) contracts,” EOH said.

“When the SIU met with EOH management for the first time on 20 March 2020, the SIU requested that EOH engage with them directly regarding compensation to the DoD, as they were mandated to address the irregularities at DoD. During that meeting, EOH provided the SIU with the ENSafrica investigation information on the DoD contracts,” the firm said.

EOH said it had subsequently entered into an AoD with the SIU at the end of September 2020.

“EOH commenced monthly payments in terms of the AoD from 5 October 2020. The terms of the settlement agreement were disclosed at the EOH 2020 year-end results presentation on 2 December 2020 and in its SENS announcement. EOH has not only reported wrongdoing but has initiated action to recover losses caused by the perpetrators of wrongdoing,” EOH said.

“EOH remains committed to doing business ethically as well as being a good corporate citizen. It was in line with this commitment that EOH provided input to the Judicial Commission of Enquiry into allegations of State Capture regarding identified irregularities.”

>>13478682

“Cuban engineers scandal: Sisulu given list of 120 SA workers ‘who can do the same job’”- https://www.thesouthafrican.com/news/why-cuban-engineers-lindiwe-sisulu-list-south-african-workers-trained/

A leading trade union appears to have done Lindiwe Sisulu's job for her this week, after finding over 100 domestic alternatives to the 'Cuban engineers'.

Lindiwe Sisulu has done very little to instil confidence in the South African labour force, after she confirmed that the government was spending tens of millions of rand to bring a group of Cuban engineers to our shores this week. The ANC stalwart argued that these technicians ‘are more skilled’ than the workers we have here in Mzansi.

LINDIWE SISULU AND THE CUBAN ENGINEERS

Sisulu, failing to consider that this logic is perhaps a damning indictment of her party and their 27 years in power, has stuck to her guns throughout this fiasco. But she runs the risk of being left utterly red-faced, thanks to the trade union Solidarity.

According to the Department of Water and Sanitation (DWS), the Cuban engineers will bring a wealth of strategic expertise and assist with training local candidate engineers, while working on a series of rural projects. However, the DWS and Minister Sisulu have faced mounting criticism from the opposition and civil society since the appointment was announced.

HOW MUCH WILL IT COST TO HOST THE CUBAN ENGINEERS?

Sputnik Ratau, the spokesperson for the DWS, says the appointment of Cuban engineers is justified because the country has a number of bilateral agreements with Cuba. The deployment of 24 workers from the island nation will cost South Africa roughly R65 million – something that Solidarity (Solidariteit) is bitterly disappointed with.

That’s why they are trying to play Minister Sisulu and her department at their own game. Earlier today, Chief Executive Officer of the Union, Dirk Hermann, revealed that he and his colleagues have been working hard to draw up a candidate list made up entirely of competent and qualified South Africans – and they’ve found some gems:

SOLIDARITY DRAW UP LIST OF ‘CAPABLE SOUTH AFRICANS’

“We have reached out to the Minister with a list of some of the country’s most experienced and knowledgeable specialists in engineering, some of whom retain masters and doctoral degrees and others who have up to 42 years of experience. They are ready and willing to immediately start with work.”

“It is a shame that the government itself does not take the President’s call earlier this year to support local employees and businesses seriously. If the Minister was truly unable to find local workers who wanted to do the work, then she did not search very hard. Thus, we will bring the engineers to her. The Minister’s decision is unacceptable and cannot ignored.”

LINDIWE SISULU IN HOT WATER OVER DWS PROCUREMENT

The backlash against Lindiwe Sisulu has been fierce. She’s a trending topic on Twitter, after social media users echoed the point made by Hermann: The deployment is off-brand with the ‘keep it local’ message Cyril Ramaphosa delivered at SONA 2021 – and there aren’t enough Cuban engineers in the world to help the minister fix this particular PR nightmare.

“AfriForum questions Sanral’s use of facial recognition tech”- https://www.thesouthafrican.com/news/afriforum-sanral-facial-recognition-what-is-machine-learning/. Below are excerpts.

Sanral is exploring the use of machine learning to improve road safety. Here's why AfriForum is concerned.

AfriForum, on Friday 23 April 2021, expressed concern about the South African National Roads Agency’s (Sanral) possible use of machine learning and facial recognition technology in the agency’s highway cameras.

The organisation now questions Sanral’s ability to implement the project successfully, citing the possible violation of the public’s constitutional right to privacy. Here’s what we know.

SANRAL’S USE OF MACHINE LEARNING – WHAT YOU NEED TO KNOW

DOES SANRAL USE FACIAL RECOGNITION TECHNOLOGY?

Sanral’s Technical Innovation Hub (TIH) earlier this week confirmed it was exploring the use of machine learning to improve road safety, reduce traffic congestion and assist with infrastructure development.

CHINA’S USE OF MACHINE LEARNING IN LAW ENFORCEMENT

Van Breda explains that the system adapts and learns as more data is collected. He admitted that this type of tech was still in an “exploratory phase in South Africa” and cited countries such as China using machine learning to assist law enforcement.

“[Authorities in China] are able to identify the driver of a vehicle and instantly issue fines if that driver does not have a valid driver’s licence. Fines can also be issued automatically for individuals who jay-walk or gain access to restricted areas”.

If implemented properly in South Africa, this technology could aid Sanral with infrastructure planning of drop-off or pick-up points, and identify which areas are considered a safety risk.

PRIVACY CONCERNS

AfriForum believes this technology would violate the public’s constitutional right to privacy. The organisation called on Sanral to provide detailed information on how the tech would be implemented in South Africa.

AfriForum also requests information on what steps Sanral would take to ensure motorists’ privacy are protected, and how Sanral would combat misuse of this technology.

Legal and Risk Manager Marnus Kamfer explained that AfriForum “is not opposed to the use of the latest technology to improve road safety and law enforcement”, as long as it isn’t implemented “at the expense of people’s constitutional rights”.

“AfriForum is also concerned that Sanral refers to China as an example where [machine learning] has been successfully implemented, especially due to the Chinese government’s poor track record in terms of human rights and privacy violations”.

AfriForum says technological advancements cannot be pursued by a government to increase its ability to observe “and thereby infringe on the privacy of its citizens, especially not in a way that can lead to unhindered abuse”.

>>13489090

>>13487875

>>13469631

“Heritage Fund: Was Tokyo telling the truth? Hawks confirm case was opened”- https://www.thesouthafrican.com/news/heritage-fund-tokyo-sexwale-hawks-open-case-white-spiritual-boy-trust-22-april-2021/.

There is another twist in Tokyo’s tale about the mysterious Heritage Fund. The HAWKS confirmed that a case was opened.

Tokyo Sexwale held a dramatic press conference in Johannesburg on Thursday afternoon, 22 April. He made several extraordinary claims and provided paperwork, which is yet to be substantiated, about a mysterious fund, which goes by many names.

Some call it the Heritage Fund, Sexwale refers to it as the White Spiritual Boy Trust (WSB) and claims individuals in the country have been siphoning funds from it.

At the conference, he told the journalists in attendance that he would not be able to answer certain questions because the HAWKS were investigating the matter.

Late on Thursday, at 20:40, South African law enforcement confirmed that a case had indeed been opened.

HAWKS CONFIRM HERITAGE FUND CASE HAS BEEN OPENED

In a tweet via the South African Police Service’s account, the Directorate for Priority Crime Investigation, more commonly known as the HAWKS, said that a case was opened and they were looking into the allegations of theft regarding the fund but they were not very forthcoming.

“The Directorate for Priority Crime Investigation can confirm that a case of fraud alternatively theft was opened with regards to the so-called Heritage Fund,” said the tweet.

After Sexwale’s blockbuster press conference, a man claiming to be a South African Reserve Bank shareholder, Fanie Fondse backed up the ANC veteran’s claims and said he believes the Heritage Fund exists.

Fondse apparently lodged a criminal complaint sometime last week and claimed he named a suspect in his submission. The alleged SARB shareholder is adamant the Heritage Fund exists and claims the account holds more than 15 zeroes.

WHAT WE KNOW SO FAR

Sexwale said he was appointed as a joint mandate holder of the Heritage Fund on 7 January 2019. The other joint mandate holder is another mysterious figure named Godwin Webb, who could not attend the press conference due to a medical emergency.

The money in the fund is allegedly of foreign origin and is meant to serve as a source for philanthropic investments and low-interest loans for the entire African continent and certain parts of Asia.

Sexwale said the fund is based in Singapore and is led by a Chinese man named “Chuck Leong” who serves as a proxy.

The South African Reserve Bank (SARB) and Minister of Finance Tito Mboweni maintain that the Heritage Fund does not exist and referred to it as a “scam.”

“Tokyo Sexwale on the day #ChrisHani was assassinated.” dated Apr 10, 2013, at https://youtu.be/mcOjx45FYLI.

“ANC veteran and Chris Hani's friend, Tokyo Sexwale, was first on the scene of the SACP leader's assassination. Here is what he told the media on 10 April 1993.”

“TOKYO SEXWALE: Meet The Billionaire Diamond Magnate Who Went To Jail With Nelson Mandela”dated Jul 9, 2013, at https://www.businessinsider.com/the-fabulous-life-of-tokyo-sexwale-2013-7?op=1&r=US&IR=T

Until today, billionaire South African Tokyo Sexwale (prounced "seh-wa-le," unfortunately) was the country's housing minister.

But Jacob Zuma's leadership shake-up saw Sexwale — the major anti-apartheid crusader and diamond mogul considered to be a political challenger to the president — removed from the cabinet.

Sexwale has a crazy life story to go with that name (the "Tokyo" moniker derives from his childhood love of karate).

In the late 1970s, he was charged with terrorism and conspiracy and sent to Robben Island where he met fellow political prisoner Nelson Mandela, who had been sent there 12 years prior.

Sexwale was released in 1990, and like something out a movie, he ended up marrying Judy van Vuuren, the paralegal that represented him while he was in prison.

When he came to power in 1994, Mandela named Sexwale premier of Gauteng province, the region home to both Johannesburg and Pretoria.

Sexwale would eventually leave politics for business, becoming a major oil and diamond mining magnate, though his name was floated as a possible successor to Mandela. That honor would go to Thabo Mbeki. In 2007, Sexwale reportedly planned to challenge Mbeki, but never did.

Things would also turn sour for Sexwale's marriage, scandalizing South Africa with a bitter divorce in February. It got ugly. Sexwale accused his wife of emailing out illegal hardcore pornography while she accused him of shielding his finances.

Those finances are impressive. Sexwale made an absolute fortune from his company, which was once lauded by fellow diamond tycoon Harry Oppenheimer. In 2009, Sexwale declared his wealth to be approximately $2 billion rand (nearly $200 million).

The divorce also helped shine some light on all of Sexwale's toys too: the requisite yacht, vineyards, Learjet, and even a $70 million island.

In 2009, Zuma appointed Sexwale as Minister of Human Settlements, but it was no secret that Sexwale still had presidential aspirations.

Now out of power, those ambitions will have to wait. At least this is his new girlfriend.

“Sexwale, Gungubele: Chris Hani's purpose was to free SA's from apartheid”dated Apr 10, 2016, at https://youtu.be/PfWRVqft6ls

“Chris Hani joined the SACP in 1961 and MK in 1962, and went into exile in the Soviet Union in 1963 while out on bail pending an appeal against a sentence under the Suppression of Communism Act. He re-entered South Africa in 1974 to establish an underground infrastructure for the ANC. Moving to Lesotho, he organised MK units for guerrilla operations in South Africa. By 1982, having survived several assassination attempts, he was transferred to Zambia, where he was elected a member of the ANC National Executive Committee and MK Political Commissar, working with students recruited to the ANC following the 1976 uprising. In 1987, Hani was elected Chief of Staff of MK, and rose to a senior position in the SACP. On April 10, 1993 Hani was assassinated, shot in the head and back by a Polish far-right immigrant, Janusz Waluś, as he stepped out of his car outside his Boksburg home. Exactly, 23 years ago, South Africa was at the brink of a civil war when SACP leader Chris Hani was gunned down at his East Rand home in Boksburg. Tokyo Sexwale wept beside Chris Hani's body. Let us take a look at some of the scenes from that day. Meanwhile the Mayor of Ekurhuleni, Mondli Gungubele says Chris Hani's purpose was to free the people of South Africa from the shackles of apartheid.”

>>13525727

>https://youtu.be/PfWRVqft6ls

Embedded

“Sexwale urges Hani killers to come clean”dated Apr 10, 2013, at https://youtu.be/yOQdMkw2e4U

“Much like Chris Hani's widow, Limpho Hani, minister for Human Settlements Tokyo Sexwale believes Hani's killers have not told the entire story on the events that lead to Hani's assassination in 1993. Sexwale was speaking on both SABC2's Morning Live and later on SAfm AM Live programme to commemorate the 20th anniversary of Hani's passing. The minister says it is difficult to consider parole for Hani's killer Clive Derby-Lewis who was recently denied medical parole…”

5:51 – “A gun was stolen from the Air Force because the weapon that was shot at Chris was an Air Force weapon.”

“The [Clive] Derby-Lewis disclosure: Part 1” convicted of Chris Hani’s murderdated Nov 14, 2016, at https://youtu.be/tmcYoCVhips

>>13525747

>“A gun was stolen from the Air Force because the weapon that was shot at Chris was an Air Force weapon.”

“The [Clive] Derby-Lewis disclosure: Part 2” convicted of Chris Hani’s murderdated Nov 15, 2016, at https://youtu.be/-7aBuiExtSc

5:45 – Clive discusses how he provided Janusz with his own 9mm weapon with a silencer.

“The [Clive] Derby-Lewis disclosure: Part 3” convicted of Chris Hani’s murderdated Nov 16, 2016, at https://youtu.be/NvR91IeZdc8

“The [Clive] Derby-Lewis disclosure: Part 4” convicted of Chris Hani’s murderdated Nov 17, 2016, at https://youtu.be/5P0Z3Dqi9fw

“Chris Hani – and my part in South Africa’s downfall” – Part 1- https://nicborain.com/2011/04/11/chris-hani-and-my-part-in-south-africas-downfall/

For a brief time in the late 1980’s I had occasion to spend some time with Chris Hani, then Chief of Staff of the ANC’s uMkhonto we Sizwe and Secretary General of the South African Communist Party.

I was working for the Institute for a Democratic Alternative for South Africa (IDASA) and a meeting between the ANC’s military and the South African Defence Force seemed like a natural extension and deepening of the work IDASA had done in putting the white establishment in contact with the ANC.

I met Chris several times in Lusaka where we prepared the agenda – and then, obviously, at the conference and several times afterwards.

He was an interesting guy – serious, charming and slightly too ready to tell me the story of how he travelled, through the underground, into danger, with Pliny, Virgil and Shakespeare in his knapsack … I’m not perfectly sure of the actual authors and titles of the classics he carried, but the point was that he mentioned, more than once, that he did so.

I was already aware in those days of the depth of murderous gangsterism that had enveloped Joe Modise’s leadership of MK – a trend and tendency he took with him into Mandela’s first cabinet and helped set the ANC’s elite on the course for the destination it has reached.

Chris was the great hope for cleaning up Modise’s mess and he was also seen as an antidote to Thabo Mbeki’s technocratic shuttle-diplomacy.

I became aware while organising the conference that some ANC strategists were using the opportunity to show Chris Hani was just as charming and able to talk to whites as Mbeki.

I asked him, in my naivety, about the rumours that he and Mbeki were competitors. He convincingly, to my ears, pooh-poohed the idea saying that he and Thabo were like a tag team, each with his own strengths, but united in the identical goal – and further, he claimed, they were good friends as well.

I had no special intelligence to validate (or otherwise) this claim. Perhaps they were. Perhaps they would have been the A-Team of the post Mandela administration, balancing each other’s faults, playing to each other’s strengths. I know it’s unlikely, but it is difficult not to dream of how things might have been.

As it happened Chris was almost disturbingly charming and persuasive at the conference.

We only managed to get ex-SADF and Bantustan leaders as well as a whole lot of shady and not so shady military and arms dealer types on the domestic delegation.

I have reason to suspect that I might have brought the running dogs of the global arms trade along with that delegation and I often shudder at the thought that I might have played a role in helping the global arms corporations bury their deadly wasp eggs deep into the ANC, later to hatch and gorge themselves just carefully enough so that the host stays alive … but I comfort myself with the fact that Joe Modise had long since sold his and the ANC’s soul to the worst and most rapacious branch of global capitalism.

I remember watching Chris holding forth late one night; he stood behind two seated and coyly smiling white men with thick rugby players necks – there is a reason stereotypes are stereotypes! Chris had a hand on each of their shoulders and he was rubbing them as he spoke with languid and swelling rhythms, about the future of non-racialism and shared patriotism that awaited us.

The big white guys were in love; it gleamed out of their teary eyes and Chris had his head back and eyes closed like he was conducting an exorcism.

I don’t know if Chris Hani would have made a difference if he had lived.

“Chris Hani – and my part in South Africa’s downfall” – Part 2- https://nicborain.com/2011/04/11/chris-hani-and-my-part-in-south-africas-downfall/

Only a precious few have managed to resist the seemingly irresistible pull towards corruption and greed. You watch all of your friends and comrades become part of that system (the same system that laid its eggs in the ANC that would later hatch into the Arms Scandal and worse), the memory of the ideals that drove you become vague … everyone else is doing it, what is the point in me hanging on while they are all busy with the business of securing themselves for life?

It was Tokyo Sexwale who wept beside Chris Hani’s body on 10th April 1993 outside the house in Boksburg. There was something about Chris that reminds me of Tokyo Sexwale (who I do not know personally but seems to exude a similar charisma that makes one think of a suspiciously charming pirate).

Reading Mandy Wiener’s Killing Kebble over the weekend and getting the insight provided by Fikile Mbalula flattening a bottle of Johnny Walker Blue in Kebble’s home … Mbalula and his ANC Youth League comrades treating the servants with extreme arrogance, trashing the house like spoiled children … it is difficult not to be filled with a sense of loss and longing.

Mbalula was 9 18 (oops) years old when I sat with Chris Hani in Lusaka planning how best to drive wedges into Apartheid’s army and win any potential enemies to our side.

I don’t know for sure what he would have thought of this thrust to catapult the “new generation” of leadership into power in 2012 – including, horrifyingly, Fikile Mbalula for Secretary General.

But I suspect he would have drawn the line here. The ANC is not yet in the hands of Mbalula and his cronies – who are so reminiscent of Joe Modise, only slightly more refined.

There have always been heroes in the liberation movement who fought the tendency towards cronyism and rent-seeking abuse. I thought Chris Hani was in the process of becoming one of those when I worked with him in the late 80’s.

Like James Dean and Jesus Christ, Chris Hani’s virtues are frozen as an historical artefact.

There is a part of me that is relieved he will never be tried and found wanting.

(Note: my friend the fabulous artist Isabel Thompson helped organise that conference and my fellow Bruce Springsteen fan and mentor to so many of us Gavin Evans took the pics and posted them on facebook which is where I found them.)

“‘Hani was reckless about safety ’” - Sexwale mentioneddated Apr 10, 2012, at https://www.iol.co.za/news/politics/hani-was-reckless-about-safety–1272335

One of Hani’s former bodyguards, Sandile Sizani, broke his silence of almost two decades, on the eve of the anniversary of the assassination of the iconic liberation leader.

Before the Easter weekend, Hani, together with Sizani and Jabu, his other bodyguard, had travelled extensively – to Bhisho and other places – and there was a general feeling that everyone, including his driver, Cetshwayo, had to take a break.

“Besides, there was no point in having one man guard you on the road and also guard you at home. That was unheard of because at some stage he had to go to sleep,” Sizani pointed out. Our concern was also that we could be arrested for carrying illegal firearms and then Chris would be exposed.

“We then decided to take the matter right up to the party president, Nelson Mandela, who then called Tokyo (Sexwale), and for the first time we had legal weapons.”

Talking about the day Hani was shot, Sizani said: “It hit me, that it – his death – couldn’t be true because it happened shortly after April Fool’s Day. Part of me thought it was a joke. But then when I turned back to go home, I could see from the looks on the people’s faces that something terrible had happened to Chris.

“Chris Hani murdered because he was an obstacle to the arms deal”dated 8 October 2014 at https://www.sowetanlive.co.za/news/2014-10-08-chris-hani-murdered-because-he-was-an-obstacle-to-the-arms-deal/

Former South African Communist Party leader Chris Hani was allegedly assassinated for fear he would expose former Defence Minister Joe Modise’s involvement in the multi-million rand arms deal, said arms deal critic Terry Crawford-Browne at the Seriti Commission of Inquiry on Wednesday.

Crawford-Browne has made a number of allegations in his testimony at the inquiry established to investigate allegations of fraud and corruption in the R70 billion arms deal in 1999.

Crawford-Browne testified that there were allegations that when Hani was assassinated in 1993, he was on the verge of exposing former defence minister Joe Modise’s involvement in, and corruption relating to, the arms deal.

"It has been alleged that Mr Janusz Walus was ultimately employed by the [British arms manufacturer] BAE, perhaps by way of John Bredenkamp, the Rhodesian/Zimbabwean who was the second-largest recipient of those BAE bribes," he told the inquiry.

He said blaming Clive Derby-Lewis for Hani's murder was merely a red herring to blame white right-wing elements, diverting attention from the British arms industry.

Derby-Lewis was convicted of conspiring to kill SA Communist Party general secretary Chris Hani by providing the gun Polish immigrant Walus used to kill him in the driveway of his home in Boksburg, on the East Rand, on April 10, 1993.

The 78-year-old former Conservative Party MP, who was sentenced to 25 years behind bars, has served more than 20 years of his sentence.

Derby-Lewis was initially sentenced to death, which was commuted to life imprisonment when the death penalty was abolished in 1995. He has been repeatedly denied parole.

Modise was poisoned, the commission also heard.

"I was told by Bheki Jacobs six weeks before Mr Modise died that he was being poisoned, and that his death would be ascribed to cancer," arms deal critic Terry Crawford-Browne told the inquiry's hearings in Pretoria.

"Mr Modise was known to have many enemies and it is also known there was considerable animosity between him and Mr Chris Hani dating from their times in exile."

Bheki Jacobs, also known as Uranin Vladimir, Hassan Solomon, and Hassan Osman, died at his mother's home in 2008 after a six-month battle with cancer.

Crawford-Browne said Jacobs was an African National Congress functionary, trained in the Soviet Union as an intelligence operative.

In 2003, Jacobs was arrested, and later exonerated, for allegedly plotting an assassination. The charge of conspiring to commit murder was watered down and finally dropped.

At the time, Jacobs reportedly believed his one-time comrade and later nemesis, Mo Shaik, to be behind his surprise arrest. They had both been involved in the ANC's intelligence structures in the early 1980s.

On Wednesday, Crawford-Browne said Jacobs told him that an investigating team's report into the arms deal was being doctored pending Modise's death "so that dead men can tell no tales".

"I have now consequently reported the allegations of poisoning to the deputy commissioner of police in the Western Cape, but no action was taken," he said.

The commission was appointed by President Jacob Zuma three years ago to investigate alleged corruption in the arms procurement deal.

The government acquired, among other hardware, 26 Gripen fighter aircraft and 24 Hawk lead-in fighter trainer aircraft for the air force, and frigates and submarines for the navy.

“Hani not yet laid to rest”dated 29 Mar 2009 at

https://mg.co.za/article/2009-03-29-hani-not-yet-laid-to-rest/

A new book by political commentator RW Johnson is likely to rekindle the long-simmering controversy about the assassination of Chris Hani — and the alleged role of Thabo Mbeki protegé and former defence minister Joe Modise.

At the SACP’s 2007 congress newly elected chairperson Gwede Mantashe joined in the song “Thabo Mbeki, Tell us Who Killed Chris Hani”. The Young Communist League has repeatedly called for the investigation into Hani’s death to be reopened.

In South Africa’s Brave New World: The Beloved Country since the End of Apartheid, released this week, Johnson says that Modise, head of Umkhonto weSizwe in exile, had most to gain from Hani’s elimination and was most likely to have had the means to support silently the right-wing plot against Hani by Janusz Walus and Clive Derby-Lewis in 1993.

Johnson says that Mbeki may not have known about the Modise plot but that he protected Modise — especially in relation to the arms deal that vastly enriched the latter. Modise is shown as an Mbeki ally in his rise to the top of the ANC and in his rivalry with Hani.

Johnson writes that in the 1950s Modise was a “township thug”, a leader of the feared Spoilers gang in Alexandra township. He later became Nelson Mandela’s bodyguard and a founder member of MK.

Former MK operative Sibusiso Madlala told Johnson that both Hani and Joe Slovo distrusted Modise and thought he was an apartheid agent. “Whoever got in Bra Joe’s way tended to get caught by the Boers’ security police on their next mission — Everyone in the ANC was frightened of him. They knew he had killed people himself, that he was completely ruthless and that he had presided over mass torture and executions in the MK punishment camps like Quatro.”

In 1968 Hani wrote a famous letter to the ANC leadership complaining that, while MK soldiers suffered in the camps, leaders such as Modise, whom he mentioned by name, lived the high life.

Modise was known for his extravagant lifestyle in Zambia, partly financed by a racket in stolen cars, which he ran with ANC treasurer Tom Nkobi, Johnson writes.

Modise’s response to the Hani letter was to demand the execution of Hani and his co-signatories. They were saved only by Oliver Tambo’s intervention.

Hani later became MK second-in-command and Modise’s rival for the top job, as well as being vastly popular in MK and in South Africa. He was viewed as Mbeki’s most plausible rival to succeed Tambo.

Johnson considers the evidence that Modise was a double agent “overwhelming”, citing former apartheid security policemen he interviewed.

Modise returned to South Africa in 1990 “determined to become the first ANC defence minister” and “began to meet with foreign arms dealers now swarming the country in search of the inevitable post-sanctions arms deal”.

Johnson writes that in 1993 Hani confronted Modise with the know¬ledge that he (Modise) had sold off an ANC arms cache for R2.5-million and pocketed the money. “Two weeks later Hani was shot dead.”

Johnson argues that the intelligence services of the ANC and the white Nationalist government, which were already cooperating, got wind of the assassination plot by Walus and Derby-Lewis — and one or both rendered invisible assistance.

They then made sure the assassins were caught. Walus “carried out the hit in full sight of a white woman, who was able to give a description of him, his — car and its registration — and yet [Walus] himself had not seen her.”

The witness vanished and Walus was arrested 10 minutes after driving away from the scene.

The M&G reported in 1997 that a double agent called Ramon Laher told his National Intelligence Service handler, Eugene Riley, of a plot to kill Hani days before it took place. Laher later told the M&G that “operatives on both sides of the spectrum”, ANC leaders and ANC intelligence were involved.

Laher “went to ground” after the Truth Commission sought to interview him. He gave Riley documents supporting his view, but Riley was mysteriously murdered eight months after Hani’s death.

Mathews Phosa, who conducted the ANC’s internal investigation into the assassination, told the M&G there was a “wider conspiracy”, writes Johnson. Further, he says KwaZulu-Natal leader Sifiso Nkabinde said a policeman, Leonard Radu, who investigated Hani’s death, was murdered. Nkabinde was assassinated soon afterwards.

According to Johnson journalists attempting to follow up the story about Hani’s death have been threatened.

“The man who alleges he established the WSB Heritage Fund speaks out | South Africa”- https://youtu.be/SFPRbc090yM

“The man behind the WSB (White Spiritual Boy) Heritage Fund allegedly established to help the poor in Africa which Tokyo Sexwale claims was looted by senior ANC Politicians has now bought into the story.”

“Town under siege in the Northern Cape” - https://youtu.be/mXzLuEtl7VI

“Gabriel Crouse, Terence Corrigan and Nicholas Lorimer discuss the alarming tensions in Prieska, a small town in the Northern Cape, over control of the local copper mine as well as a decision to prosecute a Finnish MP for expressing the orthodox Christian view on gay marriage.”

“Anarchy in Prieska threatens South Africa’s mining future”- https://www.da.org.za/2021/05/anarchy-in-prieska-threatens-south-africas-mining-future

A mining project near the Northern Cape town of Prieska is facing armed intimidation and violence from a group demanding a share in the mine and control over contracts. The Orion mine is facing a similar situation to construction companies elsewhere in the country which have been targeted by what’s been called the “construction mafia”.

Elements of the local community have been mobilised to blockade all access to the town and roads have been cut off by burning barricades. Over several days, protestors have been accompanied by a number of armed men, up to half a dozen of whom carry assault rifles. The protestors have also targeted the municipality, demanding it supports their demands for an additional share in the mine. Access has been deliberately cut off also to nearby wind and solar power projects.

Police are failing to enforce the law on a continuous basis; allowing the demonstrators to carry arms, failing to ensure freedom of movement, forcing mine security to allow the demonstrators onto mine property and allowing armed protestors to occupy municipal offices. One report says a child was beaten by protestors which led to an armed standoff between protestors and local farmers. In at least one case, an attempt to lay charges against the protestors was blocked by the police.

Orion is one of the only new medium size mining projects in South Africa, which has gone ahead despite onerous BEE requirements stipulated by the Mining Charter. It has been at great pains to ensure its BEE requirements involve local people, rather than by empowering black players in the industry who have already been empowered previously. This project and all medium and major mining projects in South Africa are struggling to make the case to international investors. If the situation in Prieska is allowed to persist, it will send a signal that mining in South Africa is uninvestible.

The DA Shadow Minister of Police, Andrew Whitfield MP, has contacted the office of the National Police Commissioner to ask:

• If they are aware of the situation;

• For a task team from the national office to go to Prieska to investigate the failure to act by police in the area; and

• For the deployment of additional police resources so that illegal acts may be curtailed.

With international mineral prices at a high, there should be investment flooding into new mining projects in South Africa. The fact that there is not, is testimony to the many legal and bureaucratic barriers erected by ANC misgovernance. Given South Africa’s mineral wealth, the industry could lead our economic recovery. If the ANC government is unwilling or unable to enforce even basic law and order, that is a vain hope.

“AfriForum neighbourhood watches – Control room handles over 960 incidents in April”- https://southafricatoday.net/south-africa-news/afriforum-neighbourhood-watches-control-room-handles-over-960-incidents-in-april/

AfriForum’s control room for Gauteng, Limpopo and Mpumalanga handled more than 960 incidents in April this year while supporting the organisation’s neighbourhood watches in these provinces. The aim of the control room is to support the AfriForum neighbourhood watches by ensuring that help and the necessary resources are made available quicker.

AfriForum neighbourhood watches in these provinces held 760 patrols in total in April (194 in Gauteng, 120 in Mpumalanga and 446 in Limpopo), in which 775 people participated.

“Incidents that stood out in the region comprise of unrests. The number of unrests in the three provinces were higher than usual. Nine incidences of unrest were recorded in January, 30 in February, 104 in March and 83 in April,” says Llewellyn Hemmens, AfriForum’s Safety Coordinator for Gauteng, Limpopo and Mpumalanga.

“The control room offers a myriad of benefits to AfriForum neighbourhood watches. It identifies crime tendencies, as well as the types of crime that are on the increase in which areas. Regarding tendencies that increased, we could clearly see that crime increased significantly over the Easter weekend. This resulted in more patrols than usual,” Hemmens says.

AfriForum once again urges the Gauteng public to remove valuable items from their vehicles, and to ensure that vehicles are parked in safe areas. Vehicle theft increased in the area in March and April.

Get involved in your local AfriForum neighbourhood watch and make an actual difference in your community: SMS the name of your town to 45353 (R1).

“Cyril Ramaphosa's farm gets special treatment | South Africa”- SAPS protect his farm- https://youtu.be/q_b_fEj5zJ8

“Ramaphosa's farm in Limpopo is protected by tax paying South African Police Service carrying AK47s while other farmers are left stranded while trying to get the South African Police Service to respond to an emergency situation.”

“Mob justice: 4 Stock thieves assaulted, burnt to death in their vehicle”- https://southafricatoday.net/south-africa-news/mpumalanga/mob-justice-4-stock-thieves-assaulted-burnt-to-death-in-their-vehicle/

The Acting Provincial Commissioner in Mpumalanga, Major General Thulani Phahla has raised his concern over the rising number of mob justice cases reported within a short period.

In a recent incident, police were summoned to Troya Farm near Ga-Matimpule Village in Vaalbank and on arrival, found a vehicle believed to be an Isuzu Club Cab with four human bodies inside burnt beyond recognition.

According to information reported, it is alleged that on Monday, 10 May 2021, four unknown men were seen stealing goats, loading them into a white bakkie when community members spotted and tried to intercept them. The men then reportedly fired shots at them during the commotion but they were eventually overpowered by the mob who in the process allegedly assaulted them before setting them alight inside their vehicle with an unknown registration number.

During the shooting, one of the community members was shot on his lower body and is currently in hospital receiving medical care.

Meanwhile, a 40-year-old man was rescued by police from an angry mob, for allegedly assaulting a 34-year-old woman on Sunday, 9 May 2021, at Magudu Trust near Tonga. The man was arrested the very same day and taken to Tonga Hospital under police guard, where he unfortunately succumbed to injuries.

In another incident, four suspects aged between 18 and 46, are expected to appear before the Kabokweni Magistrates’ Court on Thursday, 13 May 2021, for bail application in a murder case. Their appearance emanates from an incident at which it is alleged that they brutally murdered a young man last week accusing him of stealing.

In Lydenburg last week also, five people were assaulted by community members, suspecting them of criminality and two men unfortunately died while three were hospitalised.

Major General Phahla strongly appeals to the community not to take the law into their own hands. He urges the community to report incidents of crime to the police or provide information through the relevant community structures. “Taking the law into your own hands is a crime which is punishable by law,” lamented General Phahla.

>>13643377

Yet

“VIRAL DAILY: SAPS alleged refusal to respond to rape in progress now under investigation” - https://youtu.be/U8ILdGvIa0A

“WATCH: Roodepoort police under investigation for ‘sleeping’ while woman was raped”- https://www.thesouthafrican.com/news/roodepoort-police-sleeping-video-rape-report-station-under-investigation-bheki-cele-gauteng-lirandzu-themba/

Roodepoort police are under investigation after a video which allegedly shows them refusing to respond to a rape went viral.

Police are “urgently” allegations that South African Police Service (SAPS) members refused to respond to claims made by a concerned member of the public after a video of the incident surfaced and went viral online.

According to reports, the incident took place at the Roodepoort Community Service Centre earlier in May.

VIDEO: ‘I DROVE HERE TO TELL YOU THEY ARE RAPING A LADY‘

A video posted to Twitter on Saturday, 8 May, showed a man berating police officers at a SAPS station for allegedly refusing to respond to a reported rape. He said he attempted to contact the officers on duty by phone call twice before getting into his car and driving to what is believed to be the Roodepoort Community Service Centre.

“Ma’am, I have phoned you twice, you couldn’t help me,” said the man recording the video to a police officer who is not visible in the dark station as the lights are turned off.

The man continued: “Is that how you treat the public after you’ve given down an oath that you will protect the public. Now you can just stand… and rub your eyes but you are taking our money for your salary.”

“I got into my car and drove here to tell you that they are raping a lady on the corner of 7th Avenue and 7th Street and you refuse to speak to me.”

As the video continued, the member of the community threatened to call a more senior police officer if the members on duty did not respond to his request.

He eventually walks around the counter and deeper into the police station, where he addresses four police officers – also sitting in the dark.

“You are four sitting here. Four people sleeping in front of a heater while your sister is being raped here on the corner,” he said.

POLICE INTERNAL INVESTIGATION UNDERWAY

Lirandzu Themba, the spokesperson for Minister of Police Bheki Cele, said an urgent internal investigation is underway, when members of the public asked her about the incident on the social media platform.

“An urgent internal investigation is underway to look into this serious allegation that SAPS officers who were on night duty in the [Community Service Centre] were sleeping and failed to respond to complaints from a member of the public,” said Themba.

Themba did not respond to The South African’s request for further comment by the time of publication.

“126 inmates are repeat offenders” of those released under a special COVID-19 dispensation- https://youtu.be/aoqZqFvBL9w

“Parliament's portfolio committee on Correctional Services heard today that at least 126 of those released under a special COVID-19 dispensation, have since re-offended.”

Expert in “revolutionary warfare” testified in the Supreme Court, South Africa – 18 August 1986: Part 1

This Afrikaans transcript of a portion of a court hearing dating back to 1986 in Delmas, South Africa, is very informative. I did my best to translate the Afrikaans sections of it into English, see attached document. My apologies for any errors. The original version can be viewed in the attachment or at https://repository.up.ac.za/bitstream/handle/2263/63552/delmas_trial_vol132_1986.pdf?sequence=2&isAllowed=y.

Below are a few excerpts from the translated version.

The concept of revolutionary warfare was created in 1936 by Mao Tse Tung, in a writing under the heading "Problems of Strategy in China's revolutionary war ".

I'm talking about the combination. The difference here is that in terms of mobilisation at the hands of the Mao Tse Tung model it is the Communist party that acts as vanguard of the battle while in the Marighella model it is the focos, the small core groups. Finally, as far as the three models are concerned as such, the Mao Tse Tung model entails that the battle begins in the countryside. The same goes for the Guevara and De Bray model, while in terms of (20) Marighella, the cities of a target state form the focal point of the battle. In this regard, I would also like to report that these models cannot be placed in compartments. A combination of two or more models can be internationalised in a particular revolutionary battle.

Maybe you could just make it a little clearer what is the input, what do you mean by that? – The type (30) of input required by such an organisation from within a target state are for example recruits, information, hiding facilities, that is mainly population support. The type of input required being from outside a target state is strategic guidance, training, the supply of weapons. If you were to look at this, then you will find that it corresponds to the internal and external maneuver of indirect strategy. As for the internal maneuver in the case of the input is obtained by the application of lure, means of persuasion and coercion. Lures only involve the introduction of the organisation's objectives, in order to attracting elements among the population to identify with the organisation (10). Persuasive measures involve the application of propaganda, socio-economic assistance to the population. In the case of coercive measures, it involves the use of terror. These include murders and destruction of property.

ASSESSOR (MR KRUGEL): Intimidation, would it also fall under this? – It is also a component of it. The external maneuver, it involves the application of lure and persuasion. These inputs are converted by a revolutionary organisation so that the operational system (20) produces outputs. The outputs involve, among other things, strikes, riots, protests, boycotts. This I classify under the intensification context of revolutionary warfare about which I will say more about it later.

Von Klausewich’s "War is nothing else than the continuation of state policy by different means." Warfare, therefore, deals with achieving a political goal. The political case provides a revolutionary movement an asset that finds embodiment in concrete power during the battle. Next, the strategic features that such a political alternative must adhere to. In the first place, it must be acceptable for the majority of the population in a target state and with it, it antagonises the minority of the population.

In the work of TJ Lawrence "Seven pillars of wisdom" he showed a number of bottlenecks that can be contained in an analysis framework. This may involve religious differences, language differences, tribal differences, economic differences and then it is also noted geographical distributions to determine whether it brings about differences and ultimately also to the historical background of the population to determine whether differences arise from them. As revolutionary warfare aims to destabilize the power bases of a state and these power bases are the stately cultural power base, the social psychology (10) power base, the economic power base and the security force base, it is my opinion that determining bottlenecks will match the power bases of a target state. However, artificial bottlenecks can also be created and it now correlates again with the bottleneck of the Guevara/De Bray model that a revolutionary climate does not have to exist, but that a foco can create it. These bottlenecks don't have to be acute either.

>>13668638 - My apologies, here are the attachments.

Expert in “revolutionary warfare” testified in the Supreme Court, South Africa – 18 August 1986: Part 2

If the ideological dimension does not correlate with the political dimension, then it is important for a revolutionary organisation to disguise its true ideological motives in the political cause.

Just before you go any further, what did you mean by disguise? – For example, when we look at a revolutionary battle where an organisation has ideologically speaking a Marxist Leninist premise, then the political case can be presented as an example democracy, so that these true ideological motives are not introduced to the population.

The next dimension is the psychological dimension. As for the psychological dimension, I then return to where I initially indicated the three target groups at the psychological (10) level. The first target group then the population. The second target group the government officials and the third target group the revolutionaries forces. As for the population, the population can be divided into three sub-target groups, namely first and foremost the militant elements, who are positively attuned to the revolutionary organisation. Secondly, the neutral elements who do not want to be involved in the struggle and thus neither pro government nor the revolutionary forces. Third, the moderate elements (20) which supports the government cause. The operational plan towards these target calls, the three target groups, is as follows. First, it is now the operational plan by the revolutionary organisation. The neutralisation of the moderate elements, the use of the militant elements to influence the neutrals pro-revolutionary. The methods followed in this regard are as follows. Namely first and foremost what I call word propaganda, socio-economic service delivery to the population and thirdly the utilization of terror.

“Police’s own statistics demonstrate that the fight against crime has been lost”- https://southafricatoday.net/south-africa-news/polices-own-statistics-demonstrate-that-the-fight-against-crime-has-been-lost/

The Minister of Police is quite right in saying that a country’s murder rate is indicative of whether that country’s police force is successful in the fight against crime or not. The average international murder rate is 7 people per 100 000 of the population. In South Africa, that figure is 36 per 100 000 – a clear indication that our police service has lost the fight against crime.

The people of South Africa do not feel safe. This is evident in the fact that there are presently, according to the Private Security Industry Regulatory Authority (PSIRA), more than 2,5 million registered private security officers in the country. Of these, 556 000 are actively on duty.

Compare this to the police force, which has 145 000 police officers who are tasked with serving and protecting the public, and it becomes abundantly clear why the people feel unsafe in the hands of the police.

There is an amendment to the Firearms Control Act in the pipeline that aims to reduce the number of firearms in private possession because of a so-called lack of firearm control and to apparently reduce the number of murders.

Those reasons are misleading. In response to a question by the FF Plus, the Minister of Police (Bheki Cele) admitted that more people are murdered with sharp objects than with firearms.

The biggest problem with the legal licensing of a firearms lies with the central firearms registry.

An investigation that the Minister of Police launched in 2010 uncovered serious underlying shortcomings at the police’s central firearms control system, such as insufficient information and an incomplete database, which is the result of flawed information technology.

These factors are still at play and are most probably much worse than in 2010. Law-abiding firearm-owners are now being blamed for the police’s failure to create and implement a workable system.

Regarding farm murders, the Minister has decided to create a new category in crime statistics for the assault of farmworkers by farmers and foremen. This is just a prejudiced attempt at blaming farmers for all the assaults and related problems on farms.

To truly sketch the full picture in this regard, the Minister must also create a category for assaults on farmworkers and residents committed by other farmworkers as well as the assault of farmers and foremen by former farmworkers and residents.

Farmers will welcome such a comprehensive approach, because at the moment there are attempts to paint a partial picture depicting only farmers assaulting their workers. A complete picture with all the relevant statistics will correct this misconception.

“Zuma trial: Shock in court as Dali Mpofu turns up to represent Msholozi”- https://www.thesouthafrican.com/news/why-dali-mpofu-jacob-zuma-trial-latest-updates-court/

The theatrics have started in the Jacob Zuma trial on Wednesday, after uBaba deployed Dali Mpofu as a 'surprise lawyer' for his defence team.

Well, who saw this coming? Controversial lawyer Dali Mpofu has brought his firebrand style of advocacy to the Pietermaritzburg High Court on Wednesday – as he turned up in the dock to DEFEND Jacob Zuma.

DALI MPOFU IN COURT FOR ZUMA TRIAL

The session on Wednesday will likely hear a plea of ‘not guilty’ from Zuma, but also, there is the small matter of a recusal hearing to attend to. The legal team cobbled together by uBaba wants state prosecutor Billy Downer thrown off the case, and it now looks like Msholozi has decided to bring in the big guns.

Dali Mpofu, an EFF-representing man of the law, has clashed with some of Jacob Zuma’s fiercest rivals in the past. Earlier this year, he told Pravin Gordhan to ‘shut up’ at the State Capture Inquiry – and more fireworks are expected here. The Zuma trial resumes one week after he was last in the dock, and we’re hoping for steady progress today.

HAS IT COME TO THIS? MSHOLOZI BRINGS OUT THE BIG GUNS

The appearance of Dali Mpofu most certainly goes down as a surprise. There was an audible shock in the courtroom when the familiar face appeared in front of the bench, unpacking his belongings and standing with Zuma’s other representatives.

“Watch: Zuma pleads NOT GUILTY – after ‘damning’ charges shared by court”- https://www.thesouthafrican.com/news/watch-jacob-zuma-not-guilty-plea-what-charges-how-many-video/

Bookmark this moment: Jacob Zuma has gone on the record in Pietermaritzburg High Court to plead 'not guilty' - in the face of an enormous charge sheet.

Jacob Zuma has told the Pietermaritzburg High Court that he is ‘not guilty’ of a whopping 18 criminal charges filed against him – after the details of his rap sheet were made public on Wednesday. It’s understood that Zuma received bribes from Schabir Shaik, from 1995 to 2005. In total, those illicit benefits amounted to almost R5 million.

WATCH: JACOB ZUMA PLEADS NOT GUILTY IN COURT

The judge clarified with Jacob Zuma that all was understood on his side, given the magnitude of the counts filed against him. The 79-year-old agreed, and after a slight delay, he comprehensively entered his plea of ‘not guilty’. It’s perhaps a good time to save this moment in history – because we WILL be revisiting it…

A TOTAL OF 18 COUNTS FILED AGAINST JZ

So, what exactly is uBaba denying? A LOT: The ex-president is accused of everything from money laundering to tax fraud. He’s believed to have been on an annual retainer to lobby in favour of the arms group Thales, and these supposedly dodgy dealings were all facilitated through Schabir Shaik. The charge sheet for Jacob Zuma reads:

– COUNT 1: Racketeering committed by Jacob Zuma and Thales.

– COUNT 2: The state alleges former president Jacob Zuma is guilty of corruption. There are 782 payments from Schabir Shaik to Zuma, which are all under investigation.

– COUNT 3: Addition corruption charges, related to alleged payments from French arms company, Thales.

– COUNTS 4 and 5: Zuma is alleged to have received annual benefits to protect Schabir Shaik and Thompson CSF (Thales). The annual benefit was R500 000.

– COUNT 6: Money laundering committed by Jacob Zuma and Thales.

– COUNT 7: A separate charge of fraud against Jacob Zuma.

– COUNT 8: A failure to declare ‘financial sponsorships’ to Parliament, on behalf of Mr. Zuma.

– COUNT 9: Zuma is accused of lying to Parliament, regarding his relationship with Schabir Shaik.

– COUNTS 10 to 18: Fraud charges against the former president – including attempts to defraud institutions such as SARS, and several violations of the Income Tax Act.

>>13760434

It’s all smoke and mirrors.

Would you say that good people who pursue a noble cause tend to get assassinated, like MLK? If Mandela and Winnie were such saints, why were they not assassinated?

The ANC and the world fought hard against Apartheid for ‘equality’ purposes however the racial divide has been perpetuated and made worse. Contradictions abound if one makes an effort to look. For instance, the following clause is found in the South Africa’s Bill of Rights which was adopted when the ANC took over;

“Discrimination on one or more of the grounds listed in subsection (3) is unfair unless it is established that the discrimination is fair.”

Does this not remind you of Orwell’s famous quote?

“All animals are equal, but some animals are more equal than others.”

South Africa got to this point due to people allowing themselves to be complacent, manipulated and not actively seeking the truth. They became comfortable in their own bubbles and when the situation got worse in the country, they turned a blind eye in the hopes that it will not affect them. Strangely enough, there are still certain South Africans in denial unless they are part of the problem.

Be careful, I see signs that America is heading the same direction as South Africa.

“‘This is awkward’: Dali Mpofu gets trolled for ‘ironic’ defence of Zuma”- https://www.thesouthafrican.com/news/dali-mpofu-gets-trolled-for-ironic-defence-of-zuma/

It was confirmed that advocate Dali Mpofu would be the newest addition to former president Jacob Zuma’s legal team

It will likely go down as one of the most unforgettable ironies in recent memory – advocate Dali Mpofu joining former president Jacob Zuma’s defence team in the arms deal trial.

Having been chairperson of the Economic Freedom Fighters (EFF), which had been one of Zuma’s most fiercest critics who’d called for him to be jailed (over several matters, including the Gupta leaks and the arms deal), Mpofu may end up being the reason he never dons orange overalls.

While he no longer serves the EFF in Parliament, he remains in the party. For quite some time, Mpofu has extended his legal services to people he’s had political differences with, or at least the EFF. The likes of Gareth Cliff (who isn’t exactly an EFF favourite), Public Works Minister Patricia De Lille and Thandi Modise have all been represented by Mpofu in their respective court cases.

However despite the aforementioned, nothing could have prepared South Africans for the big shocker that was Mpofu joining Zuma’s legal team, something which the advocate confirmed in the High Court in Pietermaritzburg on Wednesday, 26 May 2021.

SA TWITTER REACTS TO MPOFU JOINING ZUMA’S LEGAL TEAM

South African Twitter has been flooding the timeline, in reaction to advocate Dali Mpofu being the latest addition to former president Jacob Zuma’s lawyers, after some of then withdrew from the arms deal trial at the eleventh hour.

The comments even prompted the EFF’s own deputy president Floyd Shivambu to come to Mpofu’s defence.

“It is (advocate Dali Mpofu’s) right to legally represent whoever he chooses to represent. He’s represented CR17 factions, Thandi Modise, Supra Mahumapelo, Patricia De Lille, Bantu Holomisa’s UDM, Ace Magashule. He’s not doing so on behalf of the EFF. He’s doing it as an Advocate SC,” Shivambu said on Twitter.

“Tycoons who funded Fox's friend: Right-wing donors helped pay the bills for pair's globetrotting” – South Africa Connectiondated 12 October 2011 at https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2048421/Liam-Fox-Adam-Werritty-Michael-Hintze-tycoons-Right-wing-donors-helped-pay-bills-pairs-globetrotting.html. Below are excerpts.

A millionaire with close links to Israel is at the heart of a network of right-wing donors who helped fund globetrotting by Liam Fox and Adam Werritty.

Michael Lewis donated to Dr Fox’s 2005 campaign for the Tory leadership and was a donor to a fund which paid for Mr Werritty to attend at least one conference in the Middle East.

Insiders say a web of half a dozen wealthy donors directly or indirectly funded Mr Werritty’s luxury lifestyle as an informal adviser to the Defence Secretary.

Last night another of those who funded his travels – who insisted on remaining anonymous – told the BBC that he did so because they share Dr Fox and his friend’s support for America, Israel and Eurosceptic causes.

The backer insisted he did not have defence industry interests but the revelation could have serious implications for Dr Fox – currently at the centre of a Cabinet Office inquiry.

It could lead to accusations that a group of rich businessmen were effectively paying to try to exert influence over one of the key members of the Cabinet. It also explains the vast discrepancy between Mr Werritty’s relatively low income and his jetsetting lifestyle.

Mr Lewis, 52, a South African-born tycoon was, until four years ago a vice-chairman of the British Israel Communications Research Council (Bicom), and became a donor after he resigned his post in 2007.

Bicom has admitted paying for Mr Werritty to attend a conference in Israel in 2009.

He was flown at Bicom expense to Herzliya in February 2009, where he watched Dr Fox give a speech on European-Israeli relations.

In a further development it emerged that Bicom’s former director of communications Lee Petar set up a lobbying firm called Tetra Strategy, now embroiled in the controversy swirling around Dr Fox.

Mr Petar, who quit Bicom in 2005, introduced Mr Werritty to venture capitalist Harvey Boulter by email – a move which led to a controversial meeting between Dr Fox and Mr Boulter in Dubai this year without MoD officials present.

Mr Lewis, who runs the blue-chip fashion retailer Foschini, donated £5,000 to Liam Fox’s leadership campaign, £10,000 to the Tory Party and £13,822 to Atlantic Bridge, a charity run by Mr Werritty and established by Dr Fox to further links between America and Britain.

He was flown at Bicom expense to Herzliya in February 2009, where he watched Dr Fox give a speech on European-Israeli relations.

In a further development it emerged that Bicom’s former director of communications Lee Petar set up a lobbying firm called Tetra Strategy, now embroiled in the controversy swirling around Dr Fox.

Mr Petar, who quit Bicom in 2005, introduced Mr Werritty to venture capitalist Harvey Boulter by email – a move which led to a controversial meeting between Dr Fox and Mr Boulter in Dubai this year without MoD officials present.

Mr Lewis, who runs the blue-chip fashion retailer Foschini, donated £5,000 to Liam Fox’s leadership campaign, £10,000 to the Tory Party and £13,822 to Atlantic Bridge, a charity run by Mr Werritty and established by Dr Fox to further links between America and Britain.

Sources say that Mr Lewis and Mr Hintze share many of Dr Fox’s political objectives – though it is not clear if either has ever directly paid Mr Werritty.

Another who has indirectly assisted Mr Werritty is billionaire Chaim ‘Poju’ Zabludowicz – the chairman and chief donor of Bicom, who also owns large areas of Las Vegas.

Others include Stanley Fink of Man Group, dubbed the ‘Godfather’ of the hedge fund industry, who donated £50,000 to Liam Fox and more than £2million to Tories.

The Defence Secretary’s Cabinet career has been left hanging by a thread after it emerged that the pair had met 40 times since the General Election, including at meetings with a senior U.S. general, an ambassador and foreign dignitaries, though Mr Werritty had no security clearance.

>>13828662

>Michael Lewis

“Princess Diana's niece Lady Kitty Spencer, 29, is to wed fashion tycoon Michael Lewis, 60” - https://youtu.be/sg1wNfQGwKI

“Princess Diana’s 29–year old niece is marrying the 60-year old chairperson of Foschini - here’s what you need to know about Michael Lewis’ career”dated Jan 06, 2020, at https://www.businessinsider.co.za/princess-diana-niece-kitty-spencer-engaged-foschini-chairperson-michael-lewis-2020-1.

• The Mirror reported that princess Diana’s niece lady Kitty Spencer got engaged to Foschini’s chairperson Michael Lewis over the holidays.

• Lewis is 32-years older than his 29-year-old fiancee, and five years older than her dad.

• Lewis’ grandfather founded the Lewis furniture retailer in the 1930s, and his dad acquired a controlling stake in Foschini in the 1980s.

The 29-year-old niece of Princess Diana, lady Kitty Spencer, got engaged to 61-year-old Foschini chairperson Michael Lewis over the holiday season, the Mirror reported.

South African-born Lewis, who is 32-years older than Spencer and 5 years older than her father, started dating Spencer in May 2018.

He has an estimated net worth of £80 million, or roughly R1.4 billion, and has three children who are reportedly in their 30s.

According to the Daily Mail, Lewis proposed to Spencer in Cape Town before Christmas while they were on holiday with family.

Here’s what you need to know about Michael Lewis

Business Report reported that Lewis’ grandfather Meyer Lewis founded popular furniture retailer the Lewis Group in South Africa in the 1930s.

It was his dad Stanley who bought a controlling stake in Foschini in the 1980s when the group was experiencing financial difficulties.

Lewis, who would followed his father on the Foschini board, sold 16% of his stake in the group in 2016.

He has served as the Foschini Group’s chairperson since 2015.

According to the Wall Street Journal, he holds an undergraduate and graduate degree from the University of Cape Town where Spencer also studied.

Lewis moved to London in the 1980s, before the fall of apartheid in South Africa, where he founded the family’s investment vehicle Oceana Investment Corporation.

He is said to be a major financial backer of the conservative party in the United Kingdom, according to Business Report.

He previously served on the supervisory board of German publishing company Axel Springer AG, and as chairman of ProChon Biotech Ltd, the Israeli biotech company he founded.

He follows Judaism, and in 2011 his family donated £3 million, or roughly R56 million, to Oxford University to fund the appointment of a Professor of Israel Studies, the Daily Mail reported.

In contrast to his socialite fiancee, Lewis reportedly avoids the limelight.

>>13828949 -The plot thickens as I looked further into it. There will be multiple posts.

>>13828662

“Secret cash trail that meant [Liam] Fox HAD to go: Defence Secretary resigns after claim he 'personally asked Tory donor to fund his best man'” – Part 1dated 15 October 2011 at https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2049222/Liam-Fox-resigns-Defence-Secretary-finally-quits-Adam-Werritty-scandal.html. Below are excerpts.

Liam Fox resigned last night amid allegations that he asked a wealthy Tory donor to fund his best man and former flatmate Adam Werritty.

Dr Fox quit when he learnt he was to face a torrent of new claims about damaging conflicts of interest between Mr Werritty’s backers and his role as Defence Secretary.

He fell on his sword after the millionaire money men turned on him and deliberately leaked details of how £157,000 was paid to Mr Werritty to let him fly around the world with Dr Fox.

Today the Mail reveals that venture capitalist Jon Moulton agreed to fund Mr Werritty’s globetrotting after he bought a defence company that makes components for aircraft including RAF fighter jets and troop transporters.

In a shattering blow to Dr Fox’s credibility, Mr Moulton, who gave Mr Werritty’s company Pargav £35,000, made the explosive claim last night that Dr Fox solicited his cash.

Earlier Mr Werritty, who had styled himself as Dr Fox’s adviser despite having no official role, had been quizzed for a second time by an official working for Sir Gus. She found his answers about his activities confusing.

Knowing he might be forced out, Dr Fox telephoned David Cameron at around 2.30pm to say he would quit.

Sources said the Prime Minister was ‘taken aback’ when he received Dr Fox’s call at his constituency home.

Mr Cameron had been at pains to give the Defence Secretary space to clear his name, partly because of his reluctance to offer up ministerial scalps to media firestorms but also because he knew the Right of the Tory Party would react with fury if he was seen to cut Dr Fox adrift.

Dr Fox was replaced by Transport Secretary Philip Hammond, whose job went to rising star Justine Greening, the Economic Secretary at the Treasury.

Arriving today at the Ministry of Defence for the first day in his new post, Hammond said that Fox had 'done a great job' as defence secretary.

Dr Fox had tried to brazen out the scandal for nearly two weeks but gave up yesterday after the publication of details about Mr Werritty’s money men opened the floodgates to new claims about conflicts of interest.

The Mail can reveal that Mr Moulton, a longstanding donor to Dr Fox, paid £60million for defence firm Gardner UK in February 2010. Eight months later he gave money to Mr Werritty.

But his donation occurred during the Government’s Strategic Defence Review which meant £5billion of cuts. The RAF aircraft which used Gardner’s components escaped unscathed.

Few middle-aged Tory men can claim to be friends with a glamorous Australian pop star but Dr Fox counts Natalie Imbruglia among his close pals.

His parties are legendary and last month a gathering he organised to mark his 50th birthday attracted former prime minister Baroness Thatcher, who had been forced to miss an event held at Downing Street in honour of her own 85th birthday last year.

>>13828662

“Secret cash trail that meant Fox HAD to go: Defence Secretary resigns after claim he 'personally asked Tory donor to fund his best man'” – Part 2dated 15 October 2011 at https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2049222/Liam-Fox-resigns-Defence-Secretary-finally-quits-Adam-Werritty-scandal.html.

Dr Fox quits: Timeline to his resignation

Here is a timeline of events leading up to Liam Fox's resignation as Defence Secretary:

1998: Liam Fox, then an opposition spokesman for constitutional affairs, meets Adam Werritty, a student at Edinburgh University who is 17 years his junior.

1999: Dr Fox appointed shadow health secretary.

2002/03: Mr Werritty stays as a flatmate in a spare room at Dr Fox's London home.

2002: Mr Werritty becomes consultant at a firm called UK Health.

2004: Mr Werritty works as a paid intern for Dr Fox and receives a Commons pass. He also becomes director of UK Health Group, of which he and Dr Fox are shareholders.

2005:

December 6 - Dr Fox moves to defence brief in David Cameron's shadow cabinet.

December 17 - Mr Werritty is best man at Dr Fox's wedding to Jesme Baird.

2006: Mr Werritty becomes director of a group called Security Futures, which later folds.

2007: Mr Werritty appointed UK executive director of the Atlantic Bridge charity, founded by Dr Fox to promote Anglo-American relations.

2009: Dr Fox and Mr Werritty visit Sri Lanka together.

2010:

April 22 - Burglary at Dr Fox's London home while his wife is away.

May 12 - Dr Fox is appointed Defence Secretary in Mr Cameron's first Cabinet.

June 4 - Dr Fox and Mr Werritty attend conference in Singapore.

June 7 - Dr Fox and Mr Werritty meet in Dubai.

July 3 - Mr Werritty joins Dr Fox for an informal dinner in a Florida steakhouse with US general John Allen, the commander of international Isaf forces in Afghanistan.

August 6 - Dr Fox meets Mr Werritty during weekend leave in Dubai.

September 30 - Atlantic Bridge loses charitable status after Charity Commission rules it is a group fighting for a political cause. Trustees later agree to close it down.

October 20 - Mr Werritty attends a meeting he has set up between Dr Fox and Sri Lankan foreign minister Gamini Peiris at the MoD.

December - Mr Werritty is present at a private meeting in London between Dr Fox and Sri Lankan president Mahinda Rajapaksa.

December 2 - Dr Fox and Mr Werritty at conference in Bahrain.

December 17 - Dr Fox in Dubai for meetings, Mr Werritty present in a 'personal/business capacity'.

2011:

January 23 - Dr Fox and Mr Werritty meet in Dubai 'in a private capacity'.

February 6 - Dr Fox attends a dinner arranged by Mr Werritty in Tel Aviv.

February 17 - Dr Fox and Mr Werritty take skiing holiday together.

April - Mr Werritty meets businessman Harvey Boulter of private equity firm Porton Group and suggests he may be able to fix up a meeting with Dr Fox to discuss his company Cellcrypt, which makes military communications equipment. Dr Fox introduced to Boulter 'in passing'.

April 14 - Dr and Mrs Fox take holiday in Abu Dhabi with Mr Werritty.

May 22-25 - Mr Werritty is present at political meetings with Dr Fox in US and accompanies him on private flight back to UK on party donor's aircraft.

>>13828662

“Secret cash trail that meant Fox HAD to go: Defence Secretary resigns after claim he 'personally asked Tory donor to fund his best man'” – Part 3dated 15 October 2011 at https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2049222/Liam-Fox-resigns-Defence-Secretary-finally-quits-Adam-Werritty-scandal.html.

Continuation of 2011

June 12 - It emerges that a multimillion-pound lawsuit is being brought by Porton and the MoD's civilian research arm Ploughshare Innovations against US conglomerate 3M for its alleged failure to develop a technology for detecting the superbug MRSA.

June 17 - Dr Fox meeting with Mr Boulter in a Dubai hotel, organised by Mr Werritty after the businessman bumped into him in a restaurant the previous day.

Later that day, Mr Boulter emails 3M lawyers urging them to settle the lawsuit and telling them that he has discussed with Dr Fox the possible withdrawal of a knighthood from the company's British boss, Sir George Buckley. His email results in 3M launching a blackmail suit.

June 24 - MoD issues Dr Fox's denial that he discussed the 3M dispute with Mr Boulter.

June - Defence Secretary learns that Mr Werritty is using business cards bearing the parliamentary portcullis and describing himself as Dr Fox's adviser, and tells him to stop.

July 9 - Dr Fox visits Sri Lanka to deliver Kadagamar Memorial speech. Mr Werritty is in the audience.

August 5-19 - Dr Fox on holiday in Spain with family and friends including Mr Werritty.

August 8 - The Guardian reports on Dr Fox's meeting with Mr Boulter. The Defence Secretary confirms Mr Boulter did raise the issue of his dispute with 3M but denies the knighthood was discussed.

August 19 - The Guardian names Mr Werritty as broker of the meeting with Mr Boulter, noting that he describes himself as an adviser to Dr Fox but is not an employee of the MoD.

September 15 - In a written ministerial answer to Labour MP John Mann, Dr Fox states: 'Mr Werritty is not an employee of the Ministry of Defence and has, therefore, not travelled with me on any official overseas visits.'

October 5 - It is revealed that Mr Werritty has visited Dr Fox at the MoD in Whitehall on 14 occasions since he took office. Dr Fox insists the meetings were 'not in an official capacity'.

October 6 - Dr Fox denounces what he says are 'baseless allegations' about his links with Mr Werritty and asks MoD permanent secretary Ursula Brennan to carry out an internal inquiry to establish whether there has been any breach of national security or the ministerial code.

October 7 - Dr Fox's visit to Libya is overshadowed by media reports of his links with Mr Werritty.

October 8 - Mr Cameron demands an interim report by the start of the next week.

October 9 - After a phone conversation with the Prime Minister, Dr Fox issues a statement accepting that he was wrong to meet Mr Boulter in the absence of officials and recognising that the "misleading impression" may have been given that Mr Werritty was an adviser, rather than a friend.

October 10 - Dr Fox gives a statement to the Commons, in which he apologises for blurring the lines between ministerial responsibilities and loyalties to a friend, but denies wrongdoing.

Mr Cameron receives interim report from Ms Brennan, which states that it was "not appropriate" for material from Dr Fox's diary to have been made available to Mr Werritty.

Downing Street says it is clear that 'serious mistakes' have been made and Cabinet Secretary Sir Gus O'Donnell is ordered to take over the inquiry.

MoD releases a list of 40 meetings between Dr Fox and Mr Werritty either in the MoD's Whitehall offices or on trips overseas.

October 11 - Mr Werritty interviewed by Cabinet Office officials as part of Sir Gus O'Donnell's inquiry.

October 12 - It emerges that a younger man was present in Dr Fox's flat at the time of last year's burglary. A press conference scheduled during Dr Fox's visit to Paris is cancelled. "Friends" of Dr Fox suggest that Mr Werritty may be a Walter Mitty-style fantasist, to the reported annoyance of the Defence Secretary.

October 14 - Dr Fox resigns.

>>13828949 - Update

>>13828662

“A riddle wrapped in a mystery: the curious career of Liam Fox”dated 10 Nov 2017 at https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2017/nov/10/scandal-liam-fox-thrives-east-kilbride-adam-werritty-disgrace

An exception is Liam Fox. Is he charming or steady? Does he have a following? To explain his presence as the secretary of state for international trade (and president of the board of trade) you have to leave every box unticked until you reach the better-inside-tent argument. And even then, you have to wonder that his disgrace should be so completely excused and forgotten.

“Five British political scandals that ultimately went nowhere” dated 30th April 2021 at https://nicktyrone.com/five-british-political-scandals-that-ultimately-went-nowhere/ states further;

The Liam Fox “Adam Werritty” scandal (2011)

A strange one that has never been fully decoded, it’s best to start this out by saying that Liam Fox and Adam Werritty had a very close friendship. Werritty was Fox’s best man at his wedding in 2005. This was the partial explanation for the scandal that followed, but it only really acts as a bit of background. In the year leading up to the scandal, while Fox was Secretary of State for Defence, Werritty accompanied Fox on 18 foreign business trips and was at Fox’s side during the majority of his official engagements. Yet Werritty was never officially employed as a civil servant or by the Conservative party and was never even security cleared. Even odder, when the civil service started an investigation into the matter, Fox claimed that Werritty had never worked for him in either an official or unofficial capacity.

The pressure around this got too great and Fox had to resign his post. At any time pre-2010, this would have been the end of Fox’s frontline political career. Yet in 2016, Fox stood in the Conservative party leadership contest and no one batted an eyelid. After May became PM, Fox was back in the cabinet as her International Trade Secretary, meaning the whole Werritty scandal – which was never satisfactorily resolved – had no real lasting effect on Fox’s career whatsoever.

>>13828662

“Liam Fox resignation exposes Tory links to US radical right” – More South Africa Connections (Part 1)dated 15 Oct 2011 at https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2011/oct/15/liam-fox-resignation-exposes-tories

David Cameron has been accused of allowing a secret rightwing agenda to flourish at the heart of the Conservative party, as fallout from the resignation of Liam Fox exposed its close links with a US network of lobbyists, climate change deniers and defence hawks.

In a sign that Fox's decision to fall on his sword will not mark the end of the furore engulfing the Tories, both Liberal Democrat and Labour politicians stepped up their demands for the prime minister to explain why several senior members of his cabinet were involved in an Anglo-American organisation apparently at odds with his party's environmental commitments and pledge to defend free healthcare.

At the heart of the complex web linking Fox and his friend Adam Werritty to a raft of businessmen, lobbyists and US neocons is the former defence secretary's defunct charity, Atlantic Bridge, which was set up with the purported aim of "strengthening the special relationship" but is now mired in controversy.

An Observer investigation reveals that many of those who sat on the Anglo-American charity's board and its executive council, or were employed on its staff, were lobbyists or lawyers with connections to the defence industry and energy interests. Others included powerful businessmen with defence investments and representatives of the gambling industry.

Fox's organisation, which was wound up last year following a critical Charity Commission report into its activities, formed a partnership with an organisation called the American Legislative Exchange Council. The powerful lobbying organisation, which receives funding from pharmaceutical, weapons and oil interests among others, is heavily funded by the Koch Charitable Foundation whose founder, Charles G Koch, is one of the most generous donors to the Tea Party movement in the US. In recent years, the Tea Party has become a potent populist force in American politics, associated with controversial stances on global warming.

Via a series of foundations, Koch and his brother, David, have also given millions of dollars to global warming sceptics, according to Greenpeace.

Labour said it wanted to know how, in 2006, when David Cameron travelled to Norway for his famous photo opportunity with huskies to promote his new-look party's "green" policies, his senior colleagues were cosying up to US groups that were profoundly sceptical about global warming.

Writing in the Observer, the shadow defence secretary, Jim Murphy, said the Tories still had many questions to answer and claimed that "while David Cameron's compassionate conservatism has been undermined by his actions at home, it could be further damaged by connections overseas".

Murphy writes: "With each passing day there have been fresh allegations of money and influence and it appears that much of the source was the Atlantic Bridge network and its US rightwing connections. We need to know just how far and how deep the links into US politics go. This crisis has discovered traces of a stealth neocon agenda. For many on the right, Atlanticism has become synonymous with a self-defeating, virulent Euroscepticism that is bad for Britain."

Fox resigned on Friday after admitting that he had allowed his friendship with Werritty, a lobbyist who portrayed himself as an adviser to the defence secretary, to blur his professional and personal interests. His resignation followed a drip-feed of revelations about the links between Werritty and businessmen and organisations with defence interests.

>>13828662

>>13835608

“Liam Fox resignation exposes Tory links to US radical right” – More South Africa Connections (Part 2)dated 15 Oct 2011 at https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2011/oct/15/liam-fox-resignation-exposes-tories

The revelations over Atlantic Bridge have triggered questions about the role played by Fox, chair of the charity's advisory council, and that of four of its UK members: William Hague, George Osborne, Chris Grayling and Michael Gove. As a UK charity, the organisation enjoyed tax breaks but had to comply with strict rules prohibiting it from promoting business interests.

The charity's political agenda, which it articulated in conferences devoted to issues such as liberalising the health sector and deregulating the energy markets, chimes with the thinking of many on the right of the Conservative party whom Cameron has been keen to check as he holds the Tories to the centre ground of British politics.

Lib Dem peer Lord Oakeshot said: "Dr Fox is a spider at the centre of a tangled neocon web. A dubious pattern is emerging of donations through front companies. We need to establish whether the British taxpayer was subsidising Fox and his frontbench colleagues. What steps did they take to ensure Atlantic Bridge didn't abuse its charitable status?"

Werritty, the group's UK director, was funded by a raft of powerful businessmen including Michael Hintze, one of the Tories biggest financial backers whose hedge fund, CQS, has investments in companies that have contracts with the Ministry of Defence; Poju Zabludowicz, chairman of the Britain Israel Communications and Research Centre, who chairs a US munitions company; and the Good Governance Group, a private security firm set up by a South African businessman, Andries Pienaar, who also has an investment firm, C5 Capital, focused on the defence sector.

The potentially explosive mix of big business interests and politicians that triggered Fox's demise is the subject of an investigation by the cabinet secretary, Sir Gus O'Donnell. Murphy said it was essential that the government then referred the wider issues to Sir Philip Mawer, the independent adviser on ministers' interests. "He should look at the issues in their entirety to establish precisely how this never happens again," Murphy said.

Questions are being asked over the role played by an organisation called the Sri Lankan Development Trust, whose headquarters were listed at the Good Governance Group. The trust paid for three of Fox's trips to Sri Lanka. In a statement the group said: "Our involvement with the Sri Lankan Development Trust was not done for profit or at the behest of any clients."

Arriving at the Ministry of Defence to take up his new role in charge of the department, Philip Hammond, the new defence secretary, said Fox had "done a great job".

>>13828662

“Liam Fox, Adam Werritty, and the curious case of Our Man in Tel Aviv” – Part 1dated 27 November 2011 at https://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/politics/liam-fox-adam-werritty-and-curious-case-our-man-tel-aviv-6268640.html

This odd trio met six times - not that the Government wants you to know that, of course. What did they discuss? Did it include Iran? And who exactly is Adam Werritty? Brian Brady investigates a Whitehall mystery which is slowly unravelling

They were the Odd Couple: the men with identical morning suits, matching jackets and jeans but from radically different generations. They commanded more column inches than any X Factor wannabe. The Mysterious Case of the Defence Secretary and the Strange Bloke with the Cheap Business Card gripped us all, until it culminated in Liam Fox's resignation.

What on earth had they been up to, the nation wondered. The plot thickened somewhat when an official inquiry confirmed that the curious duo was in fact, at times, a trio. They had had two meetings with Matthew Gould, Britain's ambassador to Israel, adding to claims that they were running a pirate (pro-Israel, or anti-Iranian?) foreign policy. Then, before we had got to know Adam Werritty properly, it all went quiet.

He has not been seen in the UK or abroad for several months; no neighbour has reported his presence at any of the various addresses unearthed when he was being sought by every news outlet in the country.

However, the trail has not gone cold because it emerges that Liam Fox and his adviser met Britain's ambassador at least four times more than was previously admitted. So why were we not told this before? Isn't this yet more evidence that they were operating outside the control of the Foreign Office?

The fog seems to extend even to the Cabinet Secretary, Sir Gus O'Donnell, whose report into the affair, which sealed Dr Fox's fate, identified just the two meetings between the former minister, Mr Werritty and Mr Gould.

The three men met in Tel Aviv at "a private dinner with senior Israelis" and, before Mr Gould took up the ambassador's post in Tel Aviv, for "a general discussion of international defence and security matters". Sir Gus observed that Mr Werritty was invited "as an individual with some experience in these matters".

Even this was a bit unsatisfactory, said Sir Gus. His report highlighted the September 2010 meeting in the UK with Mr Gould, then the UK ambassador-designate to Israel, ruling that "as a private citizen, with no official locus, it was not appropriate for Mr Werritty to have attended this meeting".

Yet it has been left to the former UK ambassador Craig Murray to uncover four more similar meetings – although Sir Gus claimed last week that "some of those … took place before the election".

The suspicion of even more secret meetings, an inquiry which did not cover all the ground and the spectre of a favourite bogeyman is a gift to conspiracy theorists. However there are legitimate questions to be answered. The IoS revealed last month that Mr Werritty had visited Iran on several occasions and was so highly regarded by the Israeli intelligence service Mossad that he was able to arrange meetings at the highest levels of the Israeli government.

>>13828662

>>13842048

“Liam Fox, Adam Werritty, and the curious case of Our Man in Tel Aviv” – Part 2dated 27 November 2011 at https://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/politics/liam-fox-adam-werritty-and-curious-case-our-man-tel-aviv-6268640.html

The disclosure that he – and Dr Fox – had met Britain's most senior official in Israel on more occasions than previously thought underlines their interest in the region.

The Labour MP Paul Flynn questioned why the official inquiry into the Fox affair had failed to investigate all the activities of Mr Werritty. He asked the Cabinet Secretary, during his appearance before the Public Administration Select Committee: "Are you satisfied that you missed out on the extra four meetings that took place, and does this not mean that those meetings should have been investigated because of the nature of Mr Werritty's interests?"

The accusation was not received well. Sir Gus rejected any criticism of his work, noting instead that: "If you look at some of those meetings, some people are referring to meetings that took place before the election." Mr Murray, however, has established that there have been at least five meetings altogether since the election and one beforehand.

Sir Gus added that "some issues arose where I wanted to be sure that what [Dr Fox] was doing had been discussed with the Foreign Secretary. I felt reassured by what the Foreign Secretary told me."

Craig Murray submitted a Freedom of Information request to the Foreign Office very late one night last week, asking for all communications between Mr Gould and Mr Werritty; barely an hour later, he received a rejection, explaining that his request was "likely to exceed the cost limit". Given that Freedom of Information requests normally take at least a fortnight to be answered, the swift, late-night reaction has done nothing to douse suspicions.

"It is plainly nonsense that to gather correspondence between two named individuals would be too expensive," Mr Murray said. "They could just ask Gould."

The Foreign Office remains nonplussed by questions about Mr Gould's conduct. "The FCO has total confidence that Matthew Gould has acted appropriately at all times and at no stage was he acting independently, or out of line with government policy," a spokesman said yesterday.

Clearly not satisfied with the efforts of Sir Gus and his attempts to question him last week, Paul Flynn is calling for a wider investigation. He said: "Witnesses before a select committee have said that the inquiry into the Werritty affair was rushed and inadequate, and possibly in breach of the ministerial code as it was not conducted by the only person who is the enforcer of the code: the independent adviser on ministerial affairs [Sir Philip Mawer].

"As the inquiry was conducted for reasons of political expediency to avoid embarrassment for the Government, and as new evidence is available, should we not have a full legitimate inquiry conducted by Sir Philip?"

The demand has, so far, received a response that would make Sir Gus's reaction seem enthusiastic.

“LIVE: Exposing the evil "New World Order" with Dr Peter Hammond”- https://youtu.be/KmRsvDvX7ao

“The goals of the super wealthy of the world in establishing a new world order are no longer a conspiracy theory - they are a fact. Tonight I discuss the impact of this serious life changing subject on every human on earth with Dr Peter Hammond. What roles do politicians; the World Economic Forum; the current lock down and organisations like the United Nations play.”

This man is very knowledgeable about history and current events, and shares a lot of resources. It is a long discussion however it is very good. There is a wealth of information.

There is hope if every patriot stands together and prepare.

WWG1WGA!

God bless!

Below is a sample

2:32:59 – “To give you an example from South Africa, the worst crime you can commit in South Africa both under the old government and the new is illegal diamond mining, IDB, and basically the principle is that every diamond, uncut diamond, belongs to De Beers/Anglo American. And so, whether you find it on your farm, whether you find it scuba diving the… Orange River… Not just South Africa, the same thing for Namibia, same thing for Botswana, every diamond belongs to De Beers and so interestingly, the worst offence you can commit in terms of the penalties you get is not murder, it is not even income tax evasion, it is illegal diamond mining. Isn’t it interesting that, you know, you have got this communist party government and so on but they accept the fact that all the diamonds have to belong to De Beers and it just explains that’s the power in our country, the diamond magnets and so on. In other countries it might be oil and so on but behind it are these massive power houses who somehow untouchable when it comes to law and they are above the law. And this should make a person think because even governments can change and there can even have revolutions but somehow these chaps are unaffected and some of the things that which make you think about this. Just take during the cold war, there was 1 capitalist from America, Armand Hammer, who could fly to the Soviet Union any time and he could fly his private plane to the Soviet Union, he could walk into the office of Joseph Stalin without an appointment which none of his cabinet ministers could do… He’s meant to be one of the top capitalists and yet he was totally in bed with the commies. His father was the top member of the Communist Party in the USA. You can look at Zimbabwe and Rhodesia, there was the head of Lonrho, London Rhodesia Company… Tiny Rowlands, the moment that Robert Mugabe took power, he took up membership openly with ZanuPF, he became the major funder and personal friend of Robert Mugabe. You would have thought Tiny Rowlands was a respected businessman in Rhodesia but in fact he was in bed with the communists before and after 1980 and we could give lots of other examples like it… I remember being in prison in Lusaka central prison and having some of the Zambian presidential detainees who were in the same cell with me in Lusaka central explaining that in Zambia a lot of the copper mines and everything else up on the copper belt were still owned by Anglo American and I said well that is strange, don’t you want one party dictatorship/socialist government… yes we do… and yet Anglo American still runs the copper mines?… yes they do. I said and how does this work. He said, well they are happy because they only have to pay off the government and they have not done a wage increase in decades. And when the people try to strike, the government just calls out the police army and they shoot rioters straight… not with rubber bullets, real bullets… And apparently hardcore capitalists, monopoly capitalists I mean, they love communist regimes because big tech, big government, big business, big media, big pharma are in bed with one another. And I have seen it in our country.”

>>13870546

>Armand Hammer

“THE RIDDLE OF ARMAND HAMMER” – Part 1dated at Nov 29, 1981, at https://www.nytimes.com/1981/11/29/magazine/the-riddle-of-armand-hammer.html. The excerpts are divided into parts.

Edward Jay Epstein is a freelance writer. His most recent book, The Diamond Invention, an examination of the international diamond cartel, will be published by Simon and Shuster this spring. By Edward Jay Epstein In Moscow, on May 27, l922, Vladimir Lenin, the ailing leader of the Russian Revolution, sent an urgent and secret message to Joseph Stalin, the newly appointed General Secretary of the Communist Party, instructing him and the Politburo to give their particular support to a young American and his trading venture. Lenin explained: This is a small path to the American 'business' world and this path should be made use of in every way. The American was a 24-year-old graduate of the College of Physicians and Surgeons of Columbia University.

In Los Angeles, on Aug. 31, l981, more than a thousand leading businessmen and politicians gathered at the Century Plaza Hotel for the presentation of the annual Armand Hammer Businessman of the Year Award. Bob Hope introduced Armand Hammer, now 83, as the epitome of success of American capitalism. He lauded him as an industrialist, an art collector, a diplomat and a philanthropist, all titles to which Hammer can lay indisputable claim. He is the head of Occidental Petroleum, the largest independent oil company in the world and itself the owner of giant subsidiary companies in such vital areas as food production and chemicals. Dr. Hammer, as he prefers to be called (in deference to the medical degree he has never used), also happens to be the owner of the Hammer and Knoedler Galleries, among the leading art dealers in America, and he is the chairman of the Armand Hammer Foundation, which donates millions of dollars every year to charitable causes.

But the most remarkable thing about Armand Hammer is that he created this personal empire largely by negotiating extraordinary deals with nations that have usually been hostile to the United States - and even more hostile to American capitalists. The son of one of the founders of the American Communist Labor Party, Hammer became a multimillionaire capitalist, thanks in large measure to his relations with the leaders of the Soviet Union. He has maintained cordial relations with Soviet leaders for more than half a century, providing Moscow with a vital link to Western industry and technology. (Six years ago Soviet leader Leonid I. Brezhnev gave Hammer a luxurious Moscow apartment, and Kremlin officials have proposed that he be named United States ambassador to the Soviet Union. Such recommendations have made some members of the Reagan Administration uneasy. Says one member of the President's inner circle, who asked not to be identified by name, We simply don't know which side of the fence Hammer is on.)

Hammer also happens to be Jewish (by background if not belief), yet Libyan strongman Col. Muammar el-Qaddafi has made him a major beneficiary of Libya's oil wealth. In the early l970's, Hammer negotiated an accommodation with Qaddafi that had the eventual effect of contributing to the growth and power of OPEC and which radically changed the oil business around the world. (Even though both Mobil and Exxon announced decisions to suspend production in Libya earlier this month, Occidental, the main channel of Libyan oil, declared its intention to continue production as usual.)

And although Hammer is a Democrat, he pleaded guilty and received a suspended sentence for providing secret and illegal campaign funds to then-President Richard M. Nixon in l972. It is not a simple matter to understand the convictions and motivations that underlie these apparent contradictions. Hammer's skills as an international wheeler-dealer, on the other hand, are much less difficult to document.

“THE RIDDLE OF ARMAND HAMMER” – Part 2dated at Nov 29, 1981, at https://www.nytimes.com/1981/11/29/magazine/the-riddle-of-armand-hammer.html

For example, on April 26, 1981 - the day after President Ronald Reagan reopened the door to trade with the Soviet Union by ending the embargo imposed in l979 as a retaliation for the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan - Armand Hammer entered the Soviet Union aboard OXY 1, his private Boeing 727, one of the very few private aircraft permitted to fly in Soviet airspace. He had already dictated a letter to Ronald Reagan commending the President on his courageous decision and suggesting that renewed East-West trade was in the interest of the United States. Not incidently, perhaps, it was also in Hammer's interest. His company was committed to ship a million tons of concentrated phosphoric acid to the Soviet Union annually for the next 20 years. This would provide Soviet agriculture with the liquid fertilizers that it desperately needs to improve crop yields. The deal, which Hammer reckoned to be worth no less than $20 billion, had been nearly wrecked by the American embargo. Dr. Hammer was now flying to Moscow to get it moving again.

During the next few days, Hammer had a series of meetings and dinners with Soviet ministers and trade officials. Aside from the multibillion-dollar phosphoric acid deal, his company is in-volved in a multitude of other enter-prises in the Soviet Union ranging from selling petrochemicals to building an international trade center.

In between meetings, Hammer asked his personal assistant, James Pugash, to begin gathering information on the stock price of Murdoch's beef-packing company. It was only then that his assistant realized that Hammer's interest in Murdoch went beyond helping him buy a Russian horse.

By the time Hammer returned home to Los Angeles the following week he had already broached the possibility to Murdoch of Occidental Petroleum buying Iowa Beef. Several weeks later, Hammer purchased Iowa Beef for more than $800 million in Occidental stock. When he returned to Moscow a month later, he not only arranged to buy the stallion Pesniar for Murdoch, Occidental and a third buyer (for $1 million), but he also offered Deputy Prime Minister Leonid Kostandov a plan to help solve the Soviet Union's chronic meat shortage. With Iowa Beef, he could replicate its highly advanced meat packing factories in the Soviet Union, and sell directly to the Soviet Government large quantities of American boxed beef.

In both style and substance, it was the kind of maneuvering for which Hammer has become famous. When he took over Occidental Petroleum 25 years ago, it was little more than a corporate shell with three employees and a net worth of only $34,000. He was then nearly 60 and he had had no experience in the oil business. Less than 10 years later, Occidental had a market value in excess of $100,000,000. By the beginning of 1981, with sales of over $12 billion, the corporation ranked in the Fortune 500 as the 20th largest industrial company in the United States. And with added revenues from Iowa Beef, Occidental should be in the top 15 before the current year is out. How did Hammer do it? Earlier this year, I traveled more than 10,000 miles with Dr. Hammer in North America and Europe. During this period, he flew over 100,000 miles in the OXY 1 and met with an international Who's Who of presidents, princes and dictators.

In Ottawa, he went to the gala that Premier Trudeau gave in honor of President Reagan. In Peking, Hammer had a private audience with China's strongman, Deputy Prime Minister Deng Xaioping, in the Great Hall. Afterwards, at a lavish banquet he gave for over 100 Chinese officials, he discussed his plan for developing Chinese oil and coal resources. In Brasilia, he met with President Joao Baptista Figueiredo, and talked about the possibility of building a natural gas pipeline from Occidental's fields in Bolivia to Brazil. In London, he presented a book illustrated by Leonardo da Vinci (and renamed the Codex Hammer) to the Royal Academy of Arts for an exhibition. In Washington, he went to numerous receptions for visiting world leaders, and lunched with at least 15 Senators.

Throughout this global odyssey, it quickly became clear how in all his dealings, commerce, diplomacy, politics, philanthropy, friendship and his own self-interest interweave in complex patterns. A vivid illustration is his recent personal peace initiative in Afghanistan. The idea, which he claims had been suggested to him by Edward Gierek, then the head of the Communist Party of Poland, was for the Soviet Union to begin a phased withdrawal of its troops from Afghanistan in return for which Pakistan and the United States would agree to stop aiding the anti-Soviet rebels in Afghanistan.

“THE RIDDLE OF ARMAND HAMMER” – Part 3dated at Nov 29, 1981, at https://www.nytimes.com/1981/11/29/magazine/the-riddle-of-armand-hammer.html

Hammer, taking Brezhnev at his word, next flew to Karachi to meet with General Mohammad Zia ul-Haq, the President of Pakistan who had been up to this moment the main supporter of the rebels in Afghanistan. During these meetings, he suggested that Occidental Petroleum could redrill shallow offshore oil fields in the hope of striking a bonanza, and also build a new oil refinery in Pakistan. Gen. Zia showed considerable interest in the idea but he was reluctant to commit himself on Afghanistan.

Hammer was not prepared to give up. He went to Senator Charles Percy, the chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee and a personal friend; to Secretary of State Alexander Haig; to Lord Carrington, the British Foreign Secretary, and finally to Kurt Waldheim, the Secretary General of the United Nations. While he was proceeding with this approach he received word that President Reagan was about to end the Soviet embargo for entirely unrelated reasons. Only then did Hammer stop pressing his peace initiative. And in that light it perhaps becomes clear where his highest priorities lie.

Occidental has had three different presidents in the last three years. Hammer's one-man control of Occidental has, he explained, allowed him to make instant and advantageous decisions in the competitive world of oil concessions. It has also permitted him to resort to some unconventional tactics. For example, to get an oil concession in the Persian Gulf from an Emirate Sheik, he personally delivered to him $1,671,000 in cash in a suitcase in a London hotel room. (Another $200,000 was deposited in a Swiss bank.) Hammer says that the payment was a legitimate part of the contractual arrangement with the Sheikdom of Umm-al-Qaywayn: The Sheik, named Sultan al Mu'Alla, was the son of the ruler and authorized to receive the payment on the part of the nation.

In Venezuela, Hammer gave the President of that nation a valuable bronze statue of Simon Bolivar from the Hammer Galleries. He later characterized the gift as just a token.

In Libya, Hammer arranged for Occidental to pay for the college tuition and expenses of Libyans whose parents held influential positions in the Government. Hammer explains that these students were chosen by the Libyan Government and that these unusual arrangements engender local good will. A Source Memorandum prepared by a special committee of the Occidental board discloses many unorthodox arrangements that Hammer has made to gain advantage for Occidental in the rivalry for oil properties. They range from paying a Nigerian Consul General $295,000 through an intermediary in Liechtenstein to transferring some $3 million to a Bahamian shell corporation, called Noark International, which allegedly used the funds to bribe Venezuelan officials. Hammer characterized these charges by his own committee as unproven allegations. He points out that an oil company is often obliged to pay intermediaries in underdeveloped countries, and it cannot then prevent them from using these fees to bribe government officials.

To maintain his international network of influence, Dr. Hammer also depends heavily on his Washington connection. He claims to have known every President since Herbert Hoover. To assure himself access to the White House and Congress, he retains a powerful corps of men in Washington and other cities, almost all of whom formerly served as Government officials. This contingent includes William F. McSweeny, a former high-level aide in the Johnson Administration; Jerrold L. Schecter, the former spokesman for the National Security Council in the Carter Administration; Rear Adm. Tazewell T. Shepard Jr., a former aide in the Kennedy Administration; Gorden Reece, formerly public relations adviser to Margaret Thatcher, and Jack King, a former spokesman for the National Aeronautics and Space Administration.

Still, Hammer, and his public affairs staff, have found his access to the Reagan Administration progressively stifled. Hammer continues to write letters to the President. So far, however, the responses have been cool. He particularly blames Richard V. Allen, the President's National Security Adviser, for blocking him.

“THE RIDDLE OF ARMAND HAMMER” – Part 4dated at Nov 29, 1981, at https://www.nytimes.com/1981/11/29/magazine/the-riddle-of-armand-hammer.html

Allen acknowledges that he has made efforts to limit Hammer's access to the President, explaining that he is concerned about the funny company that Hammer keeps. It is understandable that Hammer's longtime association with Soviet leaders raises some questions about the nature of his international activities: Does Hammer merely take advantage of his contacts with the the Russians to advance his business interests? Or does Hammer take advantage of his business contacts to serve Moscow's interests? That may not be possible to know. But to find clues one must go back to a series of events that occured just after the Russian Revolution.

Hammer claims that his Soviet connection grew out of his philanthrophic intentions and a series of innocent accidents. He recounts that after he graduated from medical school in 1921, he heard about a typhus epidemic sweeping the Soviet Union. Since he was interested in bacteriology, and he had a six-month hiatus before his internship was scheduled to begin, he decided to go to Russia to study and assist in the control of the epidemic. When he saw the extent of the famine, he offered to buy wheat for the Soviet Government. He says that Lenin, hearing of his offer, invited him to the Kremlin, and told him: We do not need doctors, we need businessmen …Communism is not working and we must change to a New Economic Policy. Then, according to Hammer, Lenin offered him a concession for mining asbestos in the Urals and another for organizing Soviet foreign trade - the first foreign concessions ever in the Soviet Union.

The story behind Hammer's concessions, however, involves considerably more intrigue than that, according to recently declassified State Department and Army intelligence files at the National Archives. Those files suggest that the Soviet arrangement actually began with Hammer's father, Julius Hammer, an immigrant from Russia, who was a dedicated supporter of Lenin and the Communist Party. Indeed, according to one account, Julius named Armand after the arm-and-hammer symbol of the Socialist Labor Party. Julius Hammer, also a doctor by training, had built a prosperous business in New York, selling shampoos, medicinal alcohols and pharmaceutical drugs. Julius Hammer also became a financial supporter of radical causes, and it was in this capacity that he established his connections with the Soviet Union.

Hammer paid the rent and other expenses of [Ludwig C.A.K.] Martens's [German-Russian engineer] unofficial Soviet Bureau in New York. Hammer was officially appointed commercial attache of the Soviet Bureau, and also was given an exclusive license for Russian trade with the United States. By 1918, the Soviet Union was financing the Soviet Bureau by smuggling diamonds into New York. Julius Hammer was responsible for converting these diamonds into cash to finance the purchase of Soviet supplies, according to the autobiography of one of Julius Hammer's fellow party members. Armand Hammer denies this. In any case, the Hammer family soon moved from their modest home in the Bronx to luxurious quarters in the Hotel Ansonia in Manhattan, and Julius Hammer noticeably improved his style of living.

Julius Hammer organized and held equity in a corporation originally called the Allied Drug and Chemical Company, and which later evolved into the Allied American Corporation.

With Julius Hammer in prison and Martens back in the Soviet Union, Armand Hammer had little choice but to take over the business. He acknowledges that he intended to collect some of the debts that the Russian Government owed his family business, and on his passport application he listed his reason for travel as commercial business and pleasure.

In Moscow, Hammer met with Martens, who had been appointed to the Supreme Economic Council, to discuss the resumption of shipments through his corporation. Martens brought Hammer to see Boris Reinstein, who was then in charge of organizing the Department of International Propaganda. Reinstein, who was working on a new political initiative to attract foreign capital to the Soviet Union, accompanied Hammer to Lenin's office in the Kremlin.

“THE RIDDLE OF ARMAND HAMMER” – Part 5dated at Nov 29, 1981, at https://www.nytimes.com/1981/11/29/magazine/the-riddle-of-armand-hammer.html

Lenin realized that the Soviet Union desperately needed Western technology, and he saw concessions as a temporary expedient towards this end. He wrote in a secret message to the Communist Party: Concessions, these do not mean peace with capitalism, but war on a new plane. To carry out his new economic policy, Lenin now needed a capitalist who would accept a Soviet concession and advertise it in the United States. Hammer seemed a likely candidate.

Several months later, after the concession was officially granted - and publicized in the United States -Lenin wrote his secret missive to Stalin and the Politburo, explaining that the Hammer enterprise was a path to American business that was to be used in every way. Lenin, who was paralyzed by a nearly fatal stroke the day after sending the communique, never clarified the idea further.

Hammer's concessions included not only the asbestos mine but also the extraordinary right to act as agent for Soviet trade with the United States. To develop this latter concession, Hammer traveled throughout the United States attempting to persuade American companies to invest capital and transfer technology to the Soviet Union. He was joined in this enterprise by his father, who was paroled from Sing Sing prison in 1923, and also by his brother Harry Hammer. By 1925, he succeeded in recruiting no fewer than 38 corporations that supplied Russia with everything from machinery to agricultural equipment. Hammer also became the agent for the Ford Motor Company's Fordson tractors in the Soviet Union, and even arranged for Russian engineers to come to the United States to study Ford's techniques of mass production.

Hammer's Allied American Corporation was no ordinary company in Moscow. When Lenin's New Economic Policy ended about 1925, and virtually every other foreign concession was nationalized without compensation, Allied American received a lucrative Soviet pencilmanufacturing concession. This raised questions about the Soviet role in Hammer's business. Hammer insists he was the sole owner of Allied American and he asserts: I made all the decisions and the Soviet Government had nothing to do with the running of the business. According to documents submitted in a tax suit by Allied American Corporation, however, it was acknowledged that the Soviet Government, through its Commissariat of Foreign Trade, did, in fact, select and appoint two directors of Allied American with powers equal to other directors in carrying out the contract, and that it had the absolute right to establish the price of its exports. Moreover, the agreement provided for a division of profits between the Soviet Government and the Allied American Corporation. These documents suggest that the Soviet Government had considerably more influence in the operations of Allied American than Hammer recollects.

British Intelligence also became intrigued with the operation of Allied American after a raid on Soviet House in London in 1927. A State Department intelligence report later noted, Dr. Julius Hammer was prohibited entry into the United Kingdom as a political agent and (as) the controlling personage of the Allied American Corporation which was used as a cover for the transmission of Soviet funds to American revolutionary organizations.

“THE RIDDLE OF ARMAND HAMMER” – Part 6dated at Nov 29, 1981, at https://www.nytimes.com/1981/11/29/magazine/the-riddle-of-armand-hammer.html.

In 1955, Hammer decided to start life anew. Selling his herd of Black Angus cattle and his whisky business, he moved to Los Angeles, where he married for a third time, to Frances Tolman. The following year, Hammer, along with his new wife and a few friends, arranged to take over a nearly defunct oil company selling for 18 cents a share. That company was Occidental Petroleum.

In l961, Armand Hammer returned to Russia as an unofficial trade emissary. Hammer found the United States Embassy in Moscow less than helpful. Junior aides treated his mission as nothing more than a political lark. They were more than a little startled when Soviet leader Nikita Khrushchev himself requested a meeting with Hammer in the Kremlin; Khrushchev had avoided almost any high-level contacts with American officials since he had canceled the summit meeting with President Dwight D. Eisenhower in 1960. When Hammer arrived at his office, Khrushchev dismissed the translators, and both men talked in Russian. The Russian leader made a strong case for United States credits, arguing that Soviet orders for American goods could relieve unempoyment in the United States. If you give us credit … you will keep your plants busy. Hammers recalls Khrushchev telling him.

Khrushchev also told Hammer that the Soviet Union needed billions of dollars worth of phosphorus-based fertilizers for its agriculture. Hammer saw the possibility of using his fledgling oil company as a vehicle for organizing a multibillion-dollar trade in fertilizers with the Soviet Union.

When Hammer returned to the United States, he began buying up the components necessary for a fertilizer business. He bought Interore (International Ore and Fertilizer Corporation), then the largest fertilizer trading company in the United States; Best Fertilizer, a producer of ammonia, and the Jefferson Lake Sulphur Company. Next, he acquired vast tracts of phosphate deposits in north Florida. By 1963, Occidental Petroleum had become primarily a fertilizer company, with oil and gas accounting for less than 10 percent of its income.

Not long afterward, Dr. Hammer found another opportunity that would prove even more lucrative. The notoriously corrupt Libyan government of King Idris was seeking independent oil companies to bid for oil concessions that were adjacent to the concessions held by the oil giants. Hammer bid on the concessions - and won them.

The flow of Libyan oil that Occidental began extracting soon reached almost 500,000 barrels a day, and turned Occidental into a multibillion-dollar company. When Col. Qaddafi overthrew the Idris monarchy in 1969, he immediately confronted the 21 oil companies in Libya and told them he wanted to increase his nation's share of the oil to 51 percent. Up to this point, all the oil companies had acted in unison in refusing to permit any nation to raise its share above 49 percent. This time, however, Qaddafi applied pressure against Occidental, which depended almost entirely on Libya for its supply of oil. Dr. Hammer says he approached Kenneth Jamieson, the chief executive of Exxon, and offered to stand fast against Qaddafi if, and only if, Exxon would provide it with 500,000 barrels of oil a day at close to cost. According to Hammer, it was only when Jamieson refused this demand that he flew to Tripoli, and came to terms with Qaddafi.

The common front was now irreparably breached, and other oil companies in Libya had little choice but to accede to Qaddafi's demands. By breaking ranks with the oil giants in Libya, Hammer had effectively changed the rules of the game for oil companies in the Middle East. Oil companies could now be played off against one another. Under these new conditions, the rise of OPEC was greatly accelerated.

“THE RIDDLE OF ARMAND HAMMER” – Part 7dated at Nov 29, 1981, at https://www.nytimes.com/1981/11/29/magazine/the-riddle-of-armand-hammer.html.

The Central Intelligence Agency counterintelligence staff became concerned with these negotiations when routine interceptions of the secret communications between Moscow and the Soviet Embassy in Tripoli suddenly showed a quantum leap in volume that coincided with turns in the oil negotiations. While American cryptoanalysts at the National Security Agency could count the messages being transmitted, they could not crack the code itself, and therefore the content of this spurt in volume remained conjectural. Hammer himself denies that the Soviet Union had intervened on his behalf in the negotiations, recalling that to the best of his knowledge this was purely a Libyan affair.

Whatever the case, as a result of these negotiations, Occidental became the major beneficiary of Libyan oil. Hammer's company built its own pipeline to the Mediterranean, and bought a refinery, tankers and a distribution system in Europe. With the enormous cash flow from Libya, Hammer began to buy other properties around the world.

In Peru, following the l968 takeover by a revolutionary junta, Hammer again fished in troubled waters, accepting a concession in the Amazon Basin. He further assisted the new Government by depositing $25 million of Occidental funds in Peruvian banks. Then, in the British North Sea, Hammer bought major shares in the Piper and Claymore fields which eventually proved to be rich in oil. And, in the United States, he bought Island Creek Coal, the country's fourth largest coal producer, and made arrangements to barter coal for chemicals with Rumania, Italy and other countries.

In 1968, Hammer also bought Hooker Chemical Company (the corporation that 11 years later was to become embroiled in multimillion-dollar lawsuits as a result of its dumping of toxic wastes into the Love Canal in upstate New York.)

In April 1973, after 12 years of efforts, Hammer finally reached a definitive $20 billion agreement with the Russians for his fertilizers. In return, the Soviet Union would supply Occidental with a million metric tons of ammonia, potash and urea per year which it would sell through its Hooker Chemical subsidiary. And with its Libyan oil money, Occidental no longer needed American bank credits to finance the deal.

Even though the United States Department of Mines objected that the massive transfer of Florida phosphates to the Soviet Union would deplete American reserves, President Nixon wrote a letter to William Casey, then the head of the Export-Import Bank, in which he strongly recommended granting the Soviet Union a low-interest loan of $180 million to build the plants and pipelines it needed for the Hammer enterprise. Nixon declared that the loan would be in the national interest, and it was therefore approved by Casey. (Hammer had indeed personally briefed Nixon on the status of his deal, adding, according to the White House tapes, I am glad to tell you that I am a member of the $100,000 Club, - referring to his illegal cash contribution to the Nixon campaign.)

Soon afterward, Hammer announced a bewildering array of other East-West deals. These included a $4 billion pipeline through Siberia that would supply Japan with Russian gas, the sale to Moscow of enough metal-finishing machines to build an industry, the construction of hotels and inns in Eastern Europe, the minting of coins for the Olympics, and arrangements to barter coal to Rumania. What Lenin had described a half century earlier as a small path to American business had now expanded into a superhighway.

Hammer's critics might recall Lenin's dictum that when it comes time to hang the capitalists, the capitalists themselves will compete to sell the rope. Former American Ambassador to Moscow Malcolm Toon says: I'm uneasy about Hammer's close relations with the Soviet leadership. I'm not suggesting any sinister KGB connection - Hammer is probably far too valuable as an organizer of Soviet trade for him to be used by the Soviets for any other purpose.

Or his critics might simply point out how convenient it is that Hammer's convictions on world peace and international relations always neatly coincide with his self-interest. Fair or not, such criticism is to be expected.

>>13870546

>Tiny Rowlands

“Deep secrets behind Lonrho boss [Tiny] Rowland”dated March 26, 1993, at https://larouchepub.com/eiw/public/1993/eirv20n13-19930326/eirv20n13-19930326_075-deep_secrets_behind_lonrho_boss.pdf

“Tiny Rowland: The Ugly Face of Neocolonialism in Africa” by an EIR Investigative Team Executive Intelligence Review, Washington, D.C., 1993, 165 pages, paperbound, $10

Since he took the helm of a sleepy little mining company in then-Rhodesia (Zimbabwe) in 1961 and turned it into one of the world's premier multinationals, Lonrho, Roland W. "Tiny" Rowland has not only dominated the continent of Africa, but has spread his tentacles into India, Germany, Mexico, eastern Europe, Russia, Japan, and beyond.

An aura of mystery has always surrounded Rowland. What accounts for his meteoric rise? What gives him the power to dictate to governments? For whom does he work, really?

The product of a years-long investigation by a special EIR team on several continents, this book utilizes never before-published documentary evidence and interviews with those who have known Rowland intimately for decades, to answer those questions. Stunning new light is cast on many hidden aspects of Row land's career, including:

• Rowland's pro-Nazi fanaticism, which led to his internment during World War II as a danger to Britain;

• His participation in one of the most secret British intelligence operations of the 20th century, the wartime "Double-Cross Committee," beginning a long affiliation between Rowland and Britain's foreign intelligence service, MI-6;

• His early sponsorship by legendary City of London magnate Harley Drayton, whose 117 Old Broad St. Group managed the private fortune of the Queen;

• His backing of all sides in the last decades' civil wars in Africa;

• His pivotal role in the Iran-Contra guns-for-drugs affair.

Said an EIR spokesman, "Africa is dying, and there is no hope for the continent until the death-grip on its people by such pillars of the modem slave trade as the International Monetary Fund and Tiny Rowland's Lonrho is broken. Until now, journalists have been terrified to tell the story of the cheating, lying, stealing and worse, which have characterized the career of Rowland.

"More importantly, this book is history of the tragedy of modern Africa. As documented, the post-1960 decolonization announced by British Prime Minister Harold Macmillan in his famous 'Winds of Change' speech in Cape Town that year was always intended, by powerful forces in Britain, to ultimately result in a recolonization. The architects of this new colonialism sponsored the meteoric rise of Tiny Rowland and Lonrho."

What is particularly striking about Rowland from this book, is his sponsorship by top British circles connected to the Royal Family. The following individuals all helped Rowland get out of many a tight spot, Angus Ogilvy, Harley Drayton, Sir Joseph Ball, and Duncan Sandys, the former Secretary of State for the Colonies. The authors point to this connection as being something beyond financial involvement, however; rather, they view the alliance of Rowland with these royal retainers as reflecting a policy commitment of the Crown.

Also of particular interest to black Africans will be the chronology of the duplicitous role played by these so-called British liberals in fomenting civil war in the African nations, from Angola to Namibia to Zimbabwe. The authors warn of similar games set up to be played in the much larger and more volatile South Africa, where British colonialists will keep a tight hold on the raw materials wealth of the country, while encouraging fratricidal warfare within the population.

While one could ask for a little more emphasis on the actual physical power which the Rowland group holds today, the book as a whole serves its function to unmask this private financier as a tool of British imperial policy.

“LEAKED! This is how the ANC wants to change the Constitution.”- https://youtu.be/Od-rEYrV6bM

“I received a leak of the Bill that wants to amend the Constitution. It has all the worst elements of socialism in it - including custodianship of land.”

It can be accessed at https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/1iUt0ChCqFtm18mAH0CiL–XjkDUQSVQF

>>13908297

“André Pienaar Remarks on the Space Investment Landscape at America’s Future Series Space Innovation Summit”dated April 21, 2021, at https://www.c5capital.com/andre-pienaar-remarks-on-the-space-investment-landscape-at-americas-future-series-space-innovation-summit/

About the Event:

On April 7, 2021, C5 Capital CEO and Founder André Pienaar joined investment experts and high-level decision makers at America’s Future Series Space Innovation Summit [https://www.americas-fs.org/2021-space-innovation-summit]. This interactive discussion covered the present and future states of the space investment landscape and highlighted the critical matters both startups and investors need to think about prior to investing in the industry. The event featured a series of panels and presentations for the purpose of bringing together industry experts to advance global competitiveness in America.

Featured Speakers:

__________

André Pienaar, Chief Executive and Founder, C5 Capital

Dr. Kam Ghaffarian, Founder and Executive Chairman, Axiom Space

Jeff Crusey, Investment Manager, Seraphim Capital

Matt Kuta, Co-Founder, President, and Chief Operating Officer, Voyager Space Holdings

Ken Moelis, Founder, Chairman, and CEO, Moelis & Company (moderator)

__________

“Assessing the Space Investment Landscape“

In this new decade, the fast-moving space economy is one of increasing interest to founders and investors alike. Morgan Stanley estimates the global space industry may generate more than $1 trillion in 2040- just 19 years away. There have been an emerging group of venture capital investors who understand that space is the high ground of cybersecurity and find great value in this sector. This domain is integral to the growing low Earth orbit (LEO) economy and our reliance continues to grow on technologies that utilise space for communication, GPS navigation, weather monitoring, and more.

Prior to investing in the space economy, we noted that investors will need to know the process will take more time and capital than expected. Investors should also know exactly who is on the team of the startup they plan to invest in. Are they credible? Finding a team at a space startup with the right expertise is a critical step so you can ensure they will be able to handle the capital you present them with. A variety of experiences are needed- everything from engineering to management can provide the diversity and competency needed to drive the company to success.

The sources of capital continue to broaden for space startups- everything from SPACs to seed investments to venture to government. André believes SPACs are here to stay despite their difficult undertaking. He has found an enormous appetite for companies that can bring change in the public market and in the coming decades, we expect to see space flourish and create more opportunities than most other sectors.

Watch the full panel here: https://youtu.be/ZF-A5_8fgs8

“'It's impossible to run our business': Rio Tinto shuts KZN operation amid bloodshed”- https://www.news24.com/fin24/companies/its-impossible-to-run-our-business-rio-tinto-shuts-kzn-operation-amid-bloodshed-20210630

Rio Tinto Group declared force majeure on customer contracts at Richards Bay Minerals after escalating violence forced it to suspend activity at the minerals sands operation in South Africa.

Managing Director Werner Duvenhage said the company is prioritising the safety of its 5 000 workers at RBM, which exports titanium dioxide slag, used to create ingredients for products including paint, plastics, sunscreen and toothpaste. The closure of Rio’s only South African business follows the death last month of RBM manager Nico Swart, who was shot on his way to work.

"It has become impossible for us to run the business," Duvenhage said by phone. "We won’t go back until it's safe for our people."

The suspension of operations at RBM is a blow to the South African government’s efforts to attract new investment to the country. Violence around RBM forced the operation to shut temporarily in 2019, with work subsequently halted on a $463 million (~R6.6 billion) expansion project.

In recent weeks, mining equipment and infrastructure have been destroyed and access roads blocked. South African mining operations are frequently dogged by community protests, which relate to issues ranging from poor municipal services to labor conditions. Duvenhage said there have been reports that the latest violence may be connected to youth unemployment.

RBM’s furnaces are currently being run on low power as they can’t be shut down completely. The company is engaging with both regional and national governments to get a better understanding of the cause of the violence, Duvenhage said.

South Africa’s mines and energy ministry didn’t immediately respond to a request for comment from Bloomberg.

“South African Police stations soft targets for gun running | South Africa” - https://youtu.be/WUYEDPzkjgw

“The Tyefu police station in Peddie, Eastern Cape, was broken into, the safe opened and stripped of its arsenal of firearms this week. Thieves got into the locked station while the two officers on duty were allegedly responding to a domestic violence complaint. The same station came under attack in January from angry Eastern Cape villagers who were fed up with "unreliable" and "useless" police officers.”

“ANC’s silence over their own firearms indicates double standards”- https://southafricatoday.net/south-africa-news/ancs-silence-over-their-own-firearms-indicates-double-standards/

The civil rights organisation AfriForum demands clarity on the situation with regard to firearms that are currently in the ANC’s possession.

An unknown number of firearms were granted to the ANC by the National Party government in those days because the ANC claimed that they had no confidence in the police to protect their members against political violence.

It is however unclear what became of the firearms and if these firearms were ever relicensed under the new firearm legislation of 2000. According to AfriForum a source close to Luthuli House confirmed that no record is kept of the firearms and that many have already gone missing.

“This yet again indicates the ANC’s double standards. In those days the party and its members did not have confidence in the police to protect them and they insisted on possessing firearms. Now that they are in charge and being protected by armed bodyguards at the expense of the taxpayer, they have the nerve to disarm the public,” says Jacques Broodryk, AfriForum’s Manager of Campaigns.

AfriForum appeals to all South Africans to participate in the public participation process with regard to the amendments to the firearm legislation by adding their name here, https://afriforum.co.za/en/stop-firearms-act/.

>>14029619

We will not, they are good at doctoring the statistics… Excuse the pun.

“Zuma Sentence | Police monitoring situation in Nkandla”- https://youtu.be/m_HFaQMAsaE

“Members of SAPS are monitoring the gathering outside former President Jacob Zuma's home in Nkandla. His supporters have arrived to show support. eNCA's Siphamandla Goge is following this story.”

“Gauteng Treasury ‘erroneously’ pays Microsoft $20m instead of R20m”- https://www.thesouthafrican.com/news/gauteng-treasury-erroneously-pays-microsoft-20-million-instead-of-r20-million-da-gauteng-covid-19-vaccine/

The Gauteng Department of Treasury has lost over R6 million after it mistakenly paid Microsoft $20 million instead of R20 million.

The Gauteng Department of Treasury has lost R6 843 737.90 of taxpayers’ money, after it erroneously processed an amount of $20 913 793.81 instead of the rand value of R20 913 793.81 as per e-Government payment advice, for the cost of Microsoft fees.

This has reportedly resulted in a debit amount of R 318 307 941.79 from the e-Government bank account.

GAUTENG TREASURY OVERPAYS MICROSOFT

According to the MEC for Finance and e-Government, Nomantu Nkomo-Ralehoko, the amount to be paid to Microsoft Ireland was R20 913 793.81. The Department submitted the payment advice to Provincial Treasury, Cash Book and Services for processing.

After the error was made, e-Government requested Provincial Treasury to recall the full amount of R318 307 941.79 from Microsoft. The money was successfully recalled in February 2021, with an amount of R 311 464 203.81, resulting in a shortfall of R6 843 737.90 because of the exchange rate.

The Democratic Alliance says the money could have bought the country 48 000 Johnson and Johnson vaccines and protected many innocent lives from COVID-19.

DA Gauteng Shadow MEC for Finance and e-Government Adriana Randall said: “We believe that stronger action should have been taken and the official responsible for this should have been suspended immediately and the money recouped from the official.

“Consequence management is the only way in which errors like these will not happen and will send a strong message to any government official that is involved in negligence as seen at the e-Government department. Our residents in Gauteng deserve a government that holds officials and MECs to account when it comes to how our taxpayers’ money is spent now more than ever given the current Covid-19 pandemic.”

The DA said it will not rest until this money is recovered for the benefit of the residents of Gauteng and the implicated officials are charged. Serious negligence deserves serious consequences, especially when lost money could have been used to save lives and livelihoods.