“Kenya has threatened to close two refugee camps in the country”- https://youtu.be/56GfgC9mFw4

“Kenya has threatened to close two refugee camps in the country. The ministry of interior released a tweet stating that the United Nations Human Rights Commission has been issued with a 14 day period to provide a roadmap on the closure of the camps. The ministry made it clear that there was no room for further negotiations”

Noteworthy statement;

6:51 – “Remember in 2016, the Kenyan government had a reason that… the reason they had given the ultimatum was most of the terrorism activities that were being planned inside the refugee camps but for now, they’re not giving any reason as to why they want to close the down the camps.”

“Mozambique attack: Oil and gas held promise, what went wrong?” – Part 1- https://www.thesouthafrican.com/news/mozambique-attack-oil-and-gas-held-promise-what-went-wrong/

The Liquified National Gas (LNG) LNG projects in the northern Cabo Delgado area of Mozambique represented a silver lining of hope.

Recent events in Palma, a town in the volatile Cabo Delgado province in the north of Mozambique, have taken bloodshed in the region to new levels. Dozens of people were killed when hundreds of Islamist militants stormed the town on Wednesday, 25 March. They targeted shops, banks and a military barracks.

The attack has been devastating for the people living in the area – as well as the country. The escalating violence has already left at least a thousand dead and displaced hundreds of thousands more.

The conflict has put a temporary lid on plans that have been in the making for more than a decade since rich liquefied natural gas (LNG) deposits were discovered in the Rovuma Basin, just off the coast of Cabo Delgado. Western majors like Total, Exxon Mobil, Chevron and BP entered the Mozambique LNG industry as well as Japan’s Mitsui, Malaysia’s Petronas and China’s CNPC.

The gas projects are estimated to be worth US$60 billion in total. Some observers recently predicted that Mozambique could become one of the top ten LNG producers in the world.

The development of the projects had led to the area becoming a hive of economic activity.

The plan was for Palma to become a LNG manufacturing hub where hundreds of skilled workers would be located. And, more broadly, the hope was that it would drive the rapid advancement of a country that ranks close to the bottom of the United Nations Human Development Index. More than 70% of the population have been classified as “multidimensionally poor” by the United Nations Development Programme.

The LNG projects in the northern Cabo Delgado area represented a silver lining of hope. Since 2012 the major multinational energy companies have spent billions of dollars on developing the offshore gas sites. Today, offshore exploration in the Cabo Delgado area includes Africa’s three largest LNG projects. These are the Mozambique LNG Project (involving Total and previously Anadarko) worth $20 billion; the Coral FLNG Project (involving Eni and Exxon Mobil) worth $4.7 billion; and the Rovuma LNG Project (involving Exxon Mobil, Eni and CNPC) worth $30 billion.

Production was scheduled to start in 2024 but intensifying attacks near the gas site on the Afungi peninsula are now posing serious challenges to the production time lines.

There have been no material benefits for the people of Cabo Delgado thus far. Moreover, many local people feel deeply aggrieved because many were evicted and had to relocate soon after the discovery of gas in Cabo Delgado to make way for LNG infrastructure development.

HISTORY OF INSTABILITY

Cabo Delgado is Mozambique’s most northern province. Neglected over many years, the people who live there have been politically marginalised. And the area is underdeveloped.

Since independence in 1975 investment, and rising incomes, were largely confined to the capital Maputo in the south as well as the southern parts of the country.

In addition, the central government in Maputo has only had a fragile and precarious control over the territory and borders of the country. A 16-year civil war that involved clashes between the central government and Renamo, a militant organisation and political movement during the liberation struggle and now opposition party, claimed more than a million lives.

“Mozambique attack: Oil and gas held promise, what went wrong?” – Part 2- https://www.thesouthafrican.com/news/mozambique-attack-oil-and-gas-held-promise-what-went-wrong/

More recently, since 2017, the militant Islamic movement, Ansar al-Sunna, locally known as Al-Shabaab, has been active in Cabo Delgado. It now poses the biggest security threat in the country, rendering some of the northern parts almost ungovernable.

The militants took advantage of the Mozambican government’s failure to exercise control over the entire territory of the country.

Ansar al-Sunna reportedly pledged allegiance to the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS) in April 2018. It was acknowledged as an affiliate of ISIS-Core in August 2019. In view of this, the US Department of State has designated Ansar al-Sunna Mozambique, which it refers to as ISIS-Mozambique, as a foreign terrorist organisation.

What makes this armed force so significant is that the movement has orchestrated a series of large scale and targeted attacks. In 2020 this led to the temporary capturing of the strategic port of Mocimboa da Praia in Cabo Delgado.

In addition, the turbulence caused by the militants’ attacks has displaced nearly 670,000 people within northern Mozambique. Obviously, foreign companies in the LNG industry with their considerable investments feel threatened, especially at the current stage where final investment decisions have to be taken.

In recent months the situation in Cabo Delgado has gone from bad to worse. In November 2020, dozens of people were reportedly beheaded by the militants. Now the bloodshed has spread to Palma.

Amid the development of an increasingly alarming human rights situation towards the end of last year, the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights, Michelle Bachelet, appealed for urgent measures to protect civilians. She described the situation as “desperate” and one of “grave human rights abuses”. Bachelet also stated that more than 350,000 people had been displaced since 2018.

GROWING RISK

There is little doubt that Islamist insurgents are increasing the scale of their activities in Cabo Delgado. A lack of governance and a proper security response by both the Mozambican government and southern African leaders make this a case of high political risk for the LNG industry.

The escalation of the insurgency can potentially jeopardise the successful unlocking of Mozambique’s resource wealth. Until now, the main LNG installations and sites have not been targeted, but the attacks in Palma have brought the turbulence dangerously close to some of the installations.

The Mozambican armed forces are clearly stretched beyond the point where they can protect the local communities. A part of the solution lies in Southern African Development Community or at least South African military support to stabilise Cabo Delgado and restore law and order in the short term. Wider international support might even be necessary.

But this would require the Mozambican government to change its stance by allowing multinational foreign military forces on its soil.

At the same time, a long term solution should be pursued. This will require better governance of the northern areas and the local people in what has been called a forgotten province.

It is clear that Cabo Delgado is an area which the central government in Maputo is unable to control, govern effectively, or even influence. In short, weak state institutions – including weak armed forces – are key to the problems of Mozambique and specifically the turbulence in the northern parts.

“Easter shopping in South Africa - everything for free”- https://youtu.be/X_bOx20ktiU

I thoroughly enjoyed the below comment posted by someone.

“For some reason I was waiting for David Attenborough's voice to come on, describing a natural event taking place.”

“Siya Kolisi's Story | Carte Blanche | M-Net” - https://youtu.be/hMx4F046Etc

“When Siya Kolisi walked through the doors of Grey High School on a scholarship, that was the moment everything changed. Kolisi shares emotional times shared with his father, enduring friendships, as well as the moment he met his school sponsor for the first time. Macfarlane Moleli sits down with Springbok rugby captain Siya Kolisi for a memorable chat.”

“Well-known former SA school [Grey High School] coach nabbed in Australia on child porn charge” – Siya Kolisi’s coach- https://www.iol.co.za/news/world/well-known-former-sa-school-coach-nabbed-in-australia-on-child-porn-charge-3f446328-e68a-437f-8221-7100f7d6fdac

DURBAN: Former Grey High School teacher and well-known sports coach Dean Carelse has been arrested after police seized child pornography material from his home in Queensland, Australia, at the weekend.

Carelse coached Springbok captain Siya Kolisi while at Grey and is believed to have played a major role in identifying Kolisi’s talent and teaching him to hone his skills.

Briefly reported that when Kolisi's grandmother and mother died, Carelse became a father figure to the youngster when he went to high school.

The Queensland Police Service said detectives from the Sunshine Coast Child Protection Investigation Unit executed a search warrant at an address in Mooloolaba on March 20 where items of interest were seized.

"A 40-year-old man was arrested and charged with one count each of possessing and distributing child exploitation material. He is due to appear in Maroochydore Magistrates Court on May 5," the QPS said.

Carelse is a former teacher at a Sunshine Coast private school and current coach with a major water sports association.

Detectives also made an appeal for potential victims to come forward as part of their investigations.

Meanwhile, Carelse has been suspended from his coaching position at Water Polo Queensland.

"This is now a matter for Queensland police and part of an ongoing investigation, Water Polo Queensland said.

“There is nothing to indicate that any child associated with WPQ has been harmed. WPQ would like to reassure all of our members that the safety and welfare of our junior members is of paramount importance and safeguarding our people remains our priority. WPQ are committed to continuing to provide the support necessary to ensure the protection and well-being of all children within our sport."

“Ganging Up | Carte Blanche | M-Net” – Gangsterism in Mitchells Plain- https://youtu.be/ti1ZtP7Z4aA

“Mitchells Plain, one of the country’s areas worst hit by murder and violence, has been rocked by a renewed spate of senseless gang killings in recent months. Innocent children and bystanders have been gunned down and drive-by shootings and point-blank assassinations have rocked the community. As we meet bereaved families to count the cost of lives lost and livelihoods destroyed, Carte Blanche asks what has become of the much-feted South African Police Services’ Anti-Gang Unit which was established to take down gangsters and protect communities. With the SANDF now also withdrawn from the Cape Flats, we go on patrol with a new private security company that’s taken it upon itself to make inroads against the gangs.”

“‘You cannot be African AND white’ – Mbuyiseni Ndlozi in explosive rant” – EFF- https://www.thesouthafrican.com/news/mbuyiseni-ndlozi-twitter-white-african/. Below are excerpts.

Ah, this is going to linger for a while. EFF Commissar Mbuyiseni Ndlozi – whose greatest hits include calling Nelson Mandela a sell-out and denouncing the Springboks’ Rugby World Cup victory – has added another hot take to the collection. On Tuesday, the controversial MP stated that ‘no white person on this continent can claim to be African’.

Between 8% – 10% of all South Africans are white citizens, with at least 80% of the population sitting in the ‘Black African’ demographic. The discourse about the imbalance of wealth between the two groups is frequently brought into the limelight by the EFF, but with the Easter holidays done and dusted, Ndlozi has decided to kick things up another level.

During a series of Tweets that rued today’s date – 6 April is when Jan van Riebeek and other Dutch settlers arrived in South Africa, back in 1652 – the 35-year-old argued that no-one can exist as an African and a white person ‘at the same time’…

“The term ‘Afrikaner’ is a land thief identity that prides itself in colonial crimes. No one can be African AND white at the same time! Seeking to be White, means Africans MUST be Black.” | Mbuyiseni Ndlozi

The EFF also went down the same lines of attack, lambasting the inequality that currently exists in South Africa. In a recently-issued statement, the party questioned SA’s allegiance to the UK and the Commonwealth, claiming that the ‘arrogance of colonialism’ continues to embolden racists to this very day. Eish, these guys haven’t held back at all…

“The 6th of April, the date when Jan van Riebeek and his fellow colonialists landed on our shores, still inflicts pain on the South African people. As a country, we still belong to a group of countries that observes loyalty to the United Kingdom under the Commonwealth – and the arrogance of racists in SA, to this day, draws its inspiration from these settlers.”

Is the EFF conditioning people for a revolution? The ANC has also been actively commemorating several of its comrades recently.

“Eff marks the 6th of April as the arrival of white-settlers who stole the land of African people”- posted on their Twitter account at https://twitter.com/EFFSouthAfrica/status/1379358692320108544?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw%7Ctwcamp%5Etweetembed%7Ctwterm%5E1379358692320108544%7Ctwgr%5E%7Ctwcon%5Es1_&ref_url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.thesouthafrican.com%2Fnews%2Fmbuyiseni-ndlozi-twitter-white-african%2F

The EFF marks the 6th of April as the day the original sin was set in motion against African people, when racist white-settler minority arrived on our shores and committed the most despicable crime against humanity.

On this day in 1652, Jan Van Riebeek and his band of criminals landed at what was known as the Cape of Good Hope, and pursued the racist and capitalist agenda of colonial conquest and subjugation of Black people in the land of their birth.

It is a day that inflicts pain in the souls of African people in the past and the present, as our very reality today is determined by that fateful arrival of a genocidal people who have no regard for the life of African people.

It is because of this very day, that a white minority has engineered a country that serves them alone. Today, because of the legacy of colonialism black people live in shacks, are servants in suburbs and are helplessly at the mercy of white people in the corporate sector and in all aspects of society.

The confidence and arrogance of racists in this country draws its inspiration from those settlers who assumed their own superiority, and the self-proclaimed sophistication of their norms, cultures, religions and values.

We are yet to escape the firm grip on African lives that was crafted during the epoch of settler colonialism.

As a country, we still belong to a Common Wealth of nations that observes loyalty to the United Kingdom, the very purpose that the so-called former liberation movement known as the South African Natives National Congress was established for.

We continue to export valuable raw materials to the West, perpetuating our own under¬development and dependency through unequal trade relations whose purpose is wealth extraction in Africa.

The most offensive concession made by a government that suffers from a severe inferiority complex is the celebration of the very murderers who stole our land through statues, street names and symbols all over this country. Racist men and women, who committed atrocities against our people are made to represent heritage, and look over African people, reaffirming that black life means nothing.

Not even in Germany are the victims of the fascist Adolf Hitler subjected to statues and songs that commemorate the Nazi's, yet in South Africa we glorify those who committed an institutional cultural and physical genocide against African people.

Our national anthem contains the hymn of conquest known as "Die Stem", which the children of Jan Van Riebeek sang while they tortured black people who dared to demand dignity and that the wealth of South Africa be controlled by the majority Black people.

The legacy of 1652 lives on and our continued landlessness is testament to that. The EFF therefore reaffirms that we will never retreat in the agenda of the return of our land as the point of departure to reclaim black dignity and reverse the social-ills that are born out of the miserable day when a curse arrived at the shores of Africa.

The removal of all statues of racists and colonialist is an agenda that must be intensified, as killers have no right to be celebrated and the notion that racists must remain at sites of significance as heritage must be rubbished with the contempt it deserves.

We call for "Die Stem" to be removed from the national anthem, and for all Africans to respect the hymn Nkosi Sikelela i'Africa. by refusing to sing "Die Stem", and sitting down at any event of significance that attempts to defile a sacred song of our liberation heroes.

As African people, we must undermined the arrogant assumption that Black life, experience, culture and being is worth nothing, as 1652 is a day upon which whiteness imposed itself on Africans on the premise that it constitutes civility and that only white people are human beings.

We must fight tirelessly for Economic Freedom and for the dignity of Black people, so as to honour those who fought gallantly in defence of the land and the humanity of Africans.

“Disrupted Land Documentary” – History and Future of South Africadated Mar 10, 2019, at https://youtu.be/qhMqc7exTus. This is a good documentary.

Disrupted Land is a documentary film about the history and future of land ownership in South Africa. The film deals with the controversial history of land in South Africa and views it is a matter that has been distorted for political gain by politicians and land reform activists. The film investigates the question of how white farmers obtained land in South Africa and exposes the extensive failure of the South African government’s land reform initiatives. Disrupted Land refutes the claim that there is a large-scale hunger for rural land among black people in South Africa. The films also point out that the situation would deteriorate if the ruling ANC and its alliance partners were to succeed with its push for expropriation of private property without compensation.

The film was produced by Forum Films, in cooperation with AfriForum

“CCP Virus Variant Affects Vaccinated People More Than Unvaccinated People: Study” [South African variant]- https://www.theepochtimes.com/ccp-virus-variant-affects-vaccinated-people-more-than-unvaccinated-people-study_3770982.html

A study from Tel Aviv University found that a South African variant of the CCP (Chinese Communist Party) virus affects people vaccinated with the Pfizer shot more than unvaccinated people.

The study, which has not yet been peer-reviewed, indicated that the B.1.351 variant of the virus—also known as the novel coronavirus—was found eight times more than individuals who were unvaccinated, or 5.4 percent against 0.7 percent. Clalit Health Services, a top Israeli health-care provider, also helped in the study.

“We found a disproportionately higher rate of the South African variant among people vaccinated with a second dose, compared to the unvaccinated group,” said Adi Stern of Tel Aviv University. “This means that the South African variant is able, to some extent, to break through the vaccine’s protection.”

The study looked at 400 people who received at least one shot of the Pfizer/BioNTech vaccine and had contracted the COVID-19 variant and compared them to the same number of people who were infected and unvaccinated. Moderna’s vaccine is also used in Israel, but it was not included in the study.

“It is the first in the world to be based on real-world data, showing that the vaccine is less effective against the South Africa variant, compared to both the original virus and the British variant,” said Professor Ran Balicer, director of research at Clalit, according to news reports.

Stern said the study’s findings came as a surprise.

“Based on patterns in the general population, we would have expected just one case of the South African variant, but we saw eight,” Stern told the Times of Israel. “Obviously, this result didn’t make me happy.” He added, “Even if the South African variant does break through the vaccine’s protection, it has not spread widely through the population.”

He continued: “These preliminary findings necessitates close continued attention to the dissemination of this strain in Israel, emphasizing the need for epidemiological monitoring and systematic sequencing, in order to contain further spread of the South African variant in Israel.”

The South African variant accounted for less than one percent of all COVID-19 cases in Israel, reported AFP, citing the study.

“This means that the Pfizer-BioNtech vaccine, though highly protective, probably does not provide the same level of protection against the South African (B.1.351) variant of the coronavirus,” the study said.

Israel, separately, has rolled out a so-called “vaccine passport” system that allows people who have been vaccinated privileges over individuals who are not vaccinated. Such systems have been criticized by civil liberties groups, saying it would be an infringement on people’s rights, including privacy, and would potentially create a two-tiered class system of vaccinated and unvaccinated people.

“Sibanye-Stillwater make R4bn investment for Marikana”- https://youtu.be/sGxs3GjQwD8

“Paving the way for healing and renewal. That’s Sibanye-Stillwater's hope for Marikana. An investment by the company of almost R4-billion will create over 4,000 additional jobs and is about to get underway.eNCA's Govan Whittles reports.”

“Sibanye-Stillwater restructures historical black economic empowerment structure” dated Apr 14, 2021, at https://www.miningreview.com/gold/sibanye-stillwater-marikana-black-empowerment/

Sibanye-Stillwater has re-structured the previously highly indebted Lonmin broad-based black economic empowerment (B-BBEE) structure in relation to Western Platinum Proprietary Limited and Eastern Platinum Limited, collectively referred to as Marikana.

The move is aimed at ensuring the sustainability of the B-BBEE shareholding in Marikana and facilitating the realisation of value to the B-BBEE shareholders.

The restructuring has been implemented to facilitate inter alia:

Subsequent to its acquisition of Lonmin in June 2019, Sibanye-Stillwater has had constructive engagements with Phembani Group Proprietary Limited (which inherited its participation in the Marikana B-BBEE structure in December 2015, as part of a larger non-related transaction) and the other Marikana BBBEE shareholders regarding the re-structuring.

• Access for the Marikana B-BBEE shareholders to distributable Marikana dividends in the short and medium term through the introduction of a 10% trickle dividend while any intercompany debt is outstanding. Thereafter, the Marikana B-BBEE shareholders will participate fully in their attributable portion of Marikana’s dividends

• The longer-term accruing of value to the Marikana B-BBEE shareholders through:

− The release of Incwala Platinum to repay the loans made to it by Western Platinum Proprietary Limited.

− The replacement of historical debt with a more affordable preference share arrangement.

• The creation of a sustainable B-BBEE financing structure for Marikana which is consistent with Sibanye-Stillwater’s transformation objectives.

Commenting on the restructuring Neal Froneman, CEO of Sibanye-Stillwater said, “We welcome the restructuring of the Marikana B-BBEE shareholder structure, which is the result of engagements with all the relevant shareholders in order to reach an agreement that is sustainable, ensures the real accruing of value to the Marikana B-BBEE shareholders and is fair to all stakeholders.

“The revised structure will allow for a sustainable capital structure for the Marikana B-BBEE shareholders, as well as immediate access to distributable cash flow and the ongoing transfer of tangible value. This re-structuring is supported by all Marikana B-BBEE shareholders.”

>>13439261

Sibanye-Stillwater History”- https://www.sibanyestillwater.com/about-us/history/

Since our founding, Sibanye-Stillwater has grown from being a South African gold mining company to an internationally competitive, globally diversified precious metals miner, producing gold and the full suite of PGMs.

We were formed in February 2013 as Sibanye Gold Limited following the unbundling by Gold Fields Limited of a South African subsidiary company which owned Kloof, Driefontein and Beatrix gold mines. Upon completion of that transaction, our common shares and American depository receipts were listed on the JSE and the New York Stock Exchange, respectively.

We subsequently pursued a strategy of organic and acquisitive growth, including acquiring the Cooke operations from Gold One International in 2013 and the Burnstone project from Wits Gold in 2014, in order to create a more sustainable gold business.

In 2016, we completed the acquisition of Aquarius Platinum Limited’s stakes in the Kroondal mine and the Platinum Mile retreatment facility, both in the Rustenburg area, South Africa and the Mimosa Joint Venture with Impala Platinum in Zimbabwe. Later in the same year, we acquired Anglo American Platinum Limited’s Rustenburg operations.

In late 2016, we made a formal US$2.2 billion offer to acquire the Stillwater Mining Company in the United States. The Stillwater transaction, which constituted the largest PGM transaction globally in over a decade, was completed in May 2017, following which we began trading as Sibanye-Stillwater.

In 2018, we concluded a US$500 million stream financing with Wheaton International, significantly strengthening our balance sheet and reducing net leverage. We also closed an agreement with DRDGOLD to establish an industry-leading surface mining tailings retreatment partnership.

In early 2019, we acquired of SFA Oxford, a leading metal market analytical consulting company and globally recognised authority on PGMs, to provide in-depth market intelligence on battery materials and precious metals for industrial, automotive and smart city technologies.

In June 2019, we acquired the entire share capital of Lonmin Plc. Lonmin’s assets include the Marikana PGM mining operations and associated retreatment, smelter, base metal refinery and precious metal refinery assets in South Africa. Completion of this acquisition in 2019 represented the culmination of our “mine to market” South African PGM strategy.

In February 2020, an internal restructuring process was concluded, changing the group holding company from Sibanye Gold Limited to Sibanye-Stillwater Limited. The Group is now trading under the tickers JSE: SSW and NYSE: SBSW.

“Daily frustration at Home Affairs”- https://youtu.be/oLF3luLtRNI

“From dawn to dusk, many South Africans experience the snaking queues at the Department of Home Affairs - all in the hope of getting through the door but many have been left frustrated after being told to go back home because the system is down. eNCA is taking a nationwide look at Home Affairs. Aviwe Mtila has the update.”

>>13447525

“Farm Murders | 4 farmers accused of the murder of 2 brothers in Mkhondo, apply for bail”- https://youtu.be/fAB8hmFaQJ8

“Daniel Malan, Cornelius Greyling, Othard Klingberg and Micheal Sternberg are back in the Piet Retief Magistrate's Court in Mkhondo, Mpumalanga. The four men are accused of the murder of Amos and Zenzele Coka at Pampoenkraal outside Mkhondo. The four are expected to apply for bail. SABC News reporter Tumelo Machogo is outside court.”

2:55 – “They are saying Black Lives Matter and also why they’re protesting.”

>>13463120

“Piet Retief [Mkhondo] 19 April 2021 & part of Cape Town”- https://youtu.be/b2oqJUqdD0k

“Enormous backlog in Gauteng’s Forensic Department ties hands of courts”- https://southafricatoday.net/south-africa-news/gauteng/enormous-backlog-in-gautengs-forensic-department-ties-hands-of-courts/

The enormous backlog with the compilation of forensic reports by the Gauteng Police Service’s Forensic Department illustrates the challenges that members of this specialist division face on a daily basis.

The response to a question by the FF Plus to the Gauteng MEC for Community Safety, Faith Mazibuko, regarding the backlog with forensic investigations indicated that on 4 March this year, the number stood at 149 391.

Mazibuko also confirmed that only 35 quantification sets had been received by the laboratory in Pretoria by 4 March 2021. These sets are used in conducting forensic investigations and preparing reports.

The lack of personnel and equipment hampers forensic technicians’ task of preparing cases for court. As a result, courts are put under pressure because forensic reports are not submitted in time. And courts have no choice but to repeatedly postpone the hearings of cases while awaiting these reports.

The backlogs in the various forensic divisions are as follows:

• Biological (comparing the victim and perpetrator’s bodily fluids and hair samples as well as doing DNA analysis) – 111 342

• Ballistic (firearm analysis) – 9 849

• Chemical (investigations relating to fires, drugs, chemically matching paint samples in car accidents etc.) – 26 679

• Scientific (investigations into forensic samples of materials, fluids, medicine, poisonous substances etc.) – 1 474

• Suspect documents (the investigation of documents, such as wills, title deeds, contracts, ID documents, hand-written documents etc.) – 44

• The identification of victims – 3

Mazibuko indicated that routine evidence is usually ready within 35 days from registration, non-routine evidence is finalised 113 days after registration and ballistic evidence after 90 days from registration.

The FF Plus is not satisfied with the report’s findings and will request Mazibuko to provide more detail to the Gauteng Legislature’s Committee on Community Safety so that the pressing problems can be addressed.

It is unfair that court proceedings are delayed and victims’ rights are violated due to a lack of personnel and equipment.

The FF Plus will ask Mazibuko once again to establish cooperation between public and private laboratories so as to catch up on the backlog.

>>13496340

>>13478682

Yet

“Cuban Engineers latest: EFF Welcomes deployment”- https://www.thesouthafrican.com/news/cuban-engineers-latest-eff-deployment/. Below are excerpts.

The EFF has welcomed the deployment of Cuban engineers who will assist in South Africa's water crisis through transfer of skills to locals.

The Economic Freedom Fighters has welcomed the arrival of 24 Cuban engineers who will assist in the water crisis in South Africa

In a statement released on Friday, 23 April, the party said that the engineers come in to bolster South Africa’s efforts of building internal capacity in areas of expertise in local engineers, as opposed to the “foolish agenda of privatising water supply and infrastructure developments.”

EFF WELCOMES CUBAN ENGINEERS DEPLOYMENT

The EFF said that the Cuban Engineers will assist with their expertise in research and security of hydraulic infrastructure, while also providing expertise on the versatile use of ground water, sea water and surface water resources.

“As the EFF, we have long called for comprehensive cooperation with Cuba on a variety of key development areas, namely, healthcare, the building of pharmaceutical capacity, the economy and education.

“Cuba remains a leading humanitarian benchmark on development that is anchored on socialism and internationalist cooperation that does not waiver under parasitic imperial pressure,” the party said.

“ZZ2 Protests: EFF blasted for threatening to ‘attack farms and burn trucks’”- https://www.thesouthafrican.com/news/eff-threaten-farm-attack-burn-trucks-zz2-limpopo/

A protest about workers' rights in Limpopo took a sinister turn on Saturday, after some EFF supporters threatened to target the farms and trucks of ZZ2.

Representatives of the EFF have been roundly lambasted for stepping over the line during their protests against fresh produce company, ZZ2. The distributor has been accused of ignoring worker’s rights, prompting the Red Berets to conduct a ‘labour desk’ visit with dozens of supporters. However, the rally soon took an outrageous turn.

EFF ‘THREATEN TO ATTACK FARMS’ IN LIMPOPO

Fired-up EFF members allegedly threatened to burn trucks and attack farms belonging to the ZZ2 group in Mopani, Limpopo. With emotions running high, things started to get out of hand on Saturday afternoon.

DA REASSURE BUSINESSES OVER ‘TRUCK BURNING’ CLAIMS

As expected, the threats have drawn widespread criticism across the political spectrum. The DA made their voices heard too, with Solly Malatsi – the party’s political head in Mopani – branding the taunts as ‘disgusting’.

In a recently published statement, Malatsi gave his support to ZZ2 and the farming communities of Limpopo, and called for heightened police surveillance at strategic points to ensure the safety of land owners and rural workers.

“The DA in Limpopo is disgusted by the EFF’s threats of violence against ZZ2, during their protest yesterday on Worker’s Day. It is opportunistic for them to threaten to burn ZZ2 trucks and attack its farms, all of which will, if executed, destroy the livelihood of thousands of farmworkers.”

“Our local farmers play a significant role in keeping the Limpopo economy running and the DA stands firmly against attempts by the EFF to undermine or attack our farming communities. We call on SAPS to closely monitor the situation and intervene immediately should party members act on any of the threats made.”

“Pravin Gordhan, Denel accused of ‘committing war crimes’ – here’s why…”- https://www.thesouthafrican.com/news/pravin-gordhan-war-crime-why-south-africa-yemen/

An investigative team of researchers claims that Denel, under the guidance of Pravin Gordhan, might have 'profited from the misery' inflicted upon Yemen.

A lot of mud has been thrown at Pravin Gordhan over the last few years. He has felt the wrath of both pro-Zuma forces with the ANC, and he remains the EFF’s most prominent nemesis. However, these latest set of accusations do not come from his political rivals – but rather, a team of investigators looking into economic crimes and the situation in Yemen.

PRAVIN GORDHAN, DENEL ACCUSED IN YEMEN REPORT

The Middle-Eastern country has been decimated by an ongoing conflict in the region, after clashing with the respective mights of Saudi Arabia and UAE. The devastation has left 80% of citizens in Yemen requiring ‘humanitarian aid’ to survive. And, according to Open Secrets, there’s might be a trail leading from this war back to South Africa.

The group says they have uncovered evidence of ‘billion-rand sales’ to both the Saudis and the Emiratis, including mortar shells and armoured combat vehicles. These weapons of war may now land Pravin Gordhan in some serious trouble, given that Denel – responsible for manufacturing the items – falls under his Public Enterprises portfolio.

THE MINISTER OF WAR CRIMES? HERE’S WHAT IS BEHIND THE PRAVIN GORDHAN ALLEGATIONS

 Both Saudi Arabia and the UAE are involved in Yemen’s humanitarian conflict.

 The report covers details about an export of war weapons from SA, to the tune of R2.81 billion, to Saudi Arabia.

 An export of war weapons worth R4.74 billion to the United Arabian Emirates has also, allegedly, been uncovered.

 Everything from mortars and artillery guns, to ammunition to armoured combat vehicles, form ‘part of the exports’.

DA DEMAND PROBE INTO POSSIBLE YEMEN INVOLVEMENT

For the DA, the report is very much a literal smoking gun that ties Pravin Gordhan AND Denel to one of the most brutal ongoing conflicts in the world. Michele Clarke, the party’s shadow minister for Public Enterprises, confirmed that the opposition would now push for a Parliamentary inquiry into any possible South African involvement:

“The DA will write to the Chairperson of the Portfolio Committee on Public Enterprises to request that Pravin Gordhan appear before Parliament to answer for the role of Rheinmetall Denel Munition (RDM) in the civil war in Yemen.”

“In a recent report by Open Secrets, titled ‘Profiting from Misery – South Africa’s war crimes in Yemen‘, it was revealed that RDM might have profited off the Yemeni humanitarian crisis by the sale of weapons to parties central in the conflict.”

“Salim Abdool Karim has a new job – but ‘WHO’ is he working for now?”- https://www.thesouthafrican.com/technology/science/who-is-salim-abdool-karim-where-is-new-job/

After stepping away from COVID duties with the South African government, Professor Salim Abdool Karim has now got the call from the WHO.

Just a month after stepping down from SA’s Ministerial Advisory Committee on COVID, Professor Salim Abdool Karim is back in the game – and going global: He’s been appointed to the World Health Organisation (WHO) Science Council.

WHAT IS PROFESSOR SALIM ABDOOL KARIM’S NEW JOB?

The Council was established earlier in April, to help guide WHO’s research. The nine-member team comprises of internationally renowned experts from around the world – and Professor Karim is proudly flying the flag for South Africa.

“I am looking forward to participating in this council providing scientific advice to WHO on future developments in health that the world needs to be better prepared for. Pandemics such as Aids and COVID-19 have highlighted the important role of science in global health.” | Professor Salim Abdool Karim

‘A VICTORY FOR SA’S HEALTH PROFESSIONALS’ – GLENDA GRAY

‘Slim’ also received some high praise from SAMRC President Glenda Gray. The two worked tirelessly together in order to get the pandemic under control in its first year of existence, and Karim’s ex-colleague has hailed his work ethic:

WHO IS SALIM ABDOOL KARIM?

Abdool Karim presided over the Ministerial Advisory Committee (MAC) on COVID-19 before he stepped down in March. The Ministerial Advisory Committee (MAC) positioned South Africa as one of the leading nations in the emergency response to the COVID-19 pandemic.

He is also a Director and Co-Founder of the Centre for the Aids Programme of Research in South Africa (CAPRISA), the former President and CEO of SAMRC, and now the Director of the HIV-TB Pathogenesis and Treatment Research Unit.

The Professor has previously been recognised for his immense scientific contributions to HIV prevention and treatment, and his COVID-19 research in South Africa and abroad. His glittering CV has now landed him a job with the biggest health organisation in the world – and one that will remain crucial for us all in the ongoing fight against coronavirus.

“Arrested armed gang member set free by mob who attacked police, CT”- https://southafricatoday.net/south-africa-news/western-cape/arrested-armed-gang-member-set-free-by-mob-who-attacked-police-ct/

On 1 May 2021, at approximately 03:30, Kensington CPU members saw a known gang member, walking with an exposed firearm in Matroos Plein, Kensington. The well-known suspect was apprehended and the firearm confiscated.

The suspect immediately started calling out for help and approximately 30 unknown members of the community came out of their homes and threatened to shoot the police members if the suspect is not released.

The community members started throwing stones at the SAPS members and the vehicles and thereby aiding and abetting the gunman to escape.

The SAPS vehicles were slightly damaged. No shots were fired and no further arrests were made.

The firearm was positively linked to a Kimberley case and was handed in at Kensington SAPS on a charge of possession of unlicensed firearm and attack on police.

Incidents of violent crimes in the area as well as attacks on police are becoming a common occurrence and that is of grave concern to the SAPS management. Community members are reminded to respect the rule of law.

“Zimbabwe's President Emmerson Mnangagwa signs controversial Constitutional Amendment Bill into law”- https://youtu.be/24igK7HDbG4

“Zimbabwe's President Emmerson Mnangagwa has signed a controversial Constitutional Amendment Bill into law. It gives effect to 27 changes to the Constitution. The law affords him unfettered powers over the Judiciary and Parliament. The Bill sailed through the Senate this week with a two-thirds majority, but not without opposition”

“DNA backlog crisis at the National Forensic Science Laboratories.”dated May 10, 2021, at https://youtu.be/YItpewp32Po

“Parliament's debate tomorrow will focus on the DNA backlog crisis at the National Forensic Science Laboratories.The Democratic Alliance requested for this, after raising the alarm about the escalating issue for years. The party says the backlog in DNA case exhibits now stands at more than 200 000”

“Vigilantism: Mob assaults 5 suspects, 2 die, Lydenburg”- https://southafricatoday.net/south-africa-news/mpumalanga/vigilantism-mob-assaults-5-suspects-2-die-lydenburg/. Below are excerpts.

Police management in Mpumalanga has strongly condemned acts of vigilantism in which five people accused of being involved in criminal activities around the area of Lydenburg were brutally assaulted and two succumbed to their injuries.

The incident happened on Tuesday, 4 May 2021 at Extension 8 in Mashishing. Reports indicate that members of the SAPS received information about a group of people who were assaulting two men at the said location. They responded and upon arrival, found two men lying on the ground, badly injured.

Emergency services personnel were notified about the incident and on arrival, one of the victims, a 31-year-old man was certified dead, while the other, a 23-year-old was taken to hospital where he later succumbed to his injuries.

It is further said that three more victims who were also assaulted by the mob were admitted in hospital where they are receiving medical care. A double murder case and assault with an intent to cause grievous bodily harm were opened.

The management of police in the province warns community members to stop taking the law into their own hands, urging people to report criminal acts to police and allow the law take its course. “Vigilantism will not be tolerated nor accepted as a way of addressing issues relating to crime, anyone found to have taken part in such acts, will be arrested and face the full might of the law”, said Major General Thulani Phahla, the Acting Provincial Commissioner of the SAPS in Mpumalanga. [Yet - >>13634943 ]

“ANC's financial woes continue”- https://youtu.be/uzTonjy_1H4

“As the ANC continues experience cash problems, analysts have raised concern, on how the governing party can it be trusted to lead the country. Political Analyst Professor Steven Friedman says it's not surprising that the ANC has become the first casualty of the Political Party Funding Act, weeks after it was introduced. This week, an audio of the ANC Treasurer General was leaked to the media, where he was telling the top six officials that the party is in deep financial problems. And Deputy Secretary-General, Jessie Duarte confirmed that the party is facing financial problems.”

“Police brutality in South Africa” - https://youtu.be/FPKtm9ghXDw

“Every year, there are numerous allegations of police brutality in South Africa, with a number of deaths and injuries attributed to law enforcement. A new investigation by an accountability journalism project - Viewfinder - says the killings and brutality are enabled by the reluctance to discipline officers accused of wrongdoing in these cases. The organisation says this impunity emboldens officers to repeat their actions, creating a never-ending vicious cycle.”

“How SAPS protects the killers within its ranks” – Part 1- https://viewfinder.org.za/how-saps-protects-the-killers-within-its-ranks/. Below are excerpts.

Every year, police in South Africa kill hundreds of people and are accused of brutalising thousands more. A new investigation by Viewfinder has revealed that the killings and brutality are enabled by police management’s reluctance to discipline officers accused of wrongdoing in these cases. This is true even when watchdog investigations conclude that these officers should be disciplined. Given free rein to re-offend, problem officers may become emboldened. For their victims, the consequences can be dire.

On 2 June 2014, 52-year-old Phindile Ramncwana lay dying at a neighbour’s house in Sada, a rural township in the former Ciskei region of the Eastern Cape. As Esther Kasam tended to him, she recoiled at the sight of blood and vomit in a five-liter container on the floor beside his bed. Ramncwana retched when he tried to eat. He complained of stabbing pains in his stomach, Kasam recalled during a recent interview.

A week later, a postmortem report revealed the extent of his injuries: abrasions and bruises all over his body, two fractured ribs, bruises to his heart and a ruptured small intestine. From this rupture, intestinal content had slowly seeped into the cavity holding Ramncwana’s abdominal organs. This caused the infection which killed him.

“This is a very, very serious case,” said Dr Steve Naidoo, one of South Africa’s leading forensic pathologists with decades of experience in conducting post mortems on people who have died in police custody, on studying the report’s findings. He added that Ramncwana’s injuries were typical of “extreme interpersonal violence” which probably comprised kicking and stomping.

In mid-2014, police management in Whittlesea knew that there was a problem of brutality within its ranks. Over the two previous years, the station had registered a slew of assault cases against its own officers. According to IPID’s data on the outcomes of these cases, SAPS management took very little action. This is not uncommon for a police station in a poor community in South Africa.

Visit Sada today and stories from those years, of a task team from Whittlesea SAPS raiding taverns and prowling the unlit streets at night to arrest and beat up the fleeing patrons, still abound. The name of the warrant officer who reportedly led such operations, and who was accused in Ramncwana’s killing, is still steeped in notoriety. Viewfinder understands, from IPID’s records on the case, that he was acquitted in a disciplinary hearing and remained on duty at Whittlesea SAPS long after Ramncwana’s death. As of June last year he enjoys early retirement, according to a check of government’s PERSAL system by a source.

The IPID Act, which came into force around two years before Ramncwana’s death, affirmed that station commanders should transfer such cases to the directorate’s relevant provincial office. In the Eastern Cape, IPID is in East London some 200 kilometers away from Whittlesea. Today, still, police commanders throughout South Africa would argue, as police minister Bheki Cele has done, that this means they must outsource the cases and wait for the outcomes of IPID’s investigation before suspending or disciplining officers.

So, officers accused in even the most serious violent crimes often remain on duty.

“The Death of Phindile Ramncwana [TRAILER]” - https://youtu.be/kHjoDeUaMio

“How SAPS protects the killers within its ranks” – Part 2- https://viewfinder.org.za/how-saps-protects-the-killers-within-its-ranks/. Below are excerpts.

IPID is a fraught and overworked institution. Viewfinder has previously revealed that the directorate has a history of “completing” poorly investigated cases to inflate performance statistics, while obstructing justice for victims of police brutality. Even when investigations are thorough, the completion of these are often delayed for months, due to massive case backlogs, a dearth in manpower, delays in technical reports and long distances to crime scenes. Interviewed about the Whittlesea cases, IPID Eastern Cape head Bongiwe Tukela lamented that she has only 12 “foot soldiers” to cover the rural vastness of the province.

In spite of these odds, some IPID cases do lead to criminal or disciplinary recommendations against accused officers. For instance, Tukela’s office recommended that police management discipline certain officers accused of assault and other crimes at Whittlesea in the years before and after Ramncwana’s alleged murder. But, the watchdog’s data show that hardly any were disciplined.

According to IPID data, four Whittlesea officers — the warrant officer, a constable and two police reservists whose identities are known to Viewfinder — had pending assault cases and disciplinary recommendations against them on the night that they were implicated in Ramncwana’s killing. People present at the station’s charge office on the night also accused two officers implicated in the Ramncwana case of separate assaults: with “fists” and an “iron rod” in one instance and with “open hands” and “police boots” in the other.

As part of an investigation which has now spanned more than two years, Viewfinder has collated and analysed IPID’s raw data on thousands of alleged killings by police and tens of thousands of other brutality complaints. Taken across more than a thousand police stations in South Africa, these data show that violence permeates police work in the country. These records also reveal that police management routinely fails to discipline officers accused of brutality.

This is often true when allegations are registered at police stations – because station commanders outsource the dossiers to IPID. Yet, it is also usually true when IPID completes its investigations and expressly recommends that police management discipline officers via departmental hearings. SAPS converts fewer than one in four IPID recommendations into disciplinary convictions, according to the watchdog’s case data.

If they were meted out properly, SAPS departmental sanctions could be effective in taking problem officers off the street. For SAPS management, the burden of proof for securing a disciplinary conviction is much lower than for a prosecutor pursuing a criminal conviction in court. So too is the likelihood of delays. Criminal proceedings against police officers can drag on for years – the National Prosecuting Authority (NPA) in the Eastern Cape is yet to decide whether to institute murder charges against the officers accused in Ramncwana’s 2014 killing.

The ultimate power of police management over these internal disciplinary processes explodes the notion that IPID is able to provide external or “independent” police oversight in South Africa – the purpose for which it exists. And, the reluctance of police management to properly enforce disciplinary recommendations leaves IPID’s officials in the provinces cynical and demoralised. Police officers, like those accused of terrorising Sada’s residents and murdering Ramncwana, are often left unpunished.

“Alleged repeat offenders at Whittlesea SAPS, Eastern Cape” - https://youtu.be/BtVRoiK7_QI

“How SAPS protects the killers within its ranks” – Part 3- https://viewfinder.org.za/how-saps-protects-the-killers-within-its-ranks/. Below are excerpts.

Police management’s failure to discipline officers for killing people is most frequent where it is probably needed most, IPID data shows. Between early 2012 and early 2020, police in KwaZulu-Natal killed 1,057 people in 849 separate incidents — more than in any other province, in absolute numbers and per capita.

Between early 2012 and early 2020, case data show that KwaZulu-Natal police management only convicted nine officers following IPID investigations into these killings. This meant that police in the province had the country’s lowest rate for converting IPID negative recommendations against officers accused of misconduct in such killings into disciplinary convictions.

Across all provinces and all classes of crimes that IPID investigates, the data shows that the problem of SAPS failing to discipline officers with recommendations against them has got worse in recent years.

Police management have ample opportunity to scupper IPID disciplinary recommendations to protect their colleagues.

“They stand with their members, always. They don’t believe that police officers can do any wrong,” said one former senior IPID official, quoted on condition of anonymity.

Police officers in charge of enforcing discipline may exploit a confluence of loopholes and ambiguity in law and SAPS’s discipline regulations to nullify IPID recommendations.

Sometimes, says Thabo Leholo, the long-serving head of IPID in the Western Cape, police refuse to discipline an officer because an alleged offense happened “a long time ago”. Viewfinder understands that such an excuse may be rooted in SAPS’s interpretation of a regulatory clause which prescribes an “expeditious process” for serious allegations of misconduct such as murder, serious assault and rape.

Viewfinder has seen a sample of disciplinary outcome reports by SAPS in the Western Cape which showed that the “time delay” between an alleged offence and a disciplinary hearing was cited by SAPS as the reason for an acquittal.

In other instances, throughout South Africa, police management interpret their legal obligation to “initiate” IPID recommendations as cause to appoint their own investigator to reinvestigate an IPID case from scratch. At best this is duplication. At worst, according to an IPID source, these SAPS disciplinary investigators spook witnesses into silence, retraumitise victims and deliberately throw doubt on the findings of the original investigation.

“How SAPS protects the killers within its ranks” – Part 4- https://viewfinder.org.za/how-saps-protects-the-killers-within-its-ranks/. Below are excerpts.

As far back as 2014, the directorate’s compliance monitoring head Mariaan Geerdts complained to Parliament that this custom “defeated the entire exercise” for which IPID exists.

The loophole was not closed. Instead, it was re-entrenched by SAPS’s new discipline regulations published in 2016. Today, still, the police watchdog can do very little if these internal police investigations whitewash the case against an accused officer. In such instances, exculpatory findings by a police disciplinary investigator — or an ad hoc decision by police management not to initiate disciplinary proceedings — will supersede the findings of probable wrongdoing by an “independent” watchdog investigation.

“If I’m the commander and my member that I want, that I’m buddy-buddy with, has done something, I’m not going to take steps against him. I’m going to do everything to stop steps from being taken,” said one current IPID official, quoted on condition of anonymity.

In instances where disciplinary hearings actually proceed, police officers deputised as “employer representatives” are tasked with leading evidence. If they are listless or selective in this task, this invariably results in the acquittal of their accused colleague. In such instances, the IPID investigators who originally gathered the evidence can do nothing if their case is misconstrued by incompetence or design. Often these investigators do not even know of the hearing’s date and outcome until after the fact. Police management are not obliged to invite IPID investigators or independent observers to ensure the integrity of such hearings. These happen behind closed doors.

In these hearings the accused person, SAPS’s representative (tasked with leading evidence against the accused), and the chairperson (who must decide on guilt or innocence and hand down a sanction) are all police officers.

“It’s so demoralising,” said Leholo, reflecting on the lack of transparency in SAPS disciplinary hearings and outcomes.

“IPID investigators put a lot of effort into these investigations. And, you’ve got a strong or prima facie case against the (police) member. And there is no justification for the brutalisation of the victim. Then you find out down the line a matter is thrown out on the basis of technicality – a technicality, I emphasise, that does not exist … I do not think it is fair to the victims.”

IPID has confirmed that one of the officers accused of misconduct in the killing of Phindile Ramncwana was convicted in a hearing. He was suspended for two months without pay, but kept his job. He is still on duty at Whittlesea police station today, according to a check of the government’s PERSAL system by a Viewfinder source.

Research by the Dullah Omar Institute has found that the reluctance of police management to enforce IPID recommendations occurs against a backdrop of a slow decline in SAPS management’s ability to enforce discipline. Even though there has been no significant decline in the number of killings and alleged brutality reported to IPID in recent years, SAPS Annual Reports statistics show that there has been a marked decline in the number of officers brought before disciplinary hearings and convicted (across all categories of alleged misconduct, not just ones related to the use of force).

For an officer fairly accused of once-off assault, management’s increasing apathy towards discipline amounts to a big let-off. For vigilantes, sadists or repeat offenders, it gives virtual free rein. They may commit and recommit abuses in the knowledge that they will probably never be fired by their employers. As repeat offenders go unchecked, the severity of their crimes often escalates, concludes Leholo.

>>13650966

>Research by the Dullah Omar Institute

“Fact Sheet 9: Failing to discipline in SAPS”- https://acjr.org.za/resource-centre/fact-sheet-9-failing-to-discipline-v-3.pdf/view

“Recent media reports showed again how police officials grossly misused their power and, against departmental prescripts, used a 'sjambok' to assault a man for apparently not wearing a mask. Such reports are not isolated and have a very direct impact on trust in the police and thus the legitimacy of the police. The core of the problem seems to be twofold (1) that SAPS managers are not enforcing the internal disciplinary code, and (2) the National Prosecuting Authority (NPA) very rarely prosecutes police officials, especially for human rights violations. We have updated ACJR Fact sheet 9 (originally published in February 2019) with statistics for the past two financial years and it appears that the situation has worsened. This does not bode well for general trust in the state and specifically in the police. There is little sense in tough talk about law enforcement when the police themselves are not being held accountable and increasingly regarded as hostile to the general public.”

The pdf can be viewed in the attachment or at https://acjr.org.za/resource-centre/fact-sheet-9-failing-to-discipline-v-3.pdf/@@download/file/Fact%20sheet%209%20Failing%20to%20discipline%20v%204%20updated%2026%20Jan%202021.pdf

“Home Invasion Latest: Armed robbers pose as SAPS ‘organised crime’”- https://www.thesouthafrican.com/news/home-invasion-latest-armed-robbers-pose-as-saps-organised-crime/

'A white VW Polo Sedan with NDM registration entered…stating that they were from SAPS Organised Crime' - ALS Paramedics on home invasion.

In a new home invasion modus operandi, a gang of armed robbers impersonating members of the SAPS Organised Crime Unit, forced their way into the home of a Phoenix family and robbed them at gunpoint.

The gang told the family that they had a search warrant to check for “narcotics”, before holding them up at gunpoint on Wednesday night.

Advanced Life Support Paramedics spokesperson Garrith Jamieson said that the gang had arrived at the house and ‘informed’ the home owners that they had a search warrant for the property.

“KZN Vip Response and Medical Teams are standing off at a house robbery in the Clayfield Area, Phoenix where a white VW Polo Sedan with NDM registration entered the home stating that they were from SAPS Organised Crime,” Jamieson said.

“The suspects informed the home owners that they have a warrant to search the premises for narcotics,” he said.

Jamieson said that the home invasion suspects, who were all armed with firearms, then held up the family and robbed them. He said the robbers fled with cash, jewellery and the digital video recorder for their home security camera.

“No injuries were reported by KZN VIP Medics. All emergency services are on scene,” he said.

Jamieson said the family had been left highly traumatised by the incident. The SAPS is investigating the matter.

“SSA used by politically connected: Dintwe” - https://youtu.be/_zkVAwws5Jc

“Looting at intelligence agencies flourished while politicians failed their oversight role” – State Capture Part 1dated 13 May 2021 at https://www.dailymaverick.co.za/article/2021-05-13-looting-at-intelligence-agencies-flourished-while-politicians-failed-their-oversight-role/

Members of intelligence agencies must have felt invincible. Operatives looted cash meant for covert operations and thwarted investigations by over-classifying documents. Politicians knew what was happening but appeared more concerned with targeting the intelligence watchdog than improving accountability.

One of the most startling aspects of Inspector-General for Intelligence Dr Setlhomamaru Dintwe’s testimony at the Zondo Commission is that for some MPs, the revelations wouldn’t have been startling at all.

Dintwe, who testified on Wednesday, has been in the job for four years and repeatedly informed Parliament’s 11-member Joint Standing Committee on Intelligence (JSCI) that members of the State Security Agency (SSA) and Crime Intelligence were brazenly stealing cash designated for covert operations. They either kept it for themselves, used it to fund factions of the ANC and even funded parallel intelligence operations.

Legitimate intelligence services require cash. Agents use it for covert ops to pay sources and for services that require a level of secrecy. SSA and Crime Intelligence members abused that system because, well, they knew they could get away with it.

Zondo has already heard evidence about how hundreds of millions of rands were allegedly siphoned from the SSA to fund projects to benefit former president Jacob Zuma.

“What I can confirm is that money has been stolen, and we’re talking lots and lots of money, taken with suitcases, others being lost, and people never really held accountable for that money,” Dintwe told Zondo on Wednesday.

He described a common scenario. Senior officials who are not active in operations, a chief financial officer, for example, would send a junior agent, “the runner”, who can access funds for sources, to collect large amounts of cash.

The CFO would instruct the agent to claim that the money is for a source and then hand it over to his boss, without ever knowing if there was a source or what happened to the cash. In his example, Dintwe said both the runner and CFO knew their actions were corrupt.

“Our findings are this money has been used for other things that in fact could affect our national security adversely,” said Dintwe.

While much of the testimony related to intelligence agencies has focused on funds siphoned off to support Zuma’s faction of the ANC, Dintwe said the loot was used to fund various factions of the ANC and fuel political tensions.

“So, it’s like different people may have taken moneys to finance different factions?” asked Deputy Chief Justice Raymond Zondo.

“That is correct, chairperson.”

One SSA member, a protector for a political principal, claimed R9-million for international travel over three years while evidence showed the principal never travelled to the claimed destinations. In another transaction, an agent took €200,000 in cash to pay a source. The supposed source would sign to say they’d received the payment, but that signature served as the only accounting of how the money was used.

“There is just a signature, no letterhead, no nothing and we are talking huge amounts of money,” said Dintwe.

“Looting at intelligence agencies flourished while politicians failed their oversight role” – State Capture Part 2dated 13 May 2021 at https://www.dailymaverick.co.za/article/2021-05-13-looting-at-intelligence-agencies-flourished-while-politicians-failed-their-oversight-role/

The Office of the Inspector-General for Intelligence can investigate allegations of corruption and impropriety at intelligence agencies while the Independent Police Investigative Directorate (Ipid) and Hawks investigate criminal cases for prosecution. In theory, that is.

In practice, the intelligence community has employed rather effective strategies to ensure members are never held accountable for their grand-scale theft. First, they refuse to cooperate with Ipid and the Hawks, claiming the Inspector-General for Intelligence has exclusive jurisdiction to investigate their agencies.

Dintwe’s office makes recommendations and doesn’t launch criminal cases. He described the claim from SSA and Crime Intelligence leaders that his office has exclusive jurisdiction as an “absurdity”, one they employ because they know his office is weak and his recommendations can be ignored.

Then, they refuse to give investigators evidence, claiming the information is classified.

“Members of my office and I have been allowed only restricted or managed access to information from the director generals and other heads of services, evidenced by the protracted delays and lack of response to our numerous requests for information,” Dintwe said in his statement to the Zondo Commission.

He described it as a “constructive refusal”, where intelligence officials over-classify information to stifle investigations. For example, a senior manager was facing prosecution for using the cash funds, meant for secret ops, to pay the shortfall on the trade-in of his private vehicle. The prosecution was interrupted because the relevant documents were deemed confidential.

“It is not intelligence at all. It is purely criminality and theft of state funds,” said Dintwe.

Intelligence agencies’ cash funds are not audited. Dintwe’s office was in discussion with the late auditor-general Kimi Makwetu on collaborating to audit the secret funds, but the inspector-general said his office neither had the mandate nor the skills to conduct such an audit.

Evidence leader Paul Pretorius SC asked, “So, that very category of funds that you have investigated and shown to be the source of much corruption and blatant looting and theft, as you’ve put it, is concealed from the Auditor General, is that right?”

“That is correct, chairperson,” said Dintwe.

The issue of auditing the funds came up at the JSCI. Intelligence agency heads had reviewed how other countries handle the challenge of auditing secret spy funds and, according to Dintwe, told the committee it had found an appropriate model.

They suggested following the example of an African country where the auditor general played no role in such audits. The country they wanted to follow was ranked last in Africa on Transparency International’s corruption perception index, said Dintwe.

“I think this led to a lot of malfeasance because the services had the audacity to tell us oversight bodies and a parliamentary committee how they should be audited how they should be held accountable,” he added.

Dintwe said the JSCI failed to perform its oversight role. The JSCI has been silent while Zondo has heard evidence that intelligence agencies were looted to enrich their members and fund ANC factions. The committee has doubled down on its unfounded claims that its activities must remain secret, even while Dintwe faced an onslaught of opposition from multiple Cabinet members for trying to do his job.

The testimony at the Zondo Commission on the wide-scale looting of intelligence agencies has been explosive, but, if called to testify, JSCI members cannot claim ignorance, said Dintwe. He repeatedly told them what was going on and they failed to act.

Dintwe, whose term comes to an end in 2022, said he believed his office has failed on its mandate. He admitted he could have pushed more, perhaps gone to court more frequently to demand access to confidential documents and had struggled to improve accountability over intelligence agencies.

While Dintwe has certainly made more inroads than his predecessor, the late advocate Faith Radebe, Zondo said appreciated the Inspector-General’s willingness to take responsibility.

“I’ll be out of this office on 15 March 2022 but I’ll be the happiest man if my successor will reap the rewards, if there are any, in terms of strengthening this oversight mechanism, which is very crucial to the intelligence space,” said Dintwe.

“Police firearms registry a chaotic unorganised catastrophe – 250K outstanding applications”- https://southafricatoday.net/south-africa-news/police-firearms-registry-a-chaotic-unorganised-catastrophe-250k-outstanding-applications/

The chaotic and disorderly state of the police’s central firearms registry demonstrates why the progress with applications for firearm licences and competency certificates is so slow and has basically ground to a halt. The police service itself has indicated that the backlog with applications for firearm licences currently stands at 250 000.

The application forms for firearm licences and certificates are not properly filed – as is evident in the photos – they are piled up in heaps spread over offices, among personnel and even in corridors.

There does not seem to be enough space to keep the large number of forms and there is no sign of any functional filing system either. Should an individual lodge a query about his / her documentation, it would be a tedious, if not impossible, task to locate the forms in question.

The problem is exacerbated by the facility as well. It is unsafe and inadequate. There is a lack of proper maintenance and there seems to be a structural problem with the building as the walls are cracking, which poses a serious safety risk. Truth be told, the building should be evacuated.

The structure was probably not designed to carry the weight of the large quantity of documents. And on top of that, there is a rat infestation in the offices.

“When the new firearms legislation was implemented, I warned that the legislation would place a heavy administrative burden on the police service that it will not be able to handle. So, this problem has been a long time coming. The police itself has admitted that some of the applications are more than two years late.

Initially, the goal was to finalise an application within 90 days. When the Covid-19 pandemic arrived on the scene, it was extended to 120 days. But even with the extension, the goal is obviously unattainable.

The FF Plus is of the opinion that the current legislation must be amended. At present, there is too much administrative red tape related to firearm licensing. Firearms should be licensed only once and there is no need to renew the said licence every five years. The same applies to competency certificates.

In addition, a proper electronic system must be implemented – much like the one used by the revenue service – to facilitate fast and efficient processing and to allow personnel to continue working, even from home. At the moment, management is poor and a lack of personnel only exacerbates the problem.

Another solution would be to privatise the entire system. In 2010, the then Minister of Police, Nathi Mthethwa, established a task team to investigate the problems with the licensing process. Recommendations were made, but no action was taken.

In March this year, the deputy Minister of Police, Cassel Mathale, paid another visit to the central firearms registry and pointed out serious shortcomings with the current Polvin system, which result in information being stored incorrectly.

The matter calls for urgent attention. The police service is letting all firearm owners and traders down seeing as an essential service that must be provided to the public is currently not being provided.

““We Know Our Lives are in Danger” Environment of Fear in South Africa’s Mining-Affected Communities” – Part 1dated 16 April 2019 at https://www.hrw.org/report/2019/04/16/we-know-our-lives-are-danger/environment-fear-south-africas-mining-affected

I know I am on the hit list.… If I am dying for the truth, then I am dying for a good cause. I am not turning back.

— Nonhle Mbuthuma, community member and spokesperson of the Amadiba Crisis Committee, Cape Town, February 2018

In March 2016, activist Sikhosiphi “Bazooka” Rhadebe was killed at his home after receiving anonymous death threats. Bazooka was the chairperson of the Amadiba Crisis Committee, a community-based organization formed in 2007 to oppose mining activity in Xolobeni, Eastern Cape province. Members of his community had been raising concerns that the titanium mine that Australian company Mineral Commodities Ltd proposed to develop on South Africa’s Wild Coast would displace the community and destroy their environment, traditions, and livelihoods. More than three years later, the police have not identified any suspects in his killing.

Nonhle Mbuthuma, another Xolobeni community leader and spokesperson of the Amadiba Crisis Committee, has also faced harassment and death threats from unidentified individuals. Nonhle recalled talking to Bazooka the day before he was killed. He told her he had seen a hit list that included three people — Nonhle, Bazooka, and another person from the Amadiba Crisis Committee — making rounds in the community. Nonhle fled her home and went into hiding in the days following Bazooka’s death.

Other mining areas in South Africa, including Limpopo, KwaZulu-Natal, and Northwest provinces have had experiences similar to that of Xolobeni. While Bazooka’s murder and the threats against Nonhle have received domestic and international attention, many attacks on activists have gone unreported or unnoticed both within and outside the country.

People living in communities affected by mining activities across South Africa are exercising their human rights to freedom of expression and peaceful assembly to advocate for the government and companies to respect and protect community members’ rights from the potentially serious environmental, social, and health-related harms of mining. In many cases, such activism has been met with harassment, intimidation, or violence.

This report documents threats, attacks, and other forms of intimidation against activists in mining-affected communities in KwaZulu-Natal, Limpopo, Northwest, and Eastern Cape provinces, and in domestic nongovernmental organizations challenging mining projects, between 2013 and 2018. Between January and November 2018, two South African nongovernmental organizations working on environmental justice issues, the Centre for Environmental Rights and groundWork, and two international nongovernmental organizations, Human Rights Watch and Earthjustice, conducted over 100 in-person and telephone interviews with activists, community leaders, environmentalists, lawyers representing activists, and police and other government officials.

““We Know Our Lives are in Danger” Environment of Fear in South Africa’s Mining-Affected Communities” – Part 2dated 16 April 2019 at https://www.hrw.org/report/2019/04/16/we-know-our-lives-are-danger/environment-fear-south-africas-mining-affected

Killings, Attacks, Threats, and Harassment in Mining-Affected Communities

Some of the activists in mining-affected communities have experienced threats, physical attacks, and/or damage to their property that they believe is a consequence of their activism, while others have received threatening phone calls from unidentified numbers. Women play a leading role in voicing these concerns, making them potential targets for harassment and attacks.

The origin of these attacks or threats are often unknown. So are the perpetrators, but activists believe they may have been facilitated by police, government officials, private security providers, or others apparently acting on behalf of mining companies. Threats and intimidation by other community members against activists often stem from a belief that activists are preventing or undermining an economically-beneficial mining project. In some cases, government officials or representatives of companies deliberately drive and exploit these community divisions, seeking to isolate and stigmatize those opposing the mine.

Community members often do not report the threats or attacks to the police because they fear retaliation from the person making the threat or believe the police would not take their allegations seriously. When police are informed of attacks or threats, they sometimes fail to conduct timely or adequate investigations into the incidents. In many cases, it remains unclear whether the police have even investigated the incidents. Although some of the attacks and threats documented in this report may not be related to community activism against mines, the lack of reporting by community members or failure of police to investigate adequately makes it impossible to determine the cause.

Extra-Legal Restrictions on Protest in Mining-Affected Communities

When community members seek to protest against mines, local municipalities often create obstacles that have no basis in law. For example, municipal officials have given community members the false impression that all protests need to be “approved,” even though South African law does not have such a requirement and the prevention or prohibition of gatherings is permitted only under very limited and exceptional circumstances.

Municipalities also often unnecessarily require community members to provide documentation of prior engagement with the mining company or to notify the mining company about their plans. In other cases, companies themselves have requested that communities notify companies of their planned protest, wrongfully claiming that this is a requirement under the law.

Police Crackdown on Protest

There is a pattern of police misconduct during peaceful protests in mining-affected communities, including violently stopping protests or unjustified and arbitrary arrests and detentions of protesters.

South African police, using teargas and rubber bullets to disperse protests, have injured peaceful protesters. Police have also arrested community members during protests or other gatherings related to mines, justifying such arrests on grounds of “public violence” or “malicious damage to property,” and have later released the protestors and dropped the charges. In some cases, police have not investigated these incidents or have delayed investigations.

The fear of being jailed, injured, or even killed every time they participate in a protest deters some activists and community members from protesting. “I was not far away from the guy who was shot. Since then, I am afraid to go to marches,” an activist from Limpopo said.

““We Know Our Lives are in Danger” Environment of Fear in South Africa’s Mining-Affected Communities” – Part 3dated 16 April 2019 at https://www.hrw.org/report/2019/04/16/we-know-our-lives-are-danger/environment-fear-south-africas-mining-affected. Below are a few more excerpts but there is much more in the article.

Use of Courts and Social Media Campaigns by Non-State Actors to Harass Activists

South African courts have served as an important venue for some mining companies to silence opposition to mining projects. Some mining companies have tried to intimidate activists through the court system by asking for cost penalties, using court interdicts to prevent protests, and in at least one case, filing strategic litigation against public participation (SLAPP) suits against nongovernmental groups. SLAPP suits seek to censor, intimidate, and silence critics by stifling them with the cost and burden of mounting a legal defence until they abandon their criticism or opposition. Nongovernmental organizations often commit scarce resources to defend themselves in court. One company has also used social media campaigns to harass activists and organizations who are challenging them. SLAPP suits and harassing social media campaigns can take an emotional toll on the activists, and impose a personal, financial, and reputational cost on mining opponents.

Environment of Fear

The threats to personal security of community rights defenders and environmental groups, restrictive interpretation of protest laws, police violence, and harassment through SLAPP suits or social media campaigns have contributed to an environment of fear in some mining-affected communities and environmental NGOs. These tactics have deterred some people from activism against mining; others have toned down or limited their opposition.

South Africa’s Obligation to Protect the Rights of Mining-Affected Communities

International and South African law requires South Africa to guarantee the rights of all people to life, security, freedoms of opinion, expression, association, and peaceful assembly, and the rights to health and a healthy environment. The attacks, threats, and obstacles to peaceful protest described in this report prevent many community activists in South Africa from exercising these rights to oppose or raise concerns about mines, in violation of South Africa’s obligations.

>>13480647

>>13480654

>>13480672

>>13480690

“Dinsdag, 25 Mei 2021. Geld uit chaos. Wie sit agter dit alles?” – Atha Africa Connection in Piet Retief/Mkhondo incident- https://youtu.be/c8uWcJWNOZk

Below is the English translation.

2:51 – “I actually want to talk about if the police had done a deeper investigation into the Piet Retief incident, by the Dirkiesdorp incident, and possibly looked into cause behind the protest of the groups on the farmer’s property in Pampoenkraal. We hear/read of the shocking facts that a union mining company was responsible for the incitement of the masses which led to the death of 2 people and the arrest of 5 farmers. Police went in blindly which tells us that the police did no investigation, did not determine the true motive behind it and simply accepted because it suits the scenario that the farmers are guilty and whatever goes with it. The story states that this group, Atha Africa, want to operate this mine in a conservation and the people who are preventing them doing this, are the conservation groups and the farmers. It is interesting again, just like the Gupta situation where senior ANC members are involved, we find that Atha Africa mining group which is owned by Indians has also been supported by senior ANC members. During a meeting, the chairperson of the union's mine group warned the farmers if they don’t relent and if they do not work together, then the Zimbabwe scenario is the only option… Behind it all is money, money out of chaos.”

Atha Africa is also mentioned in the article, https://www.hrw.org/report/2019/04/16/we-know-our-lives-are-danger/environment-fear-south-africas-mining-affected, >>13757588, >>13757593, >>13757596

Social Media Attacks

Some mining companies and their supporters are also using social media to threaten and attack activists and organizations opposing mines. For example, Praveer Tripathi, the senior-vice president of Atha Africa Ventures has attacked, on Twitter, the Centre for Environmental Rights and its attorneys, as well as its client NGOs, for their role in a court challenge to the water use license and environmental authorization of Atha’s Yzermyn underground coal mine in Mpumalanga province. In a June 29, 2018, tweet, Tripathi (who tweets as @praveer65) said, “If these treasonous NGO’s have any self respect left, they must apologize to the Nation for their treacherous and anti national actions. Love that the community will ask Parliament for an investigation into their anti national activities. The evidence is overwhelmingly strong.” On September 6, 2018, he tweeted, “For Heavens sake, could the professional liars of Centre of Environmental Rights and their liar in chief @melissafourie explain to the @Moneyweb and people how Limpopo river would be polluted? Abominably shocking untruths from development destroyers! Shame.”

Despite this promise, on October 15, 2018, Tripathi tweeted: “Blatant blackmail by the foreign funded anti development anti people Centre for Environmental Rights to the MP’s threatening legal action to stop development in SA. This Civil Society is a danger to the society and not so civil.”

“South Africa Plumits Further Into Violence”- https://youtu.be/6X8gu5I4Jbs

“Brutal crimes in front of police officers who simply drive away”

“In 2012 Dr. Stanton, President of the Genocide Watch, gave this message to people in South Africa.”- https://youtu.be/wXcTz_-Ify4

“Dr Stanton's message is even more relevant today than it was back then.”

“From “Event 201” to “Cyber Polygon”: The WEF’s Simulation of a Coming “Cyber Pandemic”” – Part 1dated February 5, 2021, at https://unlimitedhangout.com/2021/02/investigative-reports/from-event-201-to-cyber-polygon-the-wefs-simulation-of-a-coming-cyber-pandemic/

Last year, the World Economic Forum teamed up with the Russian government and global banks to run a high-profile cyberattack simulation that targeted the financial industry, an actual event that would pave the way for a “reset” of the global economy. The simulation, named Cyber Polygon, may have been more than a typical planning exercise and bears similarities to the WEF-sponsored pandemic simulation Event 201 that briefly preceded the COVID-19 crisis.

On Wednesday, the World Economic Forum (WEF), along with Russia’s Sberbank and its cybersecurity subsidiary BI.ZONE announced that a new global cyberattack simulation would take place this coming July to instruct participants in “developing secure ecosystems” by simulating a supply-chain cyberattack similar to the recent SolarWinds hack that would “assess the cyber resilience” of the exercise’s participants. On the newly updated event website, the simulation, called Cyber Polygon 2021, ominously warns that, given the digitalization trends largely spurred by the COVID-19 crisis, “a single vulnerable link is enough to bring down the entire system, just like the domino effect,” adding that “a secure approach to digital development today will determine the future of humanity for decades to come.”

The exercise comes several months after the WEF, the “international organization for public-private cooperation” that counts the world’s richest elite among its members, formally announced its movement for a Great Reset, which would involve the coordinated transition to a Fourth Industrial Revolution global economy in which human workers become increasingly irrelevant. This revolution, including its biggest proponent, WEF founder Klaus Schwab, has previously presented a major problem for WEF members and member organizations in terms of what will happen to the masses of people left unemployed by the increasing automation and digitalization in the workplace.

New economic systems that are digitally based and either partnered with or run by central banks are a key part of the WEF’s Great Reset, and such systems would be part of the answer to controlling the masses of the recently unemployed. As others have noted, these digital monopolies, not just financial services, would allow those who control them to “turn off” a person’s money and access to services if that individual does not comply with certain laws, mandates and regulations.

The WEF has been actively promoting and creating such systems and has most recently taken to calling its preferred model “stakeholder capitalism.” Though advertised as a more “inclusive” form of capitalism, stakeholder capitalism would essentially fuse the public and private sectors, creating a system much more like Mussolini’s corporatist style of fascism than anything else.

Yet, to usher in this new and radically different system, the current corrupt system must somehow collapse in its entirety, and its replacement must be successfully marketed to the masses as somehow better than its predecessor. When the world’s most powerful people, such as members of the WEF, desire to make radical changes, crises conveniently emerge—whether a war, a plague, or economic collapse—that enable a “reset” of the system, which is frequently accompanied by a massive upward transfer of wealth.

In recent decades, such events have often been preceded by simulations that come thick and fast before the very event they were meant to “prevent” takes place. Recent examples include the 2020 US election and COVID-19. One of these, Event 201, was cohosted by the World Economic Forum in October 2019 and simulated a novel coronavirus pandemic that spreads around the world and causes major disruptions to the global economy—just a few weeks before the first case of COVID-19 appeared. Cyber Polygon 2021 is merely the latest such simulation, cosponsored by the World Economic Forum. The forum’s current agenda and its past track record of hosting prophetic simulations demands that the exercise be scrutinized.

“From “Event 201” to “Cyber Polygon”: The WEF’s Simulation of a Coming “Cyber Pandemic”” – Part 2dated February 5, 2021, at https://unlimitedhangout.com/2021/02/investigative-reports/from-event-201-to-cyber-polygon-the-wefs-simulation-of-a-coming-cyber-pandemic/

Though Cyber Polygon 2021 is months off, it was preceded by Cyber Polygon 2020, a similar WEF-sponsored simulation that took place last July in which speakers warned of a coming deadly “pandemic” of cyberattacks that would largely target two economic sectors, healthcare and finance. Cyber Polygon 2020 was officially described as “international online training for raising global cyber resilience” and involved many of the world’s biggest tech companies and international authorities, from IBM to INTERPOL. There were also many surprising participants at the event, some of whom have been traditionally seen as opposed to Western imperial interests. For example, the person chosen to open the Cyber Polygon event was the prime minister of the Russian Federation, Mikhail Mishustin, and its main host, BI.ZONE, was a subsidiary of the Russian-government-controlled Sberbank. This suggests that the overused “Russian hacker” narrative may be coming to an end or will soon be switched out for another boogeyman more suitable in light of current political realities.

Aside from Mishustin, WEF executive director Klaus Schwab and former UK prime minister Tony Blair participated in the Cyber Polygon 2020 event, which is due to be repeated annually and bears many similarities to 2019’s Event 201. Rather than preparing for a potential medical pandemic, Cyber Polygon 2020 focused on preparing for a “cyberpandemic,” one that mainstream media outlets like the New Yorker claim is “already underway.” Given the WEF’s recent simulations, powerful billionaire business owners and bankers appear to be poised to use both physical and digital pandemics to reform our societies according to their own design and for their own benefit.

The Architects of Cyber Polygon

According to Russian cybersecurity firm BI.ZONE, 120 organizations spread over twenty-nine countries took part in the two scenarios that were simulated at Cyber Polygon 2020, with as many as five million people allegedly having watched the livestream in over fifty-seven countries. Like many events that took place in 2020, the Cyber Polygon simulations were conducted online due to COVID-19 restrictions. Together with the World Economic Forum, BI.ZONE, a subsidiary of Sberbank, manages the Cyber Polygon project. Sberbank’s largest shareholder, as of last year, is the Russian government, and it is thus often described by English-language media outlets as a state-controlled bank.

The 2020 event was launched with an address from the prime minister of the Russian Federation Mishustin, who has a history of courting Western tech companies prior to entering politics. In 1989, Mishustin graduated from Moscow State Technological University (generally known as Stankin) with a qualification in systems engineering. During the 1990s, he worked at the International Computer Club, a nonprofit organization with the goal of “attracting Western advanced information technologies” to Russia. Between 1996 and 1998, Mishustin was the chairman of the board of the ICC, but the company was liquidated in 2016. Between 2010 and 2020, he served as head of the Federal Taxation Service of the Russian Federation. Even though he had never shown any previous political ambitions, on January 16, 2020, he was appointed prime minister of the Russian Federation by an executive order issued by President Putin.

During Mishustin’s welcoming remarks at the WEF’s Cyber Polygon 2020, the Russian PM warned of the need to create public policy to “strengthen the digital security of critical activities without undermining the benefits from digital transformation in critical sectors that would unnecessarily restrict the use and openness of digital technology.” The statement suggests that “unnecessary restrictions” could become seen as necessary in time.

Mishustin goes on to explain that Russia’s post-COVID economic recovery will be based on the “increasing digitalization of that economy and government,” adding that “we will drastically increase the number of available digital public services and introduce fundamentally new support measures for digital businesses.” He also stated that “Russia has developed a common national system for identification and the prevention of cyberattacks with the government agency’s information systems linked in the system.” He also addressed the Cyber Polygon audience about the international community needing to come together to prevent a “global cyberfraud pandemic.”

“From “Event 201” to “Cyber Polygon”: The WEF’s Simulation of a Coming “Cyber Pandemic”” – Part 3dated February 5, 2021, at https://unlimitedhangout.com/2021/02/investigative-reports/from-event-201-to-cyber-polygon-the-wefs-simulation-of-a-coming-cyber-pandemic/

Sberbank, the largest Russian banking institution and former Soviet savings monopoly, which was originally founded by Nicholas I, was an official host of the Cyber Polygon 2020 event alongside the World Economic Forum. As reported in the Economist in January 2021, the Russian banking giant has begun to reimagine its business in an effort to become a consumer-technology giant. Sberbank has spent around $2 billion on technology and acquisitions, including the acquisition of internet media group Rambler, which it fully acquired in 2020. As late as December 30, 2020, Sberbank acquired Doma.ai, which describes itself as “a convenient real estate management platform.” On June 15, 2020, Sberbank bought 2GIS, a map, navigator, and business directory with over 42 million monthly active users. Sberbank’s twenty-two investments, eleven as the lead investor, include some of the most used services in Russia, and its clear intention is to become a one-stop digital shop for all services. The bank also became the owner of one of the largest data-processing centers in Europe when the South Port data-processing center opened in November 2011, replacing the existing thirty-six regional data centers. Sberbank is set to be the world’s first bank to launch its own cryptocurrency, Sbercoin, and digital finance “ecosystem” this March. It notably announced the coming Sbercoin, a “stablecoin” tied to the Russian ruble, just a few weeks after the Cyber Polygon 2020 exercise.

Sberbank’s alliance with the WEF and prominence at Cyber Polygon 2020 was underscored at the event during the welcoming remarks delivered by Klaus Schwab. Schwab gave special thanks to Herman Gref, a member of the board of trustees of the World Economic Forum and Sberbank’s CEO and also issued the following dire warning:

We all know, but still pay insufficient attention to, the frightening scenario of a comprehensive cyberattack which would bring to a complete halt to the power supply, transportation, hospital services, our society as a whole. The COVID-19 crisis would be seen in this respect as a small disturbance in comparison to a major cyberattack. We have to ask ourselves, in such a situation, how could we let this happen despite the fact we had all the information about the possibility and seriousness of a risk attack. Cybercrime and global cooperation should be on the forefront of the global agenda.

Similar warnings were heard at a 2019 simulation that was also cosponsored by the World Economic Forum, Event 201. Event 201, which simulated a global pandemic just months before the COVID-19 crisis, presciently warned in its official documentation: “The next severe pandemic will not only cause great illness and loss of life but could also trigger major cascading economic and societal consequences that could contribute greatly to global impact and suffering.” In contrast to similar simulations conducted in the past, Event 201 championed a “public-private partnership” approach to combatting pandemics, with a focus on engaging “the private sector in epidemic and outbreak preparedness at the national or regional level.” The WEF is, among other things, a major evangelist for the merging of the public and private sectors globally, describing itself as the “international organization for private-public cooperation.” It is thus unsurprising that their latest disaster simulation, which focuses on cyberattacks, would promote this same agenda.

The Speakers at Cyber Polygon 2020

Aside from Schwab and Mishustin, twenty others took part in Cyber Polygon 2020, including some big names from the top echelons of the political elite. First off, Herman Gref engaged in discussion with former UK prime minister Tony Blair, who has been pushing for digital identity systems for decades. Blair straightforwardly told the CEO of Sberbank that biometric digital identity systems will “inevitably” be the tools that most governments will use to deal with future pandemics. Blair, discussing the coronavirus pandemic with Gref, advocated the harshest of lockdown measures, saying the only alternative to biometric digital identities is to “lockdown the economy.”

“From “Event 201” to “Cyber Polygon”: The WEF’s Simulation of a Coming “Cyber Pandemic”” – Part 4dated February 5, 2021, at https://unlimitedhangout.com/2021/02/investigative-reports/from-event-201-to-cyber-polygon-the-wefs-simulation-of-a-coming-cyber-pandemic/

Next, Sebastian Tolstoy, Ericsson’s general director for Eastern Europe, Central Asia, and Russia and current chairman of the Tolstoy Family Foundation in Sweden, dialogued with Alexey Kornya. Kornya is president, CEO, and chairman of the management board of Mobile TeleSystems. He previously worked for PricewaterhouseCoopers and AIG-Brunswick Capital Management at North-West Telecom. Tolstoy and Kornya presented a segment at Cyber Polygon 2020 entitled “Building a Secure Interconnected World: What Is the Role of the Telecom Sector?” in which they discussed the importance of digital communication and connectivity to our modern way of living.

In the next segment, Nik Gowing, BBC World News presenter between 1996 and 2014 and founder and director of Thinking the Unthinkable, spoke with Vladimir Pozner, journalist and broadcaster, on the subject of “fake news” in a conversation that was actually somewhat refreshing in its arguments and approach.

Stéphane Duguin, the CEO of the CyberPeace Institute, a Geneva-based company that describes itself as “citizens who seek peace and justice in cyberspace,” then gave a talk to the millions of viewers watching the simulation. The CyberPeace Institute, funded by Microsoft, Facebook, Mastercard, and the Hewlett Foundation, among others, claims to help their customers “increase digital resilience and the capacity to respond to and recover from cyberattacks.” The core backers of the CyberPeace Institute are also among the top backers of the Global Cyber Alliance, which unites the public sectors of the US, UK, and France with multinational corporations and intelligence-linked cybersecurity firms, employing “a coordinated approach and nontraditional collaboration” to “reduce cyber risk.”

Duguin, who is also on the advisory board of the Global Forum on Cyber Expertise, recently launched the Cyber4Healthcare initiative, a “free” cybersecurity service to healthcare providers fighting the COVID-19 pandemic. The Cyber4Healthcare initiative includes as its main partners BI.ZONE as well as Microsoft and the Global Cyber Alliance. This is yet another suspicious Microsoft-linked free cybersecurity service currently being pitched to and adopted by healthcare providers around the world at a time when warnings of a coming cyberattack on healthcare systems globally are becoming more public.

Dhanya Thakkar, senior vice president of AMEA at Trend Micro, who advertises himself online as a top ASEAN LinkedIn “cybersecurity influencer,” and Wendi Whitmore, vice president of IBM X-Force Threat Intelligence, next discussed the topic “Know Your Enemy: How Is the Crisis Changing the Cyberthreat Landscape?” IBM’s presence is notable due to the company’s longstanding relationship with the CIA, dating back to the early Cold War. The company has become so entrenched that the CIA recently recruited their chief information officer directly from IBM Federal. Before joining IBM, Whitmore held executive positions at California-based cybersecurity technology companies CrowdStrike and Mandiant, the latter acquired by FireEye in a stock and cash deal worth in excess of $1 billion. Whitmore was responsible for “professional services.” Notably, both CrowdStrike and Mandiant/FireEye are the key organizations leading the investigation into the recent SolarWinds hack, which US intelligence has blamed on a “Russian hacker” without providing any evidence. Whitmore began her career as a special agent conducting computer crime investigations with the Air Force Office of Special Investigations.

Jacqueline Kernot, the Australian “partner in cybersecurity” for Ernst and Young, and Hector Rodriguez, senior vice president and regional risk officer for Visa, next discussed how to prepare for cyberattacks. Kernot worked for over twenty-five years as a military officer for the Australian Intelligence Corps and spent two years working at IBM’s Defence|Space|Intelligence for Tivoli Software in the UK with “international responsibilities within the UK Ministry of Defence, Defence Primes, and NATO.” Ernst and Young and Visa, alongside other WEF-linked corporations such as Salesforce, are well represented on the Vatican’s exclusive Council for Inclusive Capitalism. The Council, like the WEF, calls for the reconstruction of the economic system to be more “sustainable,” “inclusive,” and “dynamic” by “harnessing the power of the private sector.”

“From “Event 201” to “Cyber Polygon”: The WEF’s Simulation of a Coming “Cyber Pandemic”” – Part 5dated February 5, 2021, at https://unlimitedhangout.com/2021/02/investigative-reports/from-event-201-to-cyber-polygon-the-wefs-simulation-of-a-coming-cyber-pandemic/

Troels Ørting Jørgensen , chairman of the advisory board of the World Economic Forum’s Centre for Cybersecurity, and Jürgen Stock, the Danish secretary general of INTERPOL, also spoke together at Cyber Polygon regarding the changes in global cybercrime over the course of the previous year. A few months after appearing at Cyber Polygon, the Danish Financial Supervisory Authority announced in an official statement that “Troels Ørting has notified the Ministry of Business Affairs that he is resigning from the Danish Financial Supervisory Authority’s board.” Citing unnamed sources, Danish financial news service FinansWatch reported that during the time between 2015 and 2018, when he was employed as head of security at Barclays bank, Ørting had been a key figure in the hunt for a whistleblower who had exposed the same criminal activity Ørting railed against at Cyber Polygon.

The man speaking alongside Ørting, Jürgen Stock, is a former German police officer, criminologist, and lawyer. He was elected for a second term as secretary general of INTERPOL in 2019, a term that generally lasts for five years. Craig Jones, the cybercrime director at INTERPOL, also joined the discussion at Cyber Polygon 2020. The New Zealander spent twenty-seven years in law enforcement and is considered an expert in cybercrime investigations. He previously held several senior-management positions in UK law enforcement, most recently at the National Crime Agency.

Petr Gorodov and John Crain were briefly interviewed at the Cyber Polygon 2020 event. Gorodov is head of the General Directorate for International Relations and Legal Assistance of the Prosecutor General’s Office of the Russian Federation and also sits on the Commission for the Control of INTERPOL’s files. He is on the Requests Chamber of INTERPOL, which examines and decides on requests for access to data as well as requests for correction and/or deletion of data processed in the INTERPOL information system. John Crain is chief security, stability, and resiliency officer at ICANN, the nonprofit internet security corporation. He is currently responsible for the management of the L-Root server, one of the internet’s thirteen root servers, making his inclusion at the simulation particularly notable. At Cyber Polygon 2020 he promoted a “long-term solution of working together in the cybersecurity community.”

The final word at Cyber Polygon 2020 was delivered by Stanislav Kuznetsov, deputy chairman of the executive board at Sberbank. He is also a board member for the Sberbank charity foundation Contribution to the Future, a project that seeks to get Russian schoolchildren from grades seven through eleven interested in AI (artificial intelligence), machine learning, and data analysis and to help them develop math and programming skills. Kuznetsov studied at the Law Institute of the Ministry of Internal Affairs of the Russian Federation.

The Main Event: Enter the Polygon

The simulation component of Cyber Polygon 2020 saw 120 teams from twenty-nine countries take part in the cybersecurity technical simulation. During the online event, participants “exercise[d] the actions of the response team in a targeted attack aimed at stealing confidential data and thus resulting in damage to the company reputation.” Two teams, the Red and the Blue, went head-to-head in the simulations where the Red Team, made up of the training organizers from BI.ZONE, simulated cyberattacks and the Blue Team members attempted to protect their segments of the training infrastructure. The actual simulation was made up of two scenarios in which the various subgroups making up the teams could gain points.

When the BI.ZONE team released the results of the simulation they intentionally avoided using the real names of the organizations so as not to “set off a competition between the participants and keep their results confidential.” However, the teams could later compare their results with the others by using a basic scoreboard, and the hosts could analyse the crucial data showing various organizational weaknesses of each of the participating teams/institutions.

“From “Event 201” to “Cyber Polygon”: The WEF’s Simulation of a Coming “Cyber Pandemic”” – Part 6dated February 5, 2021, at https://unlimitedhangout.com/2021/02/investigative-reports/from-event-201-to-cyber-polygon-the-wefs-simulation-of-a-coming-cyber-pandemic/

The final report states that the results showed that “banks and companies from the IT industry demonstrated the highest resilience. Security assessment expertise in these sectors is quite well developed, with classic forensics and threat hunting widely applied.” In lay terms, the teams from banks and the IT industry seemed to be better prepared than most other sectors for investigating and hunting down threats. However, all the teams involved proved to be less than able when it came to the initial defense from a cyberattack, with the BI.ZONE report stating that “27% of the teams had difficulties earning points for the first scenario, which allows us to conclude that some of the team members lack or have insufficient expertise in security assessment and protection of web applications.” On the subject of threat hunting, the report goes on to say that “21% of the teams could not earn a single point for the second round of the second scenario. This was attributed to ‘Threat Hunting’ being a relatively novel approach and the majority of organisations lacking experience of applying its techniques in practice.”

The Cyber Polygon 2020 event revealed the weakness in human-led defensive response and resilience as it relates cyberdefense. This outcome is convenient for hi-tech cybersecurity companies like BI.ZONE that wish to highlight the superiority of AI-driven cybersecurity products in comparison to “inefficient” human workers. Also, it should be noted that BI.ZONE’s gaining knowledge of global institutional weaknesses through cyberdefense training could be useful intelligence for their parent company, Sberbank, and in turn the largest shareholder of Sberbank, the Russian government.

Bringing Russia in from the Cold?

Although Russian Federation authorities are quite used to being out in the cold both politically and physically, there appears to be a change in the usual order of nations. Russia’s inclusion as the leader in such an important global cybersecurity initiative is a bit surprising, especially after Russia has been the scapegoat of choice for any cyberattack committed against any Western power for several years, most recently with the SolarWinds hack in the US. Yet, there was no outcry in the West over Cyber Polygon 2020, in which a company that is majority owned by the Russian government was able to gain direct knowledge of the cyberdefense weaknesses of major global institutions, banks, and corporations through their hosting of the exercise.

The complete absence of the “Russian hacker” narrative at Cyber Polygon as well as Russia’s leadership role at the event suggests either that a geopolitical shift has taken place or that the Russian hacker narrative commonly deployed by intelligence agencies in the US and Europe is mainly meant for the general public and not for the elite figures and policymakers in attendance at Cyber Polygon.

Another possibility for Russia no longer being treated as the perpetual enemy of cyberspace is that it is entirely on board with both the official coronavirus narrative and the allegedly imminent cyberpandemic. Cyber Polygon 2020 appeared, in part, to be a Russian charm offensive that was welcomed by the powerful elite. Tony Blair, who once held out the hand of false reconciliation on behalf of the international community to Colonel Gaddafi, has often been involved in these exercises of international diplomacy on behalf of the elites in the years since he left public office. His involvement in the exercise may have been meant to facilitate support among Western WEF-aligned governments for even greater Russian inclusion in the Great Reset. Part of this is due to the WEF-led effort to bring BRICS nations like China and Russia into the Great Reset fold because it is essential for their agenda’s success on a global scale. Now, Russia is pioneering this new model of supposedly national finance systems that the WEF supports through Sberbank’s creation of a digital monopoly not only of financial services but all services within the Russian Federation.

“From “Event 201” to “Cyber Polygon”: The WEF’s Simulation of a Coming “Cyber Pandemic”” – Part 7dated February 5, 2021, at https://unlimitedhangout.com/2021/02/investigative-reports/from-event-201-to-cyber-polygon-the-wefs-simulation-of-a-coming-cyber-pandemic/

Cyber Polygon 2020 was both an ad for pro-Russian relations and a promotional exercise for Klaus Schwab and the World Economic Forum’s Great Reset. Some of the people who took part and supported the Cyber Polygon event are involved at the highest levels of cyber intelligence; some may have even been unofficial representatives of their national state intelligence apparatus. The decisions of several national governments to participate directly in the WEF-led Great Reset is no “conspiracy theory.” For instance, the incoming Biden administration sent its climate envoy, John Kerry, to the WEF annual meeting last month, where Kerry underscored the US commitment to the Great Reset agenda and the associated Fourth Industrial Revolution that seeks to automate most jobs being currently performed by humans. With the governments of Russia, China, the US, the UK, Israel, Canada, and India, among others, on board with this transnational agenda, it becomes deeply unsettling that high-ranking operatives in both the public and private sectors joined the WEF to conduct a simulation of a crisis that would clearly benefit the Great Reset agenda.

As previously mentioned, the WEF cosponsored a simulation of a coronavirus pandemic just months before the actual event. Soon after the COVID-19 crisis began in earnest last March, Schwab noted that the pandemic crisis was just what was needed to launch the Great Reset as it served as a convenient catalyst to begin overhauling economies, governance, and social society on a global scale. If the destabilizing events simulated at Cyber Polygon do come to pass, it will likely be similarly welcomed by the WEF, given that a critical failure in the current global financial system would allow the introduction of new public-private “digital ecosystem” monopolies such as those being built in Russia by Sberbank.

This effort by Sberbank to both digitize and monopolize access to all services, both private and public, may be appealing to some because of its apparent convenience. However, it will also be emblematic of what we can expect from Schwab’s Great Reset—monopolies of fused public- and private-sector entities disguised by the term “stakeholder capitalism.” What the general public does not realize yet is that they themselves will not be included among these “stakeholders,” as the Great Reset has been designed by the bankers and wealthy elite for the bankers and the wealthy elite.

As for the Cyber Polygon 2020 event, the coming cyberpandemic is being prophetically thrown in our faces just as the pandemic exercise was prior to the actual disease’s appearance. Such prophetic warnings are coming not only from the WEF, however. For instance, the head of Israel’s National Cyber Directorate, Yigal Unna, warned last year that a “cyber winter” of cyberattacks “is coming and coming faster than even I suspected.” In the cyber directorate, Unna works closely with Israeli intelligence agencies, including the infamous Unit 8200, which has a long history of electronic espionage targeting the US and other countries and which has been responsible for several devastating hacks, including the Stuxnet virus that damaged Iran’s nuclear program. Israeli intelligence is also poised to be among the greatest beneficiaries of the Great Reset due to the strength of the nation’s hi-tech sector. In addition, last month saw the UAE’s central bank following Cyber Polygon’s lead by conducting its first-ever cyberattack simulation in coordination with the Emirati private-finance sector. Corporate media outlets, for their part, began this year by claiming that “cyberattacks may trigger the next crisis for banks” and, as of February 1, that “the next cyberattack is already underway.”

Some will say that a “cyberpandemic” is an inevitable consequence of the quickly developing hi-tech world in which we live, but it still fair to point out that 2021 is the year that many have been predicting for the financial destruction of big institutions that will lead to new economic systems that align with the Great Reset. The inevitable collapse of the global banking system, resulting from the off-the-charts corruption and fraud that has run rampant for decades, is likely to be conducted through a controlled collapse, one that would allow wealthy bankers and elites, such as those that participated in Cyber Polygon, to avoid responsibility for their economic pillaging and criminal activity.

“From “Event 201” to “Cyber Polygon”: The WEF’s Simulation of a Coming “Cyber Pandemic”” – Part 8dated February 5, 2021, at https://unlimitedhangout.com/2021/02/investigative-reports/from-event-201-to-cyber-polygon-the-wefs-simulation-of-a-coming-cyber-pandemic/

This is especially true for Cyber Polygon participant Deutsche Bank, whose inevitable collapse has been openly discussed for years due to the bank’s extreme corruption, fraud, and massive exposure to derivatives. In late 2019, months before the COVID-19 crisis began, the CEO of Deutsche Bank warned that central banks no longer had tools that could adequately respond to the next “economic crisis.” It is certainly telling that entirely new banking systems, such as Sberbank’s soon-to-be-launched digital monetary monopoly, began to be developed just as it began to be publicly acknowledged that central banks’ traditional means of responding to economic calamities were no longer viable.

A massive cyberattack, such as that simulated at Cyber Polygon 2020, would allow faceless hackers to be blamed for economic collapse, thus absolving the real financial criminals of responsibility. Furthermore, due to the difficult nature of investigating hacks and the ability of intelligence agencies to frame other nation states for hacks they in fact committed themselves, any boogeyman of choice can be blamed, whether a “domestic terror” group or a country unaligned with the WEF (for now, at least) like Iran or North Korea. Between the well-placed warnings, simulations, and the clear benefit for the global elite intent on a Great Reset, Cyber Polygon 2020 appears to have served not only its publicly stated purpose but its own ulterior motives.

“The writing is on the wall.” - https://youtu.be/KNVVqeznby0

“Endgame Zimbabwe: Why the ANC wants you to die” – Part 1- https://marhobane.substack.com/p/endgame-zimbabwe. The video is based on this article. Below are excerpts however it is worth reading in full.

To talk about the particular crimes of the ANC in order to keep score has no utility whatsoever. The scale is so vast and so deep and so bereft of human compassion that it compares unfavourably with late Soviet Europe. The important details to eye are the structural habits of power and patronage. The system as it exists is a nihilistic totalitarian gang with a belief in manifest destiny, slowly cutting down every tree in the forest after sucking them dry with dodder weeds. Much like Zimbabwe however, the media landscape is dominated by a chorus of hand-wringing liberals making anxious noises about material conditions and “corruption”.

But the corruption is not a perversion of the system – it is the system. The wave of ungovernability and entropy is not a bug, it is a feature – as more of the formal economy is destroyed, the informal and opaque use of force, mob violence and fraud becomes the predominant mode of political power, and this is controlled in virtual monopoly by the ANC. The ANC functions by patronage, intimidation and violent crime – it is the essential model of the ANC since the 1970s, not that they were innocent before then.

The logic of the ANC’s power is to make all territory outside their control ungovernable and uninhabitable, except on its terms. It is a well-recognised slogan, still used today – “make this institution ungovernable”. It is what the Western dissident right calls “anarcho-tyranny”. As anybody who has read the history of the People’s War knows, the ANC has been evil for as long as living memory. They built an empire of terror, theft and vandalism, and merely called truce for 25 years to allow the balance of forces in the economy to tip in their favour.

The ANC justifies a critical focus on the minorities’ precarious prosperity by deferring to the egalitarianism and white-man’s-burden philosophy of pity-based progressivism and the histrionics of race-baiting bullshit, relentlessly establishing a racial hierarchy in which no black person is morally culpable for even the greatest sins, but whites must be held responsible for the sins of all. By defending the moral and ideological claims of the ANC – land reform is necessary and inevitable, crime is the fault of law-abiding citizens who haven’t given their pound of flesh, white people are fundamentally morally inferior – the liberal journalists and their lazy but spiteful radical colleagues refuse to address their complicity in the oceans of blood and suffering which drench the country.

Those whose brains are rotting from reading too much ANC-friendly news are just as bad – they will insist that “we must do x”. When one follows the soap-opera of daily politics, there is always a “good” and “bad” side set up by the micronarrative, which serves to invest one in rival loyalties internal to the party system, and seek one’s hope there. There is no “we”. The ANC is everyone’s enemy; an occupying Soviet colonial force with its head cut off.

“Endgame Zimbabwe: Why the ANC wants you to die” – Part 2- https://marhobane.substack.com/p/endgame-zimbabwe.

In fact, I would go as far as to say that no black politician even gives a damn about the crime and poverty among black communities either – I recall the quote by former minister Charles Nqakula, that if one dislikes the warzone-level homicide fatalities, one should leave. Their housing policy has shifted from the building of social housing to a sinister three-faceted strategy of land invasion. Shadow ANC ward councilors will allocate land in areas held by opposition, for use by shack-dwellers, who will be taxed by a network of violent extortion rackets tied to the party’s local structures, and bus in thousands upon thousands of unemployed and unemployable people into minority areas to dilute the demographics and voting intentions, treating the Western Cape like their own little Tibet. Thirdly, this can be used to besiege desired properties, which are bought at fire-sale prices, after which the poor black settlers can be removed by private security.

Corruption, mass theft of rail, unending cycles of political violence and assassination. It is a horse beaten to mincemeat by the slow thud of regular news articles. We were told that the new dawn of Ramaphosa’s presidency would usher in a new age of accountability. But while he has set about unplugging Zuma and his allies like Ace Magashule from the teat of power, attacking them with a finally unshackled prosecutions service delighted to finally be able to do their job, he is in fact merely consolidating his total control of the party. Ramaphosa’s cabinet has overshadowed every single previous era of corruption by a wave of looting so massive that it dwarfs the most pessimistic expectations, using the national state of emergency to waive public expenditure procedures.

And what was Cyril supposed to be? The communist who threw thousands of his loyal followers as Bisho’s border guard machine gun nests and smiled triumphantly over their corpses to declare a media victory. A man who urged police to destroy any wildcat strikers in Marikana who broke ranks from the corrupt neopatrimonial equilibrium in the Platinum Belt where his lifelong benefactors reside. A man who credibly can be thought to indulge in child prostitution (see this leaked Stratfor report [referencing the same document, https://wikileaks.org/gifiles/attach/167/167391_HIGH%20TREASON.doc, at >>13530886, >>13530894, >>13540711, >>13532054 ] and these later corroborative articles [ http://www.bdlive.co.za/opinion/columnists/2015/06/04/media-fail-to-follow-up-on-frankel-revelations and https://www.dailymaverick.co.za/article/2017-05-23-sidney-frankel-the-true-legacy-of-a-paedophile-philanthropist/ ]). This is the man the global elites chose to reform South Africa, who was plastered on the face of The Economist, which called for supporting the ANC, an openly racist, socialist organisation, as the hope for liberalism. All because the man favours using lawfare against political rivals and pushing for open borders – finalising the all-Africa passport this year.

We are told in our communities that we must trust Ramaphosa’s plan. But his plan, as he publicly announced, is to implement the Second Phase of the National Democratic Revolution, and that only means one thing – the slow march to crush and expunge minorities (see James Myburgh’s great essay, Singapore Revisited [https://www.politicsweb.co.za/news-and-analysis/singapore-revisited-ii-the-nightmare-from-which-we]). Ramaphosa’s skill is in leveraging international support for this by justifying it in terms of the great global governance programs of our day – the proposals for the digital police state of the 4IR; the wealth-levelling and central-planning mandate of SDG 10; the support for Chinese colonisation (dedicated Mandarin-speaking police forces, enclave cities, Confucius Institutes, Chinese inspections of our military).

Unlike the wild and romantic fantasies of the white right, who are hoping that in some moment of reckoning, shock and awe will trigger a collective uprising, the reality is that the wheel will simply advance, and crush the insects slowly as they crawl desperately forward to eke out the sun. Functionally the deprivation of the right to self-defence, the covert support for land seizures, the protection of the Cape gangs, the destruction of the Ingonyama Trust, and the use of state-driven land expropriation, are all one plan. The crushing of all opposition to a totalitarian black supremacist empire, a blood- and shit-smeared Bantu Imperialism. The slow march to utopia strides through an endless bloody marsh, never seeming too deep at first, but rising ever higher as time marches on.

“Endgame Zimbabwe: Why the ANC wants you to die” – Part 3- https://marhobane.substack.com/p/endgame-zimbabwe.

In retrospect, the fall of South Africa to Zimbabwefication was inevitable. It certainly was foreseeable, by millions of people, hundreds of writers, dozens of public intellectuals – all smeared as reactionary or racist. But now the worst and most dismal nightmare prophecies of the far right have all come true – South Africa has sunk into the same universal quagmire besetting the rest of the sub-Sahara (Botswana and Rwanda excepted), and all self-inflicted. And the West is beginning to learn the same lessons, imbibing comparable philosophies, blinding them with prejudice against any systemic criticisms, whether of their own system or ours. Criticism (in the sense of Critical Theory) has become the system, in a regime of thieving rebellocrats.

For years now, the liberal media in the United States has been legitimising the notion in both the mainland and the overseas territories they control that owning guns is morally wrong. At the same time, they have been systematically attacking all the institutional norms which empower police to provide adequate law enforcement. Finally, in 2020, their party-NGO complex mobilised hundreds of thousands of ideological confederates to torch, loot and murder their way through major cities to intimidate their political opponents in the leadup to an important election campaign. The subsequent crime wave is not abating, as police have been increasingly stripped of their social capacity to enforce the law against nonwhite criminals.

The use of South Africa as a model for regime consolidation against the illusory spectre of “white supremacy” is quite popular in the United States establishment, and the key foundation of the current regime’s thinking is largely based on following the ANC’s governance policy following their ascension to central power – cadre deployment and the TRC. Because of the open racism of the previous regime, it was easy for the ANC to justify a total purge of the civil service, no matter how essential the expertise and competence of those employees were to the effective functioning of state institutions. Biden’s admin has now engaged in a massive totalitarian purge of all ideological opposition in all branches in government, hunting for anybody who shows the tell-tale signs of having voted Republican. This will not end well.

By 1998, the vast majority of qualified engineers, bureaucrats and legal experts had been purged, in favour of the cadre deployment program which would soon see the complete takeover of the state by the ruling party and its subsumption into inner-party factionalism and brazen looting. In the meantime, the thin veneer of legal protections afforded by the constitution has allowed minorities and the marginalised poor blacks to hold onto the shreds of their vital interests by a slow rearguard action in the courts, the last institution to hold out against ANC power. But like the liberal commentators on Zimbabwe, the intelligentsia are defending defend the system until the bitter end, gesturing to those remaining judges who issue impotent judgements into the moral vacuum of anarcho-tyranny as if they constitute a serious force.

In our country, we have one of the highest homicide rates in the world. People hardly report crimes anymore, and even just counting those that are reported, the figures are astronomical. Official figures alone put the amount of homicides since the ANC took power (not to mention the tens of thousands they massacred to gain monopoly over the liberation movement) at over half a million, which outstrips the casualties in the Iraq war and the Afghan war combined.

This comes on the back of a broad national push for Zimbabwean style expropriation of property, only more ambitious, reaching into urban land, liquid property, the nationalisation of all intellectual property, and the continuing national-socialist attacks on minority private enterprise and employment we call BEE. The state has made no meaningful attempt to hand over the vast tracts of farmland it possesses, and has officially formalised its previously informal policy of providing plots for shacks instead of built social housing, the standards for which have been falling as an increasing portion of every budget is stolen, and skilled labour evaporates.

Our ports are the worst in the world, our state is so bankrupted by theft that failure to pay PR fees resulted in a court attaching the ANC headquarters Luthuli House [https://www.southafricanlawyer.co.za/article/2020/12/doors-closed-as-sheriff-tries-to-attach-anc-property/] as compensation.

>>13879681

>A man who credibly can be thought to indulge in child prostitution (see this leaked Stratfor report [referencing the same document, https://wikileaks.org/gifiles/attach/167/167391_HIGH%20TREASON.doc, at >>13530886, >>13530894, >>13540711, >>13532054 ] and these later corroborative articles [ http://www.bdlive.co.za/opinion/columnists/2015/06/04/media-fail-to-follow-up-on-frankel-revelations and https://www.dailymaverick.co.za/article/2017-05-23-sidney-frankel-the-true-legacy-of-a-paedophile-philanthropist/ ])

“Sidney Frankel: The true legacy of a ‘paedophile’ philanthropist” – Part 1dated 23 May 2017 at https://www.dailymaverick.co.za/article/2017-05-23-sidney-frankel-the-true-legacy-of-a-paedophile-philanthropist/. Below are excerpts.

He was a billionaire stockbroker, a friend of politicians from Cyril Ramaphosa to Barend du Plessis, and a trustee at Constitution Hill. He was also an alleged paedophile, a man accused of sexually molesting eight men and women more than 20 years ago, at a time when none of these people had yet reached adolescence. Now it turns out that Sidney Frankel, who died of cancer in April, may be lending his name to a progressive amendment to the Sexual Offences Act. What’s the moral behind this tragic tale? And why didn’t the Daily Maverick get anywhere with the long-form investigative piece we were preparing in 2016? A report-back by KEVIN BLOOM.

The civil case was straightforward enough: Frankel was being sued for the emotional and physical harm he had allegedly caused to the seven complainants who had already come forward. But the criminal case was something else entirely. Unlike rape, compelled rape, child pornography and trafficking, which have no term of prescription in South Africa, sexual assault in this country is prescribed at 20 years. Levitt, it turned out, was applying to the Constitutional Court to have the law changed so that Frankel could be charged for crimes allegedly committed in the ‘70s, ‘80s and ‘90s.

In August 2016, much to the dismay of Mark Peens and Marinda Smith and the original seven complainants, Levitt failed. The Constitutional Court rejected the lawyer’s bid for direct access. But he gathered his files and decided to go the long route, which meant taking the case to the High Court. Meanwhile, with the civil case proceeding in tandem with the criminal matter, Frankel had retained the services of Billy Gundelfinger, South Africa’s very own celebrity divorce lawyer a la Laura Wasser. On 13 April 2017, it was Gundelfinger who confirmed to the press that his client had succumbed to cancer. While most observers muttered under their breath about the “convenience” of such a demise, the activist group Women & Men Against Child Abuse (WMACA) were less demure: “It was the worst-kept secret in Johannesburg’s business, Jewish and socialite communities,” they said of the child molestation and sexual abuse charges.

The WMACA, as the Daily Maverick well knew, wasn’t joking. Among the numerous interviews we conducted for a long-form investigative piece that never got written, was one with Renee Rothquel – mother of Shane Rothquel, a former resident of the Arcadia Jewish orphanage and a member of the original seven. “It’s a closed community,” offered Renee, on the Jewish angle specifically, when asked why the alleged abuse had been kept under wraps for so long. “God forbid anybody outside the community should know about it.”

As for the business community, we were met, on the one hand, with outright hostility, and on the other with a monumental waste of our time. In the latter instance, we learned of a man who was well acquainted with a former long-time PA of Frankel, a woman in her 70s who apparently had a whole bunch of “dirty secrets” in a file in her flat. Why, after countless hours of tedium on the phone and in coffee shops with this contact, did the woman refuse to play ball? Allegedly, because she feared she would get “whacked”.

Whatever that meant, there was the obvious fact that the business community was somehow complicit in the culture of silence. As of August 2016, as pointed out to the Daily Maverick by Paul Diamond – who, along with his sister Nicole Levenstein and his childhood friend George Rosenberg, was one of the first complainants to go public – the official website of Constitution Hill listed a very interesting board of Trustees: Cyril Ramaphosa (chairman), Michael Katz, Joyce Seroke, Cheryl Carolus and Sidney Frankel.

“Sidney Frankel: The true legacy of a ‘paedophile’ philanthropist” – Part 2dated 23 May 2017 at https://www.dailymaverick.co.za/article/2017-05-23-sidney-frankel-the-true-legacy-of-a-paedophile-philanthropist/

The great “philanthropist” Sidney Lewis Frankel – on the day of his death, even talk radio station 702, whose indefatigable Mandy Weiner did more than any other journalist to publicise the story, was using the word. Frankel sure did give a lot of money to charity, it appeared. He also gave generously of his time and resources. Below, for your edification, a passage from Anthony Butler’s 2008 biography Cyril Ramaphosa:

“The true significance of the famous story about Cyril Ramaphosa removing a fish-hook from (National Party Cabinet minister) Roelf Meyer’s thumb is that their host on the day, Sidney Frankel, was chairman of Frankel Pollak, the largest stockbroker on the (then) Johannesburg Stock Exchange. Frankel acted as a facilitator of relationships between foreign and domestic business investors and government. By 1987 Frankel was well connected with the “left” in (the National Party) government – with people such as Gerrit Viljoen, Barend du Plessis and Roelf Meyer – and he began to reach out to the United Democratic Front. On one occasion, he recalls, (President) PW Botha discovered that (Finance minister) Du Plessis was attending a conference, where he was talking to a senior UDF member. Botha had Du Plessis summoned to a telephone and instructed him to leave forthwith.”

Sure, so even if the man never met a government he didn’t like, he knew how to spin the PR. It’s hardly a crime. What is a crime, however, is hanging out at the orphanage under the guise of being the big macher Jewish philanthropist and fiddling (allegedly) with the kids.

Which brings up the second reason that the long-form investigative piece never got written. After a certain amount of time pouring over the legal files and re-listening to the interviews, you start to lose faith in human nature. In other words, you begin to get seriously depressed about how much power “power” actually has. And yes, dear reader, you are quite right to ask the question: how, then, must it feel to live in the skin of Nicole Levenstein, Paul Diamond, George Rosenberg, Katherine Rosenberg, Daniela McNally, Lisa Wegner, Shane Rothquel or Marinda Smith?

But it turns out there may be a redemptive ending to this tale. As of Monday 22 May, the first day of the High Court application referred to above, the media were reporting that the bid to overturn the prescription on sexual assault, if successful, could become known as “Frankel’s Law”. Given that the legal representatives for the Minister of Justice, who argued their case on Tuesday 23 May, also supported the application, it’s likely that acting Judge Clare Hartford of the South Gauteng High Court will agree.

The grace that is the heartbreak of a life split open – or, in this case, eight lives. Would it be too much to ask, on behalf of all current and future citizens of South Africa, for us to collectively recognise the bravery of Nicole Levenstein and her brother Paul Diamond, George Rosenberg and his sister Katherine Rosenberg, Daniela McNally, Lisa Wegner, Shane Rothequel and Marinda Smith?

“Levenstein v. Estate of Frankel” dated Jun 2, 2019, at https://harvardlawreview.org/2019/06/levenstein-v-estate-of-frankel/ states;

Recently, in Levenstein v. Estate of Frankel, the Constitutional Court of South Africa unanimously held that the twenty-year statute of limitations for sexual offenses other than rape was irrational and arbitrary. This is the right outcome, but removing the statute of limitations may expand the reach of the carceral state.

>>13835628

>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.

“South African at centre of bid for Pentagon data cloud linked to Kremlin insider” – Part 1dated December 13, 2018, at https://www.somtribune.com/2018/12/13/south-african-at-centre-of-bid-for-pentagon-data-cloud-linked-to-kremlin-insider/

While South African, Andre Pienaar, founder of C5 Capital and exposed as the mysterious “Luciano” in the leaked “Zuma spy tapes” saga, is involved in a bid for the Jedi Pentagon Project – a cyber-cloud that will store highly sensitive data including US nuclear codes – he has also been linked to Ukrainian-born Russian oligarch, Viktor Vekselberg, who has close links to the Kremlin.

Former South African intelligence agent, Andre Pienaar, has been cited in an extensive investigation by BBC journalists into bids for the Pentagon’s $R10 billion Jedi Contract project aimed at storing sensitive military and other information on a single cloud.

Pienaar was exposed in court transcripts in the Zuma “spy tapes” saga as the mysterious “Luciano” who allegedly leaked illegal National Intelligence Agency recordings of conversations between then Scorpions boss, Leonard McCarthy, and former NPA boss, Bulelani Ngcuka.

The leak ultimately led to the initial withdrawal of charges of fraud and corruption against former President Jacob Zuma.

The BBC’s Ruth Clegg and Manveen Rana, have linked Pienaar to Russian oligarch and Kremlin insider, Viktor Vekselberg, who is named on the US sanctions list for his close ties to the president, Vladimir Putin.

Pienaar, according to his own biography, “started his career at Kroll Inc in 1996 where he became the youngest managing director”. In 2004, he founded G3, “an international consulting firm that advises global companies and international law firms on cybersecurity.”

Around 2013 Pienaar sold G3 to Swedish private equity firm, Kinnevik. In January 2018 one of Pienaar’s other companies, ITC Secure [https://www.bloglikes.com/blogs/2018-01-11/c5-capital-backed-itc-secure-buys-g3-cyber], bought the G3 Cyber Security “practice” component of the G3 group from G3 and Kinnevik.

In November 2016, C5 Capital acquired ITC Secure for £24 million.

Pienaar, who has been highly successful cornering this lucrative and sensitive market, said the January 2018 deal rendered ITC as “a leader in providing cyber security services and trusted advice to businesses across all sectors. Our experts are able to deliver strategic guidance to private clients and private equity groups worldwide”.

Back in 2014, when the “spy tapes” transcripts [https://serve.mg.co.za/content/documents/2014/10/02/spy-tapes-transcript.pdf] were released, Pienaar was named on page 26 as “a private intelligence operative close to Mbeki”. Pienaar has since been associated with ANC presidential hopeful, Nkosazana Dlamini Zuma, and is a council member of her African Union Foundation, which he helped set up in 2015.

While the AU Foundation claims that its aim is “to mobilise resources in support of the African Union’s vision of an integrated, people-centred and prosperous Africa, at peace with itself and taking its rightful place in the world”, it appears not much has been achieved in its three years of existence.

Pienaar is described on the AU Foundation website as “a private investor in specialist areas of technology. He is a founder of C5 Capital Limited. He is a trustee of several African charities.”

Daily Maverick inquiries and emails to the AU Foundation for a report-back on its work have been met with silence for several months.

“South African at centre of bid for Pentagon data cloud linked to Kremlin insider” – Part 2dated December 13, 2018, at https://www.somtribune.com/2018/12/13/south-african-at-centre-of-bid-for-pentagon-data-cloud-linked-to-kremlin-insider/

C5 was founded in 2012 and since then Pienaar and his companies have become major international players. Pienaar has business connections with international political heavyweights including, according to BBC journalists Ruth Clegg and Manveen Rana “the most influential and trusted figures in military and security circles on both sides of the Atlantic”.

Pienaar’s flagship company C5 Capital, boasts as “strategic partners” Charles McGarry, former CIA Operations Officer and CIA European chief; Admiral Mike Mullen, principal advisor to Presidents George W Bush and Barack Obama and 17th Chairman of the US Joint Chiefs of Staff from 2007 to 2011; Lord Gold, former “Corporate Monitor of BAE Systems” and current Chairman of the Conservative Party Disciplinary Committee; Sir Ian Lobban, former Director and Director-General of operations for the British Security and Intelligence agency GCHQ; Lieutenant General Graham Lamb, a former member of the UK regular and special forces.

Pienaar also has links, the BBC found, to Russian oligarch Viktor Vekselberg, who is named on the US sanctions list for his close ties to the Russian president, Vladimir Putin.

C5 has worked with the leading bidder for the Pentagon Jedi cloud, Amazon Web Services (AWS).

The $10 billion Joint Enterprise Defence Infrastructure (Jedi) is a mammoth project by the Pentagon aimed at storing all military data in one cloud instead of across departments which is the current situation.

“It’s hard to overstate the significance of the Pentagon’s cloud contract. Known as JEDI, for Joint Enterprise Defense Infrastructure, it will help reshape American warfare by absorbing, processing, and analysing intelligence, sensor, and troop data, and by facilitating communications through the Defense Department’s worldwide network. The winner of the contract, should they meet stringent security and performance standards, will emerge as a front-runner for more huge cloud jobs across the government,” explained Defense One [https://www.defenseone.com/technology/2018/08/someone-waging-secret-war-undermine-pentagons-huge-cloud-contract/150685/].

The BBC noted that Jedi “will provide soldiers on the front line with instant access to all of the latest intelligence, making them more effective on the battlefield.”

Bids were due by April 2019 and transnational technology companies like Microsoft, Oracle and IBM have submitted theirs. According to the BBC, however, “leading voices in the sector – including the other companies vying for the contract – say that Amazon Web Services (AWS) is the clear frontrunner.”

The Pentagon refused to comment to the BBC on the nature of and players in the “sealed bids” it has received.

C5 and AWS denied to the BBC that they are involved in the Jedi bid.

Amazon Web Services is currently the largest cloud service provider in the world and is a subsidiary of Amazon, the online shopping portal which controls a third of the cloud computing market.

AWS and C5 have collaborated on a number of international “cloud computing projects”. AWS vice-president, Teresa Carlson, and Pienaar have, said the BBC, “toured the world promoting their companies’ relationship”.

C5 Accelerate, a member of the C5 group, describes itself as a“London, Washington D.C., and Bahrain based technology investment firm. C5 Accelerate is developing a Cloud Accelerator Cluster in Europe, the Middle East, Africa and the United States, alongside Amazon Web Services.”

The BBC investigated Pienaar’s links to Vekselberg, and found that he [Pienaar] had been a paid portfolio manager for his businesses in South Africa.” Vekselberg said his relationship with Pienaar ended this year.

“South African at centre of bid for Pentagon data cloud linked to Kremlin insider” – Part 3dated December 13, 2018, at https://www.somtribune.com/2018/12/13/south-african-at-centre-of-bid-for-pentagon-data-cloud-linked-to-kremlin-insider/

“According to this version of events, he must have been working for Mr Vekselberg whilst running C5 and working on projects with Amazon Web Services,” reports the BBC.

Pienaar denied to the BBC that he had worked for Vekselberg’s company, and said he had only advised it on a mining issue.

Clegg and Rana wrote that “Shortly afterwards, Viktor Vekselberg’s spokesman came back to amend their earlier statement to match Mr Pienaar’s – which would suggest that they are still in contact.”

The BBC also found “an injection of Russian money” after investigating the “labyrinthine structure of companies around C5.”

“One of C5’s subsidiaries, C5 Razor Bidco, brought in an investment of £16.1m in 2015, just as Vladimir Kuznetsov became a director and major shareholder of the company. AWS stressed that it does not work with C5 Razor Bidco. However, C5 Razor Bidco is part of the C5 Group and is owned by Andre Pienaar.”

Kuznetsov is Vekselberg’s “trusted lieutenant” and worked for Vekselberg from 1999 to 2018 “when the sanctions against Mr Vekselberg led to mass resignations across the board of his business group, Renova.”

Kuznetsov told the BBC that his investment in C5 Razor Bidco had not been influenced by Vekselberg or the Kremlin while C5 said that the oligarch had not directly or indirectly invested in any of the group’s companies.

Vekselberg, who is linked to US President Donald Trump’s lawyer, Michael Cohen, was questioned as he got off a plane in New York by Muller Inquiry investigators. The businessman’s electronic devices were seized as part of an investigation into his possible role into alleged Russian interference in the 2016 US election.

Vekselberg’s company, Columbus Nova, affiliated to the Renova Group, allegedly paid Cohen $500,000, money which was funnelled to Cohen’s Essential Consultants LLC, the firm he used to pay off Stormy Daniels.

The oligarch is also linked to the Skolkovo Innovation Centre in Moscow, established in 2009 by Russian Prime Minister Dmitry Medvedev as the Russian answer to Silicon Valley. Vekselberg heads the centre. The FBI and the US Military are unsurprisingly suspicious of the centre saying it could be as a front for“industrial espionage”.

“'Sidney Frankel is a paedophile'” and shady business dealings, even with murdered Brett Kebbledated 1st October 2014 at https://www.noseweek.co.za/article/3290/Sidney-Frankel-is-a-paedophile

One victim who spoke to Noseweek said: “I am aware of one child who was an orphan in the Jewish orphanage – of which Sidney Frankel was a patron – who was not ready to go public. Maybe there are others. Maybe we can approach the Constitutional Court to overturn the 20-year rule on this.”

A ‘highly adaptive’ businessman

The people and entities that accompanied Brett Kebble throughout his criminal career are but few. The short list includes Investec (and its CEO, Stephen Koseff), KPMG, and SocGen (starting point for Peter Gray), although perhaps no surprise to Noseweek readers, the fourth is “respected” stockbroker Sidney Frankel (noses29,15,14 & 8: That dirty slimeball, that’s what his friends call him).

In 1996, Frankel, who some describe as a philanthropist, was in the news after SocGen acquired 51% of Joburg stockbrokers Frankel Pollak, where he was CEO. At the time, the brokerage was being investigated by the JSE for “administrative irregularities” in connection with former directors Greg Blank and Frikkie Kruger.

Frankel Pollak’s legal team was led by ENS’s figurative and literal head Michael Katz, Frankel’s brother-in-law. At the time, Peter Gray, the boss at SocGen Johannesburg, said that charges against Frankel Pollak had been thoroughly assessed before the deal was signed.

Frankel became deputy chairman and CEO of the new company, SocGen-Frankel Pollak. His overbearing father, Leslie, became life president.

In due course, things changed for the worse and in 2002, SocGen Joburg started retrenching staff. Around that time “Bossie” Boshoff, still employed by SocGen in Joburg, received a call from Peter Gray (see Shifty shades of Gray in this issue) – now reduced to the status of “consultant” to SocGen – wanting Boshoff to join him in setting up an international treasury for a “major mining house”.

Later, at Frankel’s office in Joburg, it was revealed that Brett Kebble’s JCI group was providing the financing to secure control of the brokerage Tradek-Balderson. Frankel advised against any dealings with Kebble, who he said was unscrupulous.

“Sidney then made me promise I would never be forced by Brett to contravene exchange control in dealings with his companies”, said Boshoff. Despite that warning, soon afterwards Frankel was facilitating the use of stolen cash to settle Kebble’s debt to SocGen. In due course, on 12 April 2002, Frankel Consulting paid the sum of R28m to SocGen in part-settlement of Kebble’s liability.

Jump to 2006: during a heated exchange T-Sec CEO Leonard Steenkamp admitted that the auditors had picked up a very big – R17m – payment during their audit that was made to Sidney Frankel Consulting. Steenkamp confirmed the amount had been paid into an overseas bank account – the sort of thing Frankel had warned his staff not to do for Kebble.

In a sworn statement of 18 October 2006, Frankel stated that Frankel Consulting Financial Services, of which he was the sole member, had acted for and on behalf of the JCI group “for several years” and had represented JCI “in a variety of transactions”.

Like Investec, KPMG and Gray, Frankel earned many millions from Kebble – before and after his death. In a circular to shareholders dated 30 October 2006, in which JCI announced the sale of its remaining shares in Western Areas to Gold Fields, Frankel Consulting was listed as having been paid R2.5m for “fees”.

Even after the greatest fraud the country had seen became public knowledge, Frankel persisted: in 2007, he sued JCI and Randgold for R3.3m in fees still owing from the disposal of Western Areas shares to Gold Fields.

As one fellow stockbroker has noted, Sidney Frankel is “highly adaptive” in business and politics. In one era, his offices had pictures of FW de Klerk and in another, Frankel was photographed posing with Nelson Mandela.

“Sidney Frankel, our own Epstein, with friends in high places”dated Dec 27, 2019 at https://www.reddit.com/r/RSA/comments/eg8zhv/sydney_frankel_our_own_epstein_with_friends_in/

South Africans know the anecdote about Cyril Ramaphosa and Roelf Meyer's fishing experience during the Kodesa talks on a new multicultural political dispensation in the early nineties. It happened at the country cottage of Sidney FRANKEL, the billionaire Johannesburg businessman.

Frankel, a mutual friend of Ramaphosa (the promising young ANC negotiator) and Roelf Meyer (the National Party minister), flew his two friends into the estate with his private helicopter. That weekend sealed the solid friendship of Frankel, Ramaphosa and Meyer with frequent private meetings even when the Kodesa ship seemed to be off-course. Meyer was 44, Frankel 42 and Ramaphosa 40. The world was their oyster, they were important and they could actually do whatever they wanted.

Frankel was "a noted philanthropist, CEO of Société Générale Frankel Pollak and chairman of Frankel Consulting. His nonprofit work included the establishment of the Buffelshoek Trust, which built schools, clinics and preschools in Limpopo.

Through Frankel his friend Ramaphosa also became involved in youth work with the Buffelshoek Trust and Constitution Hill Trust; Ramaphosa acting as president of the latter.

Through Ramaphosa's involvement Frankel took Nelson Mandela on a guided tour of the Johannesburg Stock Exchange.

In March 2006 Frankel and Ramaphosa started the Constitution Hill Trust with government and corporate funding " to ensure that every South African kid gets taken through it".

In the late nineties Frankel built a lavish lodge in the Manyeleti region of Mpumalanga where school children could be entertained.

He set up the Buffelshoek Trust with R1,5m and by 2010 more than R25m had been spent on Frankel and Ramaphosa's pet project through donations of Nedbank, Telkom, Old Mutual and even the Nelson Mandela Children's Fund.

In 2016 the Daily Maverick and Noseweek ran a story on Frankel's dodgy dealings. The response from readers were shocking: ignoring the fraud allegations, male and female readers responded with allegations of sexual abuse by Sidney Frankel in the 80's and 90's when he was the philanthropist of Buffelshoek and Constitution Hill and close friend of Ramaphosa and Meyer.

Apart from short references by Radio 702 and Cape Talk 567 radio stations no media followed up on the allegations.

Obviously Frankel had friends high up in government and media circles. But the victims, now knowing about each other, banded together and pressed charges against Frankel, even though it happened twenty years ago.

“It started when I was six and ended when I was 13,” explained Marinda Smith.

The civil case was straightforward enough: Frankel was sued for the emotional and physical harm he had allegedly caused to the seven complainants who had already come forward - and he apparently paid up readily.

But the criminal case was something else entirely different. The Constitutional Court rejected the lawyer’s bid for direct access.

Frankel hired Billy Gundelfinger as lawyer. On 13 April 2017 Gundelfinger confirmed to the press that his client Sidney Frankel had succumbed to cancer …

How much are the applicants in the sexual abuse case willing to disclose after the fact?: Nicole Levenstein, Paul Diamond, George Rosenberg, Katherine Rosenberg, Daniela McNally, Lisa Wegner, Shane Rothquel or Marinda Smith… and the countless others from the black community who are not even aware that Frankel had been taken to court?

Apart from short articles by Anton Harber (Wits) and Tony Bloom (Daily Maverick) and the court records, no public information can be found … but somewhere, sometime, someone is bound to talk."

>>13900734

Thank you for the update!

“Malema: We are going to picket at SAHPRA offices for vaccines”- https://youtu.be/upyCtzyNQSI

“EFF leader Julius Malema says that a picket will be staged at the offices of the South African Health Products Regulatory Authority to demand that they approve vaccines from Russia and China. Malema says this will assist the country vaccinate more people faster.”

“SA arms exports under scrutiny”- https://youtu.be/YnBJGfySPOc

“South Africa's sale of weapons to countries actively involved in the war in Yemen could soon come to an end. For more, Annika Larsen speaks to Head of Investigation's at Open Secrets Michael Marchant.”

3:07 – “And the evidence before our authorities is very clear and in the public domain that there is widespread allegations of violations of international law and human rights in Yemen by Saudi Arabia and the UAE including the worst targeting of civilians and the use of starvation as a weapon of war that has driven Yemen to be likely the worst humanitarian catastrophe suddenly currently facing the world.”

“"Farm Murderers Paid by ANC & EFF To Kill" Says Zimbabwean Truck Driver in SA, on His Way To Canada!”dated Jun 28, 2020, at https://youtu.be/-Bw6h_Yy51Q

A sound recording received by SA-News, which cannot be verified, portrays an interview with a Zimbabwean truck driver in South Africa who has somehow managed to arrange to go to Canada in November, that claims that farm murderers are locals and foreigners that are paid by both the ANC and EFF, using taxpayers money! He says ANC and Ramaphosa are trying to play a smart game.

He claims they do not care about food security but get paid a lot of money to do the murders. He also says South African blacks are not learning the lesson from Zimbabwe's mistakes.

The second part of the video portrays a couple who were victims of a farm attack in Petrusburg in the Free-state, as the Emergency medical crew prepare to take them to hospital.

But according to Ramaphosa this does not happen…

If you have any information regarding any possible organisation behind farm attack and farm murders, please contact us on news@sa-news.com - we are not based in SA so the information will be beyond the reach of the authorities…

https://sa-news.com/video-farm-murderers-paid-by-anc-eff-to-kill-says-zimbabwean-truck-driver-in-sa-on-his-way-to-canada/

“Who controls southern Africa’s mineral wealth?” – Part 1dated December 18, 1979, at https://larouchepub.com/eiw/public/1979/eirv06n49-19791218/eirv06n49-19791218_052-who_controls_southern_africas_mi.pdf

The Anglo American Corporation

The Anglo American Corporation is the flagship holding concern for a vast group of companies, interlocking in ownership and directors, which dominates the mining of uranium, gold, diamonds, copper, coal and other minerals in southern Africa. The chairman of the group is Harry Frederick Oppenheimer. The subcompanies include De Beers Consolidated Mines, Charter Consolidated and Engelhard Minerals. Rio Tinto-Zinc, Lonrho and Union Miniere are related to the Anglo American group through political alliances for shared policies. Ultimately, the same families control all the companies, with the names Cecil and Hapsburg most powerful.

The chairman of Anglo American's Diamond Services division is Julian Ogilvie Thompson, married to a daughter of the late Viscount Hampden; the chairman of the Gold and Uranium division is Dennis Etheredge, O.B.E., who worked for South African military intelligence during World War II under Jan Smuts, member of the British Round Table. The Executive Director of Anglo American after the death of founder Sir Ernest Oppenheimer, was William Marshall Clark, a Knight of the Military and Hospitaler Order of St. John of Jerusalem (Order of Malta). The first head of Anglo American's Diamond Security Organization-a private army-was Percy Sillitoe, former director of British Military intelligence-MI-5. Among other notables on the payroll of the Diamond Security Organization is Nathaniel Mbumba, leader of recent "Marxist" invasions of Shaba province in Zaire.

The Anglo American group is deeply implicated in international drug traffic. Its diamond (De Beers) and gold production plays a central role-through non-contractual sales-in laundering the "dirty money" from the dope trade. Accordingly, Oppenheimer has been a board member of the Canadian Imperial Bank of Commerce, a key bank for drug-money laundering. Anglo AmeriCan board member Sidney Spiro is now on the same bank's international advisory board. Another subcompany of Anglo American is South African Eagle, an offshoot of Eagle Star Insurance of London, which owns and operates the drug-running empire associated with the Canadian Bronfman family.

Completing the circle, Oppenheimer's Anglo American group passed on executives to the Schlesinger Insurance group, a leading corporate front for the Permindex Organization, an international assassination bureau created under the supervision of Knight of St. John Mortimer Louis Bloomfield, attorney for the Bronfman family. Permindex murdered John Fitzgerald Kennedy. It attempted to murder Charles de Gaulle. Anglo American bought out Schlesinger Insurance in 1975.

Rio Tinto-Zinc

Rio Tinto's major operations are in iron ore and copper with an important share of uranium. Among the board members is Lord Carrington, a protege of the Cecil family who is now British Foreign Secretary. Rio Tinto's chairman is Sir Mark Turner, a member of the board (former deputy chairman) of the banking firm, Kleinwort, Benson, Lonsdale, Ltd., another of whose directors is Baron Rockley (Cecil). A colleague of Turner's in World War II British economic warfare and rawmaterials control operations was the Marquess of Exeter (Cecil).

The Cecils are among the most powerful of Britain's families-with factional ties to the Hapsburgs and Jesuit intelligence operations dating from the 16th century. Titled the Marquesses of Salisbury, first sons of the family have held office as Prime Minister, leader of the House of Lords, Foreign Secretary, Colonial Secretary and Secretary for Commonwealth Relations in the past 100 years. The capital of Rhodesia, Salisbury, takes its name from the Cecils.

>>13403686

> Elliott is also a former board member of Lonrho of Tiny Rowland. Rowland's Lonrho purchased the ANC's Johannesburg headquarters for them, and is bankrolling a planned new ANC newspaper.

>>13871919

>His [Tiny Rowland] backing of all sides in the last decades' civil wars in Africa

“Who controls southern Africa’s mineral wealth?” – Part 2dated December 18, 1979, at https://larouchepub.com/eiw/public/1979/eirv06n49-19791218/eirv06n49-19791218_052-who_controls_southern_africas_mi.pdf

Lonrho, Ltd.

Lonrho, formerly the London and Rhodesia Mining and Land Company, represents both mining and manufacturing interests. The chairman since 1972 has been Duncan Duncan-Sandys (Baron Duncan-Sandys) who owes his fortune to the Cecil family. The baron is a former son-in-law of Winston Churchill. A deputy chairman of Lonrho is former Bank of England governor Sir George Bolton. Also on the board is Edward du Cann, chairman of the Keyser Ullman merchant banking group.

Union Miniere

The only non-British company with southern African mining interests comparable to Rio Tinto-Zinc and Lonrho is Union Miniere which is tightly controlled by the finance company Societe Generale de Belgique. Union Miniere has extensive interests in copper, cobalt and zinc in the Shaba province of Zaire (called Katanga province in the former Belgian Congo), and some investment in Europe and North America. Societe Generale/Union Miniere organized the recent invasion of Shaba province by "Katangese rebels" in collaboration with the Diamond Security division of the Oppenheimer Anglo American Corporation-with the effect of stopping a French-arranged loan package to the Zairean government.

There is little public-domain evidence of who exerts control over Societe Generale de Belgique. However, information received by EIR establishes that the control is Hapsburg. Count Otto von Hapsburg and several of his siblings inhabit the board of directors, under assumed names.

Engelhard and Amax:

The New York Council on Foreign Relations has its share in the mining complex through Engelhard Minerals, a subcompany of the Anglo American group, and Amax, Inc. (American Metal Climax). The Council on Foreign Relations is the American branch of the Royal Institute for International Affairs in London (British intelligence executive offices at Chatham House). The board of Amax includes George Ball of Lehman Bros. Kuhn Loeb, Gabriel Hauge, chairman of Manufacturers Hanover Trust, as well as two vice presidents of Standard Oil of California. Felix Rohatyn of Lazard Freres, the American branch of Lazard Brothers of London, sits on the board of Engelhard Minerals.

“How Cyril Ramaphosa Sold His Soul to The Oppenheimers For $900 Million. How Much Will He Sell SA For?” – Part 1dated 21/12/2017 at https://sa-news.com/how-cyril-ramaphosa-sold-his-soul-to-the-oppenheimers-for-900-million-how-much-will-he-sell-sa-for/

Has South Africa just jumped from the frying pan into the fire by having Cyril Ramaphosa elected as the President of the ANC and next President of SA? Are our memories that short that we forget that Ramaphosa is simply just a better liar than Zuma, and not only in the “African Way” is he the next to feast at the table, but he has the backing of the globalist “Liberal World Order” which includes George Soros?

Cyril Ramaphosa, the corrupt White Money Capital (WMC) politician today is one of the richest men in South Africa. In a nation like South Africa where vast majority of ethnic blacks continue to be oppressed at the hands of the WMC, Cyril Ramaphosa represents (to quote V.I.Lenin) the “fifth column” in the ranks of the African National Congress. Cyril is “a black traitor who struck a compromising deal with WMC tycoon Nicholas Oppenheimer in order to script the most scandalous rags to riches story by exploiting weak links in the BBBEE”. We bring you the uncut story of the deal between Cyril Ramaphosa and WMC tycoon Nicholas Oppenheimer that forever compromised the hopes of millions of native blacks while placing Cyril Ramaphosa on the bridge that connected white monopoly capital with real state capture.

WMC Tycoon Nicholas Oppenheimer’s Offer Over the Bloods of Innocent Natives

Even as Nelson Mandela remained imprisoned, WMC tycoons like Nicholas Oppenheimer were busy reading through the lines of BBBEE trying to ready the next generation state capture blueprint by setting the cats among the pigeons in the rank and file of the otherwise largely honest African National Congress. The strategic goal of the WMC tycoon Nicholas Oppenheimer was “to throw a bone” at the middle class ethnic blacks and lure them into the opportunism of the free market economic philosophy. The strategic intent was to ensure status quo for the WMC even in the post-apartheid era and guarantee for the legacy of the Volkskapitalisme, and the WMC to be inherited by the next generation of the ‘Rainbow Nation” white beneficiaries. The offer from Nicholas Oppenheimer, the then Chairman of Anglo-American Corporation held importance from the twin perspective of:

• A $ 900 million deal between Nicholas Oppenheimer and Cyril Ramaphosa

• Anglo American Corporation accounted for 25% of SA GDP in 1996

Interpreting the Meaning of “Over the Bloods of Innocent Natives”

The offer from Nicholas Oppenheimer to Cyril Ramaphosa contained riders to safeguard the interests of the Anglo American Corporation and the rest of the WMC lobby. Oppenheimer’s rider was to ensure that the whites had the flesh while the vast majority of the innocent ethnic blacks had to stay content with the bones. This was ensured through the following twin strategic plank:

• Share Ownership Without Ceding Management Control to Blacks

Share ownership was to be ceded to select ethnic black influential leaders without ceding any management control. It meant that the ethnic blacks could have their cake but not eat it. It was a strategic alliance between WMC and the select corrupt black beneficiaries but one in which the blacks were still the subordinate allies.

• Investor Profiles Were Scanned for Blacks with Contacts at the Government Level

“How Cyril Ramaphosa Sold His Soul to The Oppenheimers For $900 Million. How Much Will He Sell SA For?” – Part 2dated 21/12/2017 at https://sa-news.com/how-cyril-ramaphosa-sold-his-soul-to-the-oppenheimers-for-900-million-how-much-will-he-sell-sa-for/

Cyril Ramaphosa having earned a law graduate degree on an Urban Foundation scholarship, sidelined leaders like Thabo Mbeki to head the National Empowerment Consortium. The Oppenheimer led Urban Foundation had sown the seeds of aspirations for a lucrative business career and lust for power. In Cyril Ramaphosa, the WMC found a chink in the armour of ANC; a man with weak moral character and scant regard for ideology, that the WMC could use to cut through the tight defenses of the ANC. Ramaphosa’s personal aspirations were dearer to him than the goals of the NDR in order to establish a classless society for the blacks. He was best suited for the position of a black middle class sell-out that the WMC were looking for. The meeting between Cyril Ramaphosa and Nicholas Oppenheimer was the point where greed met opportunism.

Objectives Of Co-opting Black Middle Class For State Capture

Having found a black sell-out in Cyril Ramaphosa, the WMC set its target on state capture through a systematic process of electoral factionalism and political vote bank purchase. The WMC’s plan was to purchase the black middle class votes by selling to them false dreams of progress and economic growth as rewards for joining hands with them. A division in the ANC’s vote bank could then enable the WMC to manipulate policy discourse in order to prevent any anti-business legislation and stop nationalization attempts by the government. It would have also allowed the WMC to run price fixing cartels and maintain secret corporate ownership of companies lawfully. All this could be done by throwing the blacks a ‘bone’.

Undervalued Stake Sale of Johnnic to Cyril Ramaphosa Led NEC Exploiting Weak Links in BBBEE

Once the WMC led by Anglo American Corporation boss Nicholas Oppenheimer were sure that they had Cyril Ramaphosa with them, they came up with strategic alternative processes for stake sale in Johnnic Holdings Limited to NEC to exploit the BBBEE weak links. The stake sale offer to Cyril Ramaphosa had the following highlights:

• Johnnic Holdings Limited, an Anglo American Corporation subsidiary was valued at $ 1.88 billion/8.5 billion Rand.

• Johnnic had stakes in South African Breweries, Premier Milling, Omni Media and Toyota South Africa.

• Johnnic sold 48% stake to National Empowerment Consortium led by Cyril Ramaphosa.

• Johnnic was trading at 56 rands per share on JSE at the time of the deal.

• NEC was to buy 20% share at 50 rands per share by July 1st, 1996. The deal was undervalued and hence unlawful.

• 18 months more beyond July 1st was given to NEC to buy 15% more stake at 5 % below the market price. Again there was an illegal under valuation of the deal.

• Retail investors were allowed to buy at 50 rands per share.

• Retail investors given credit of up to 90% of the amount required keeping the shares as security.

• Repayment of the credit was to be done from dividends and capital appreciation.

• NEC was to appoint half of Johnnic’s board level executives.

• NEC could effect no fundamental change to the company for three years.

• NEC could not sell its share for the three years.

• NEC could not change the management and daily operations of companies Johnnic invested in.

Ramaphosa’s rise to power and wealth hides his fall from grace and the unprecedented low levels of betrayal with his ANC comrades that he stooped to. To this day ethnic black infants in South Africa continue to die in sleep on their mother’s laps out of hunger, disease, malnutrition and poverty just because Cyril Ramaphosa, the WMC sell-out, chose to suck blood out of their innocent bodies. Julius Caesar on seeing Cyril Ramaphosa would be spinning in his grave saying “Brutus you too!”

>>13963816

>Nicholas Oppenheimer, the then Chairman of Anglo-American Corporation

“DR MAMPHELA RAMPHELE TO STEP DOWN FROM ANGLO AMERICAN BOARD”dated 25 July, 2012, at https://www.angloamerican.com/media/press-releases/2012/mamphela_ramphele

"Anglo American plc announces that Dr Mamphela Ramphele, a non-executive director, has requested to step down from the Board with effect from 25 July 2012 in order to concentrate her efforts on her educational and societal interests. Dr Ramphele joined the Anglo American Board in 2006."

Ramphele posed with Soros for the attached picture.

>>13963816

>>13870546

>>13944366

>>13830197

Anglo American is involved in governments around the world.

“Continued impunity for Anglo American despite its impacts on the community of El Melón” dated Feb 12, 2021, at https://londonminingnetwork.org/2021/02/continued-impunity-for-anglo-american-despite-its-impacts-on-the-community-of-el-melon/

Chile faces one of the worst water scarcity crises in recent years (1). One of the main causes is mining activity in its territory. There is massive extraction of water by transnational and national mining companies (2). Inequality in access to water in Chile is extremely high because of inequality in the distribution of water rights. There is a close relationship between water scarcity and the presence of mining activity in the territories. This situation directly affects the community of El Melón.

The community of El Melón, made up of about 11,000 inhabitants, has been affected by Anglo American’s activities for years. Anglo American, based in London, has one of its three Chilean operations in El Melón, Nogales. Since 2015, the inhabitants of the commune have not had constant access to drinking water (3). As a consequence, they have had to take action to defend their human right to water. During the COVID-19 pandemic, the inhabitants have not had one of the vital elements to protect themselves from the infection. The Municipality of Nogales, through cistern trucks, delivers water to the population. However, mining activity, which requires a lot of water, has not stopped. This is because Anglo American owns 119 litres per second of water rights, equivalent to 13% of the consumption rights of the entire population. While the inhabitants of El Melón fear catching the infection, Anglo American continues to exploit the territories, seemingly without reflecting on its consequences. The region has been declared an Extreme Water Scarcity Zone by the Chilean government.

The inhabitants have been in constant resistance against the company. In 2019 they had to take over one of the wells where Anglo American draws water (4), as a desperate measure, because many homes did not have water to supply themselves. Due to the growing need, the organized community filed an appeal against Anglo American (5). Ximena Gallardo, a member of the community’s Environmental Group, led the process. Their main argument was that the overexploitation of the water for mining activities was causing severe water shortage in the town. In an unprecedented ruling, the Supreme Court accepted the protection appeal and ruled in favour of the community.

The Chilean Supreme Court argued that everyone has the right to access to water, and that this right must particularly be protected in the case of rural communities such as the population of El Melón. However, the ruling was not against Anglo American, it was against the State of Chile. The Judicial Branch ordered the Municipality of Nogales, where the El Melón community is located, to carry out the necessary actions to guarantee the community’s access to water at a rate of at least 100 litres per person per day (6).

Although this is an advance in the understanding of the human right to water in a country that does not recognize it constitutionally, the Supreme Court leaves Anglo American completely unpunished for years of negative impacts on the community, the degradation of the ecosystem and the overexploitation of this vital element for life. The information presented by the community argued that the company extracts almost three times the water required by the community. In addition, since 2015 there has been continuous conflict over water. The company has been aware of this conflict since then, but has not given up on overdrawing water for its operations. As a consequence, what the company has done, in summary, has been the violation of the constitutional right to life and physical and psychological integrity of all members of the community.

It [Anglo American] has been involved in similar conflicts in communities in Colombia and Brazil. Let us not forget that the company is currently facing a lawsuit over the possible poisoning of more than 100,000 children and women in Zambia (7). To what extent will companies that violate fundamental and natural rights be left unpunished? Moving towards an international treaty that regulates business obligations on human rights is both necessary and urgent.

>>13963895

> Let us not forget that the company is currently facing a lawsuit over the possible poisoning of more than 100,000 children and women in Zambia (7). To what extent will companies that violate fundamental and natural rights be left unpunished? Moving towards an international treaty that regulates business obligations on human rights is both necessary and urgent.

Yet

“Uptick in copper exploration followed by Rio Tinto, Anglo American and other majors”dated 16/05/2021 at https://www.africaintelligence.com/mining-sector_financing-and-advisory/2021/06/15/uptick-in-copper-exploration-followed-by-rio-tinto-anglo-american-and-other-majors,109673288-art

The rise in copper prices has lead to a reboot of exploration projects in Zambia from sector giants to juniors looking for a stockmarket listing, overshadowing the country's colossal debt and recent spat with Glencore and Vedanta.

“00DEZZ - Real State Capture has now taken place.” - https://youtu.be/BVu9K8XXCxo

“LFN, De Beer approach AU to Intervene in Contempt of Court Fiasco; NDPP asked to Probe ‘captured’ Judges and CASAC”- https://www.libertyfighters.co.za/news/lfn-de-beer-approach-au-to-intervene-in-contempt-of-court-fiasco-ndpp-asked-to-probe-captured-judges-and-casac/

Last week one could almost see President Ramaphosa’s smile behind his mask when three important Court judgments went in his favour; irrespective a lot of controversy. On Tuesday, 29 June 2021, ex-President Zuma was summarily sentenced to imprisonment without trial by the Constitutional Court for contempt of court. Two days later, on 1 July 2021, not only did the Constitutional Court clear him from CR17 wrongs, but the Supreme Court of Appeal referenced to the Zuma judgment of two days’ prior to conclude that LFN President Reyno De Beer was contemptuous towards the SCA without De Beer, like Zuma, ever having the opportunity to state his case either.

The five SCA judges Navsa, Ponnan, Mbatha JJA and Rogers and Unterhalter AJJA in their purported judgment instructed the SCA Registrar to refer the judgment to the National Director of Public Prosecutions, Adv. Shamila Batohi, for her consideration. However, they already stated that De Beer was contemptuous and had an intent. Unsurprisingly, they also upheld the appeal by Minister Dlamini Zuma, which had been driven by Ramaphosa for some time.

On Friday, De Beer formally lodged a complaint of human rights violations against the State of South Africa with the AU’s African Commission on Human and Peoples’ Rights (ACHPR). Therein, De Beer referenced the intentional link now created between the well-known LFN challenge against the ongoing National State of Disaster and the at this stage impending incarceration of ex-President Zuma. The ACHPR was asked to urgently intervene to suspend the Constitutional Court order against Zuma pending a proper investigation as to the real reasons for entities opposing Ramaphosa being held in contempt of court, in similar fashion. De Beer himself is now intimidated to possibly face jail time.

The Secretariat of the ACHPR was communicated with by phone on Friday. The commission indicated that it would treat the matter with the necessary urgency it deserves.

In today’s letter by De Beer, Batohi is informed that both De Beer and LFN “are prepared to be investigated for contempt of court.” However, so De Beer further, “we have reasons to believe that such investigation is must be linked to an investigation in terms of the possible corrupt relationship between CASAC and its representatives, President Ramaphosa, the Cabinet and one or more of the following judges:-

i) Jafta J (CC); ii) Khampepe J (CC); iii) Madlanga J (CC); iv) Majiedt J (CC); v) Mhlantla J (CC); vi) Theron J (CC); vii) Tshiqi J (CC); viii) Pillay AJ (CC); ix) Tlaletsi AJ (CC); x) Maya P (SCA); xi) Navsa JA (SCA); xii) Ponnan JA (SCA); xiii) Mbatha JA (SCA); xiv) Rogers AJA (SCA); xv) Unterhalter AJA (SCA); xvi) and Mlambo JP (HCGD).”

De Beer stated to the NDPP that “[He] has apparently become political target and does not fear imprisonment for exercising his rights. Should you, Madam, wish to align yourself with President Ramaphosa and the judiciary, writer shall stand his persecution with pride.”

Kindly download the complaint to the ACHPR here, https://www.libertyfighters.co.za/wp-content/uploads/2021/07/210702-F-ACHPRComplaint-Public.pdf

“Nelson Mandela Foundation slams 'dangerous' Jacob Zuma after his arrest”- https://www.timeslive.co.za/politics/2021-07-08-nelson-mandela-foundation-slams-dangerous-jacob-zuma-after-his-arrest/

The Nelson Mandela Foundation has heavily criticised former president Jacob Zuma after his incarceration overnight.

In a statement on Thursday issued by its spokesperson Kneo Mokgopa, it welcomed that Zuma “submitted himself to law enforcement” but slammed his failure to comply with the Constitutional Court.

“We note that Mr Zuma failed to abide by the deadline set by the Constitutional Court, thus continuing a pattern of disregard for the rule of law and for our constitutional democracy,” said Mokgopa.

Mokgopa said for nearly two decades, Zuma has acted with impunity and encouraged a culture of impunity around him.

“His legal strategy has been one of obfuscation and delay, ultimately in an attempt to render our judicial processes unintelligible. We are profoundly disturbed by the willingness of Mr Zuma to court public violence and lawlessness in support of political and personal agendas.

“The scholarship of Mbongiseni Buthelezi has deconstructed the ways in which Mr Zuma mobilises both struggle-era identities and ethnic identities for his own ends. This is extremely dangerous in the contexts of a country where the rule of law is under siege at so many levels,” said Mokgopa.

Mokgopa said though it is tempting to regard Zuma’s arrest as the end of the road, it was merely another phase in what the foundation believes will be a long and fraught journey.

“The patterns and the dangers are clear. It is vital that Mr Zuma and his supporters be held accountable every step of the way.”

Zuma was arrested after the ConCourt found him guilty of contempt of court for failing to appear at the Zondo commission to answer to allegations of state capture during his tenure as president. He was sentenced to 15 months' imprisonment and given five days to hand himself over, but missed the deadline.

His supporters had gathered outside his home in Nkandla since last week, vowing that the former president would not go to prison and threatening to block the police from effecting his arrest. However, he handed himself over overnight to serve the sentence.

“Jacob Zuma will be treated with dignity in jail, may serve just under 4 months - minister Ronald Lamola” - https://www.timeslive.co.za/news/south-africa/2021-07-08-jacob-zuma-will-be-treated-with-dignity-in-jail-may-serve-just-under-4-months-justice-minister-ronald-lamola/

“In his case there is no stipulation for a non-parole period. This means that the former president will be eligible for parole once a quarter of his sentence has been served.

Zuma will be kept in isolation for 14 days, during which time a profile report will be compiled to determine where he will serve the rest of his sentence within the prison.