>>16696637

“R150 Million Gift from the Kirsh Foundation” to Witwatersrand University – December 2020

https://www.wits.ac.za/media/wits-university/alumni/documents/the-edge-newsletters/TheEdge_December_2020.pdf

Nathan Kirsh (BCom 1953) launched the University’s Centenary Campaign with a R150 million endowment from the Kirsh Foundation to provide student scholarships. “Wits played an integral role in transforming my life. I am giving back with the hope that Wits can have the same impact in transforming the lives of young people for generations to come,” he said. Read more here, https://www.wits.ac.za/news/sources/alumni-news/2020/wits-secures-r150-million-for-an-endowment-for-the-missing-middle.html.

>>16697430

”University of Witwatersrand Famous Alumni”

https://alumnius.net/university_of_the_wi-9885-12

This is just their famous list of alumni however they provide an additional list of people who are spreadout throughout the world. Few of these people are mentions in the attached image.

Nelson Mandela – No description needed.

Sydney Brenner - South African biologist. In 2002, he shared the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine with H. Robert Horvitz and Sir John E. Sulston.[1] Brenner made significant contributions to work on the genetic code, and other areas of molecular biology. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sydney_Brenner

Aaron Klug – Born in Lithuania. British biophysicist and chemist. He was a winner of the 1982 Nobel Prize in Chemistry. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aaron_Klug

Nadime Godimer – See attached image.

William Kentridge – born in 1955 in Johannesburg. Son of two anti-apartheid lawyers, he learned at an early age to question structural impositions. South African artist, film-maker, and performer. https://www.sahistory.org.za/people/william-kentridge - details of his parents are in the attached image.

Ivan Glasenberg - Glencore

Phillip V. Tobias - South African palaeoanthropologist and Professor Emeritus at the University of the Witwatersrand in Johannesburg. He was best known for his work at South Africa's hominid fossil sites.[2] He was also an activist for the eradication of apartheid and gave numerous anti-apartheid speeches at protest rallies and also to academic audiences.[3] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Phillip_V._Tobias

Winfried Bischoff - an Anglo-German banker and former chairman of Lloyds Banking Group. He previously served as chairman and interim CEO of Citigroup in 2007. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Winfried_Bischoff

Patrick Soon-Shiong - Patrick Soon-Shiong (born July 29, 1952) is a Chinese-South African transplant surgeon, billionaire businessman, bioscientist, and media proprietor. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Patrick_Soon-Shiong

Maria Ramos - Chairperson of AngloGold Ashanti and used to work for Absa Group Limited, Transnet, National Treasury, Barclays, etc.. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Maria_Ramos

Lee Rogers Berger - an American-born South African paleoanthropologist and National Geographic Explorer-in-Residence.

Johnny Clegg - See attached image.

Gavin Hood - South African filmmaker, and actor, best known for writing and directing Tsotsi (2005), which won the Academy Award for Best Foreign Language Film. He also directed the films X-Men Origins: Wolverine, Ender's Game, Eye in the Sky and most recently, Official Secrets. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gavin_Hood

Richard Goldstone – See attached image.

Joe Slovo – See attached image.

Peter Sarnak

Dennis Brutus

Harry Schwarz – See attached image.

Teresa Heinz

Jani Allan

Lucy Allais

Meyer Feldberg

David King

Patrice Motsepe – a South African mining billionaire businessman.

Lionel Bryer

Lewis Wolpert

Jack Zunz

Max Price

Helen Zille

Eduardo Mondlane

Winnie Mandela – Nelson Mandela’s wife.

Kevin Volans

Mamokgethi Setati

Denise Scott Brown

Ruth First – See attached image.

Thabo Makgoba

Danie G. Krige

Helen Suzman – See attached image.

Seymour Papert

Janet Suzman

Max Gluckman

Rory Byrne

Selig Percy Amoils

Himla Soodyall

Nathan Kirsh – Billionaire South Africa

Steven Collis

Michael Bear

Thuli Madonsela

Priscilla Kincaid

Mbuyiseni Ndlozi

Cedric Phatudi

>>16697445

>Max Gluckman

“The Enigma of Max Gluckman: The Ethnographic Life of a "Luckyman" in Africa”

https://muse.jhu.edu/book/60223/

The Enigma of Max Gluckman examines one of the most influential British anthropologists of the twentieth century. South African–born Max Gluckman was the founder of what became known as the Manchester School of social anthropology, a key figure in the anthropology of anticolonialism and conflict theory in southern Africa, and one of the most prolific structuralist and Marxist anthropologists of his generation. From his position at Oxford University as graduate student and lecturer to his career at Manchester, Gluckman was known to be generous and engaged with his closest colleagues but brutish and hostile in his denunciations of their work if it did not contribute to the social justice and activist vision he held for the discipline.

Conventional histories of anthropology have treated Gluckman as an outlier from mainstream British social anthropology based on his career at the University of Manchester and his gruff manner. He was certainly not the colonial gentleman typical of his British colleagues in the field. Gluckman was deeply engaged with field research in southern Africa on the Zulus, in Barotseland with the Lozi, and also in connection with his directorship of the Rhodes-Livingstone Institute from 1941 to 1947, which obscured his growing critique of anthropology’s methods and ties to Western colonialism and racial oppression in the subcontinent.

Robert J. Gordon’s biography skillfully reexamines the colorful life of Max Gluckman and restores his career in the British anthropological tradition.

https://anthropology.ua.edu/theory/the-manchester-school/

Max Gluckman (1911-1975) was born in Johannesburg, South Africa to Russian-Jewish parents. He studied anthropology at the University of Witwatersrand from 1928-34. There he studied under Mrs. A. W. Hoernl and I. Schapera. In 1934 he attended Oxford as a Transvaal Rhodes Scholar and received his Doctorate of Philosophy in 1936.

>>16697445

>Lewis Wolpert

“The casual sexism of Lewis Wolpert” - https://youtu.be/eJTjiOt-q3c

“Lewis Wolpert obituary” – Related to Helen Suzman, distributed communist literature and met Nelson Mandela in 1952

https://www.theguardian.com/science/2021/jan/29/lewis-wolpert-obituary

29 January 2021

Wolpert was born in Johannesburg, South Africa, the only surviving child of William, a manager in a newsagent and bookshop, and his wife, Sarah (nee Suzman). In a frank interview for the British Library’s National Life Stories collection, he remembered his parents with little warmth: his father would tolerate no contradiction, and his mother cared only for appearances in their Jewish social circle. He felt more positively about other relatives: one of his uncles, a distinguished doctor, was married to the anti-apartheid politician Helen Suzman, and he spent some time living in their home.

He studied civil engineering at the University of the Witwatersrand, where he became involved in progressive politics, helping to distribute communist literature in the townships; in 1952 he met Nelson Mandela. After two years working on soil mechanics as assistant to the director of the Building Research Institute in Pretoria, he hitchhiked to Europe, working briefly for the water planning board in Israel before studying soil mechanics at Imperial College London.

https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/34051671/

Lewis Wolpert was a brilliant and inspiring scientist who made hugely significant contributions which underpin and influence our understanding of developmental biology today. He spent his career interested in how the fertilised egg can give rise to the whole embryo (and ultimately the adult) with one head, two arms, two legs, all its organs and importantly how cells become different from each other and how they 'know' what to become. His ideas revolutionised the way developmental biology was perceived and also reinvigorated, in particular, the key question of how pattern formation in embryonic development is achieved. He published over 200 scientific articles and received many accolades over his career for his work and services to science in the UK. These included a CBE (Commander of the Order of the British Empire) from the Queen, being elected a Fellow of the Royal Society and a Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature. He was also a recipient of the Waddington Medal from the British Society for Developmental Biology and was awarded The Royal Society's top honour, the Royal Medal in 2018. Lewis was also a gifted teacher and communicator, including being the author of a textbook on developmental biology used around the world to train the next generation of developmental biologists. This contribution was recognised in 2003, by the award of the Viktor Hamburger Outstanding Educator Award from the Society of Developmental Biology in the USA. Lewis always enjoyed giving talks and lectures, having an infectious and persuasive enthusiasm coupled with a sharp sense of humour. He also published articles in popular science journals (aimed at the public) such as New Scientist, Scientific American and The Scientist. Lewis also wrote several popular science books. He was a passionate advocate for the public understanding of science and was the Chair of The Royal Society/Royal Institution/British Association for the Advancement of Science Committee for Public Understanding of Science (1994-1998). For this contribution he was awarded The Royal Society Michael Faraday Medal for "excellence in communicating science to UK audiences". He presented the prestigious Royal Institution Christmas Lectures in 1986 entitled 'Frankenstein's Quest: development of life'. These lectures, six in total, are presented by leading scientists and aimed at the general public and broadcast on national television. On a personal level, Lewis influenced all who came into contact with him, shaped his students and postdocs careers and instilled in them, and the community as whole, a life-long love of developmental biology.

>>16697430

>>16697445

>Helen Zille

In the image, Mamphela Ramphela poses with Bill Moyers, Judy Woodruff, Ted Turner, Anthony Fauci, Irene Diamond, Bill Gates Sr, Tom Brokaw, Leonore Annenberg, George Soros, Brooke Astor, David Rockefeller, Barbara Walters, Richard D. Parsons and David McCullough

“Exposed: DA-Agang mystery funder” – Nathan “Natie” Kirsh, Mamphela Ramphele, former prosecutor Glynnis Breytenbach, Helen Zille

https://www.iol.co.za/news/politics/exposed-da-agang-mystery-funder-1644076

February 9, 2014

Johannesburg - South African-born billionaire Nathan “Natie” Kirsh is most probably the mystery donor who prompted AgangSA leader Mamphela Ramphele’s desperate bid to join the DA.

Speaking to The Sunday Independent on Saturday, Ramphele confirmed that Kirsh had funded AgangSA and would continue to fund the fledgling party. She said she stayed with the Kirsh family in London during a fundraising and voter-canvassing trip in the UK in the week before the DA’s federal executive meeting, which resolved to make her its presidential candidate.

The deal, which was meant to include a merger between Agang and the official opposition went sour less than a week later, resulting in a nasty political and personal fallout between Ramphele and her friend, DA leader Helen Zille.

Kirsh said he and his family were “friendly with” Ramphele, but he was cagey about confirming whether he funded AgangSA or the DA. “I’m not going to comment one way or the other.”

Zille would not confirm that Kirsh was the donor who broke the proverbial camel’s back over the past fortnight, preferring to say “there were many donors”.

She said, however, the donor was not a corporation but an individual.

Zille spoke repeatedly this week about a specific dinner party at which every donor present told Ramphele they could not support Agang because it would compete with the DA.

Zille said this week that Ramphele and Agang were in serious financial straits, but when asked to clarify she said Ramphele was “a very wealthy woman” and could personally finance her election campaign “with her eyes closed”.

Zille kept information on the finer details of the failed Agang-DA merger and Ramphele’s funding woes confined to only a very small inner circle this week, with many prominent party members left as clueless about the deal as outsiders.As the DA goes into full campaign swing, it has to choose its next presidential candidate.

Zille, who has been friends with Ramphele for 40 years, said she knew the former businesswoman usually stayed with friends when visiting New York or London, but did not know about her relationship with the Kirsh family.

“I’m not into politics, but I am into South Africa and it really distresses me to see the destruction of the rule of law, which is why I funded (former prosecutor Glynnis Breytenbach). “She’s a gutsy little lady.” [Kirsh said]

The Sunday Independent previously revealed how Kirsh channelled money through the FW de Klerk Foundation to fund Breytenbach’s legal battles against the National Prosecuting Authority.

Two weeks ago the DA announced that Breytenbach was part of its secret arsenal to go to Parliament after the May general elections – something Kirsh described as an “elegant way out” of her professional battles with her former employers.

Breytenbach left the NPA this week after an internal investigation accused her of misconduct for allegedly accepting a R6.3 million donation for her legal fees from Kirsh (see article on page 5).

Another accusation is that a company owned by Kirsh loaned her and her business partner $1m. Kirsh was a complainant in a case she successfully prosecuted 10 years ago.

Meanwhile, the DA’s federal council – the party’s highest decision-making body between congresses – will be tasked with mapping out the party’s strategy to win back the trust of its supporters after the failed marriage with Agang.

>>16694002

>>>16569271 Glencore & Xstrata Bun Part One

>>>16569275 Glencore & Xstrata Bun Part Two

This article explains how Glencore conducts business, hires employees and it discusses Congo’s Katanga deal to give perspective

“Special report: The biggest company you never heard of”[Glencore] - Willy Strothotte – Part 1

https://www.reuters.com/article/us-glencore-idUSTRE71O1DC20110225

February 25, 2011

Yet within the commodities and mining sectors, Glencore is regarded with a mix of admiration and fear. “It’s an incredibly performance-based culture – investment banking times three, probably,” says a second outsider.

Glencore’s client list is a roster of the world’s largest firms including BP, Total, Exxon Mobil, ConocoPhilips, Chevron, Vale, Rio Tinto, ArcelorMittal and Sony, as well as the national oil companies of Iran, Mexico and Brazil and public utilities in Spain, France, China, Taiwan and Japan.

Physical commodities traders, like Glencore and its main rivals Vitol, Trafigura and Cargill, make their money finding customers for raw materials and selling them at a mark-up, using complex hedges to reduce the risk of bad weather, market swings, piracy or regime change.

Unlike Chicago traders who scream out bets on the future prices of orange juice or pork bellies, physical commodity traders negotiate prices and arrange shipments of cargo quietly, keeping their positions well hidden from others.

“It’s modern financial engineering meshed with an old-fashioned commodity trading house,” said John Kilduff, a partner at the hedge fund Again Capital LLC in New York. “It’s amazing how this formula has flown under the radar for so long, as the profits and growth of these firms has been astounding.”

Glencore’s profit after tax topped $4.75 billion in 2008, not far off its best year ever, 2007, when profit ran to around $5.19 billion. Even in the gruesome market of 2009, it raked in more than $2.72 billion.

Employees are hired young and expected to make a career at the group, where they are known as either “thinkers” bright number-crunchers who design the company’s complex financial deals or “soldiers”, the hard-driven traders who fight to win the transactions.

The company’s 10 division managers are aged 37 to 52 and remain largely anonymous outside Glencore’s business circles. “They’re really bright guys, they are really focused, they play to win every day,” says a mining executive in North America. Or as the second outsider puts it: “They look like kids, really – but they are incredibly impressive individuals.”

THE MARC RICH LEGACY

Glencore likes to promote from within and build a kind of closed, self-sustaining network of senior traders, a culture encouraged by the company’s founder Marc Rich. Not that Glencore likes to mention Rich, a figure so notorious that he’s not even mentioned in the official history on Glencore’s website.

Rich escaped Nazi Europe as a seven year old, and grew up in the United States. He launched the trading group which would become Glencore under his own name in 1974.

Rich was ultimately forced to sell out to his management and hand over control to a former metals trader, the German Willy Strothotte.

The company was reborn under Strothotte as Glencore.

The firm continued to trade, make money – and occasionally become implicated in controversial dealings. It was one of dozens accused of paying kickbacks to Iraq in 2005 by a commission that probed the United Nation’s Oil for Food program. But while Dutch-based rival Vitol was fined $17.5 million after pleading guilty, a preliminary judicial investigation into Glencore by Switzerland’s attorney-general found a “lack of culpable information”. Glencore maintained that if any payments were made by agents it did not know or approve of them.

>>16698270

“Special report: The biggest company you never heard of” [Glencore] - England cricketer Phil Edmonds – Part 2

https://www.reuters.com/article/us-glencore-idUSTRE71O1DC20110225

February 25, 2011

A SIGNATURE DEAL

Glencore’s Christmas swoop on Katanga Mining was something of a signature deal for the firm, proof that it can use its role as the trading world’s biggest middleman to its advantage. The company is always on the prowl for opportunities to sell producers’ output. But it also likes to set things up so that when markets tumble, it’s ready to buy those same producers outright.

Katanga had just the right combination of elements: relationships built over time, a project in need of funds and an exclusive marketing agreement, and the scope for equity participation. The losers, in this case, would be the company’s minority shareholders, most of whose holdings were diluted by over 800 percent.

The acquisition was the culmination of 18 months of deal-making in Congo, where the first freely elected government in four decades had embarked on a sweeping review of mining licenses granted by previous regimes.

Workers in Congo’s southeast copper belt had battled for two years to rebuild what had once been Africa’s richest copper mines, but were now littered with rusted hulks. In 2007, when markets had been riding high on cheap credit and commodity prices boomed, Katanga had been the subject of a $1.4 billion hostile takeover bid by a company led by former England cricketer Phil Edmonds. It had the potential to become the world’s biggest producer of cobalt – used in batteries, jet turbines and electroplating.

As the credit crisis began to bite, metals prices tanked and risky companies around the world found it ever tougher to raise finance.

Where others saw risks, though, Glencore scented opportunity. In June 2007, Glencore and partner Dan Gertler, an Israeli mining magnate, paid 300 million pounds for a quarter-stake in mining company Nikanor, which was seeking to revive derelict copper mines next to Katanga’s. That deal gave Glencore exclusive rights to sell all Nikanor’s output – an “offtake” agreement.

Offtake deals are common in risky projects like mining, where banks are reluctant to lend because of uncertainty about how they will be repaid. An offtake ensures a miner has customers before it starts digging, and provides a guaranteed source of raw materials to a trader, which can also act as security if the trader provides finance.

By investing in Nikanor, Glencore consolidated a powerful partnership: half of the stake it bought was on behalf of a trust linked to Gertler, an old Congo hand who industry sources say has close ties to government officials including President Joseph Kabila.

Katanga’s mines were just months from producing copper and cobalt again. The mining company had spent the summer of 2007 fighting off a hostile bid from Central African Mining and Exploration Company (CAMEC), headed by Edmonds, the former cricketer. After searching fruitlessly for a “white knight” a big miner willing to pay top dollar to fend off CAMEC Katanga turned to Glencore.

The trading company was ready to oblige. In October it agreed to a 10-year offtake deal and a loan of $150 million that could be converted into Katanga shares. Just one month later, Katanga and its neighbor Nikanor merged, giving Glencore 8.5 percent of the enlarged firm.

>>16698275

>>16698270

“Special report: The biggest company you never heard of” [Glencore] - Toronto stock exchange rules - Part 3

https://www.reuters.com/article/us-glencore-idUSTRE71O1DC20110225

February 25, 2011

In June 2008, with the global financial crisis deepening, Katanga Chief Executive Art Ditto resigned for “personal reasons”. Glencore, exercising a clause from its earlier Nikanor purchase, appointed a caretaker chief executive. It was then that Katanga embarked on its increasingly desperate search for new funds.

Issuing a statement that said it was “in serious financial difficulty”, Katanga struck its deal with Glencore, which added $100 million plus outstanding interest to its earlier loan, to give a total of $265 million. The Swiss trading firm subsequently sold on about a quarter of the loans to RP Capital, a hedge fund also linked to Gertler. Then in a linked deal that closed in July 2009, Katanga’s debt burden was slashed by swapping the loans for shares alongside a $250 million rights issue. Most of that equity, too, went to Glencore.

Now Glencore had a mining complex with the potential to be Africa’s biggest copper producer. To approve the arrangement, Katanga had used Toronto stock exchange rules that exempt companies in financial distress from a shareholder vote. That left most of Katanga’s minority shareholdings facing a virtual wipeout from the heavy dilution, a measure they voted through in a subsequent shareholders’ meeting.

“Everybody got taken down. There were a couple of savvy guys who got out early, but most people got taken for a ride. It’s a sad story,” said analyst Cailey Barker with Numis Securities in London.

Barker says Katanga had little choice but to accept Glencore’s terms since it was probably a couple of weeks away from bankruptcy. “The only person that was left was Glencore,” Barker said. “They said we’ll get involved, but we’ll take our pound of flesh.”

This sort of deal with the right to convert debt into equity in the tail has proved pivotal to Glencore as it has built up its mining assets. Analyst Michael Rawlinson at Liberum Capital, who was previously an investment banker for JP Morgan Cazenove and has worked on deals in Congo for Nikanor, says the fact Glencore was on the spot is key.

“If you’re someone like Rio (Tinto) or Anglo (American), often in these early-stage places you have no reason to be there, you haven’t got any assets there,” he says. “But if you’re Glencore, you source concentrate and product from these places, you have trading relationships. They’re on the ground first, so they see these opportunities first.”

Glencore is constantly cutting similar deals, some of the biggest of which it already has in place with its Swiss neighbor and close affiliate Xstrata. In the space of two weeks recently, Glencore agreed offtake deals with London Mining for its Sierra Leone iron ore production and Mwana Africa for nickel output in Zimbabwe. The deals often come with, or are followed by, a financing arrangement: U.S. PolyMet Mining Corp, for instance sealed an arrangement in January that involves Glencore buying shares with the right to convert the company’s debt into equity.

>>16698270

>>16698275

>>16698285

“Special report: The biggest company you never heard of” [Glencore] – Glencore and Xstrata shared a chairman - Part 4

https://www.reuters.com/article/us-glencore-idUSTRE71O1DC20110225

February 25, 2011

A NECESSARY EVIL

As one mining industry source puts it: “We all know that Glencore never leaves any crumbs on the table.”

Like Goldman, which floated in 1999, Glencore wants the permanent capital that comes with a listing. In a private partnership, payouts to departing partners shrink the capital base, but public companies’ equity remains intact even if the shares change hands at dizzying speeds.

Raising public capital would help Glencore pay out any retiring employees, whose compensation is now set to be disbursed over five years from the firm’s $20 billion book value.

New equity would also reassure the big credit rating agencies, which rate Glencore debt a notch or two above “junk”. The more flexible capital structure that comes with a listing should also allow it to make really meaty acquisitions.

It has long been Glasenberg’s ambition to merge Glencore with London-listed Xstrata, industry sources say. The companies are already so close that the Financial Times’ influential Lex column has dubbed them the “Tweedledum and Tweedledee” of their industry. Glencore owns 34.4 percent of Xstrata stock, they share a chairman, Willy Strothoffe; and Xstrata’s assets could, in a stroke, fill the gaps in Glencore’s portfolio to create a mining and trading powerhouse.

But when speculation surfaced last year around a Glencore-Xstrata merger, Xstrata shareholders opposed it, arguing a valuation for Glencore should be set by market forces, not agreed to behind closed doors. “It’s very difficult to value Glencore because you just don’t know enough about it. That’s why most investors would prefer an IPO – which will give you more visibility,” one of the top 10 biggest institutional investors in Xstrata told Reuters last year.

Perhaps to force things to a head, Glencore in December 2009 set the clock ticking on a change in its set-up by issuing a convertible bond. A year after picking up Katanga, the firm sold $2.2 billion in bonds that can convert into shares to a select band of investors, including energy-focused private equity firm First Reserve, Singaporean sovereign wealth fund GIC, China’s Zijin Mining Group, financier Nathaniel Rothschild plus U.S. fund managers BlackRock, Fidelity and Capital Group.

>>16698270

>>16698275

>>16698285

>>16698352

“Special report: The biggest company you never heard of” [Glencore] – Part 5

https://www.reuters.com/article/us-glencore-idUSTRE71O1DC20110225

February 25, 2011

In that light, the company’s most significant departure could be Strothotte, 66, who joined in 1977 and ran the metals and minerals division before replacing Rich as CEO in 1993.

Could the glare of a public listing be less dramatic than some fear? Resource groups such as BP, which houses one of the world’s biggest oil trading operations, have managed to juggle public life without revealing too much about exactly what their trading arms are up to. Gidley-Kitchen says that like many banks, a listed Glencore should also manage to keep most details of its trader compensation under the radar: “Goldmans and Barclays Capital managed to avoid revealing absolutely everything that they are doing and I would think Glencore would be able to do the same.”

Glencore’s huge coal operation in Colombia, Prodeco, was fined a total of nearly $700,000 in 2009 for several environmental violations, including waste disposal without a permit and producing coal without an environmental management plan. Xstrata had to pay the fines during its temporary ownership in 2009, but said the violations occurred before it took over. Prodeco said the violations themselves took place years earlier, before it acquired and ran the network of mines. Xstrata, like many major mining groups, has experience in meeting demands for tough green standards and says it put in place an environmental management system at Prodeco before handing the mines back to Glencore in early 2010.

In Ecuador, the current government has tried to reduce the role played by middle men such as Glencore with state oil company Petroecuador, says Fernando Villavicencio, a Quito-based oil sector analyst. “Glencore has not been transparent in its business in Ecuador,” Villavicencio said. The company “had been a favorite of almost all the democratic governments of Ecuador. It won almost all the contracts it competed for. They signed contracts with apparently low differentials, only to renegotiate the contracts in the middle of their terms, arguing that their costs had risen. Petroecuador usually went along with it.”

Tenders such as those in Ecuador are public and subject to extensions and negotiations which are expressly written into contracts, according to Glencore.

WHO WON’T BUY?

To ready it for public life, Glencore is preparing a sustainability report to bring it into line with mining majors and using Finsbury, a public relations firm whose clients include Royal Dutch Shell and Rio Tinto, for strategic advice. Former Shell spokesman Simon Buerk has been taken on to reinforce in-house communications.

But no matter what Glencore does, some investors will steer clear.

Mike Fox, head of UK equities at Co-Operative Asset Management and the manager of two sustainable funds, says ethical investing can embrace the natural resources sector – his funds have stakes in BG Group, the natural gas producer, and Lonmin, whose platinum is used in catalytic converters - but that it would be difficult to hold shares in many oil and mining companies: “Sustainable investors will always have an issue with the very fundamental nature of these businesses,” he says.

Glencore’s arrival in the FTSE would intensify the London exchange’s shift into natural resource firms. Fox says the increasing domination by a single sector is a “big headache” for smaller British investors who want a diversified portfolio. “It concerns me as much from a financial perspective as a moral perspective,” he says. “Customers will not expect that when they invest in a mainstream UK growth fund that a third of their money will end up in commodities.”

While commodities remain hot, though, that’s unlikely to change. As Glencore ponders a float, Katanga Mining is reaping the benefit of the surging markets and its wealthy, powerful owner. After losing $108 million in 2009, it posted an annual profit of $265 million in 2010.

“Destroying African agriculture” – “From Exporter to Importer” – Part 1

https://www.tni.org/en/article/destroying-african-agriculture

4 June 2008

Biofuel production did not create, but only exacerbated the global food crisis that had been building up for years, as policies promoted by the World Bank, IMF, and WTO encouraged the conversion of economies that are largely food-self-sufficient into chronic food importers.

Biofuel production is certainly one of the culprits in the current global food crisis. But while the diversion of corn from food to biofuel feedstock has been a factor in food prices shooting up, the more primordial problem has been the conversion of economies that are largely food-self-sufficient into chronic food importers. Here the World Bank, International Monetary Fund (IMF), and the World Trade Organization (WTO) figure as much more important villains.

Whether in Latin America, Asia, or Africa, the story has been the same: the destabilization of peasant producers by a one-two punch of IMF-World Bank structural adjustment programs that gutted government investment in the countryside followed by the massive influx of subsidized U.S. and European Union agricultural imports after the WTO’s Agreement on Agriculture pried open markets.

African agriculture is a case study of how doctrinaire economics serving corporate interests can destroy a whole continent’s productive base.

From Exporter to Importer

At the time of decolonization in the 1960s, Africa was not just self-sufficient in food but was actually a net food exporter, its exports averaging 1.3 million tons a year between 1966-70. Today, the continent imports 25% of its food, with almost every country being a net food importer. Hunger and famine have become recurrent phenomena, with the last three years alone seeing food emergencies break out in the Horn of Africa, the Sahel, Southern Africa, and Central Africa.

Agriculture is in deep crisis, and the causes are many, including civil wars and the spread of HIV-AIDS. However, a very important part of the explanation was the phasing out of government controls and support mechanisms under the structural adjustment programs to which most African countries were subjected as the price for getting IMF and World Bank assistance to service their external debt.

Instead of triggering a virtuous spiral of growth and prosperity, structural adjustment saddled Africa with low investment, increased unemployment, reduced social spending, reduced consumption, and low output, all combining to create a vicious cycle of stagnation and decline.

Lifting price controls on fertilizers while simultaneously cutting back on agricultural credit systems simply led to reduced applications, lower yields, and lower investment. One would have expected the non-economist to predict this outcome, which was screened out by the Bank and Fund’s free-market paradigm. Moreover, reality refused to conform to the doctrinal expectation that the withdrawal of the state would pave the way for the market and private sector to dynamize agriculture. Instead, the private sector believed that reducing state expenditures created more risk and failed to step into the breach. In country after country, the predictions of neoliberal doctrine yielded precisely the opposite: the departure of the state “crowded out” rather than “crowded in” private investment. In those instances where private traders did come in to replace the state, an Oxfam report noted, “they have sometimes done so on highly unfavorable terms for poor farmers,” leaving “farmers more food insecure, and governments reliant on unpredictable aid flows.” The usually pro-private sector Economist agreed, admitting that “many of the private firms brought in to replace state researchers turned out to be rent-seeking monopolists.”

>>16751301

“Destroying African agriculture” – “From Exporter to Importer” – Part 2

https://www.tni.org/en/article/destroying-african-agriculture

4 June 2008

What support the government was allowed to muster was channeled by the Bank to export agriculture – to generate the foreign exchange earnings that the state needed to service its debt to the Bank and the Fund. But, as in Ethiopia during the famine of the early 1980s, this led to the dedication of good land to export crops, with food crops forced into more and more unsuitable soil, thus exacerbating food insecurity. Moreover, the Bank’s encouraging several economies undergoing adjustment to focus on export production of the same crops simultaneously often led to overproduction that then triggered a price collapse in international markets. For instance, the very success of Ghana’s program to expand cocoa production triggered a 48% drop in the international price of cocoa between 1986 and 1989, threatening, as one account put it, “to increase the vulnerability of the entire economy to the vagaries of the cocoa market."(1) In 2002-2003, a collapse in coffee prices contributed to another food emergency in Ethiopia.

As in many other regions, structural adjustment in Africa was not simply underinvestment but state divestment. But there was one major difference. In Latin America and Asia, the Bank and Fund confined themselves for the most part to macromanagement, or supervising the dismantling of the state’s economic role from above. These institutions left the dirty details of implementation to the state bureaucracies. In Africa, where they dealt with much weaker governments, the Bank and Fund micromanaged such decisions as how fast subsidies should be phased out, how many civil servants had to be fired, or even, as in the case of Malawi, how much of the country’s grain reserve should be sold and to whom. In other words, Bank and IMF resident proconsuls reached into the very innards of the state’s involvement in the agricultural economy to rip it up.

The Role of Trade

Compounding the negative impact of adjustment were unfair trade practices on the part of the EU and the United States. Trade liberalization allowed low-priced subsidized EU beef to enter and drive many West African and South African cattle raisers to ruin. [Don’t forget the murders of farmers in South Africa]. With their subsidies legitimized by the WTO’s Agreement on Agriculture, U.S. cotton growers offloaded their cotton on world markets at 20-55% of the cost of production, bankrupting West African and Central African cotton farmers in the process.(2)

___These dismal outcomes were not accidental. As then-U.S. Agriculture Secretary John Block put it at the start of the Uruguay Round of trade negotiations in 1986, “the idea that developing countries should feed themselves is an anachronism from a bygone era. They could better ensure their food security by relying on U.S. agricultural products, which are available, in most cases at lower cost.”(3)__

What Block did not say was that the lower cost of U.S. products stemmed from subsidies that were becoming more massive each year, despite the fact that the WTO was supposed to phase out all forms of subsidy. From $367 billion in 1995, the first year of the WTO, the total amount of agricultural subsidies provided by developed country governments rose to $388 billion in 2004. Subsidies now account for 40% of the value of agricultural production in the European Union (EU) and 25% in the United States.

>>16751301

>>16751304

“Destroying African agriculture” – “From Exporter to Importer” – Part 3

https://www.tni.org/en/article/destroying-african-agriculture

4 June 2008

The social consequences of structural adjustment cum agricultural dumping were predictable. According to Oxfam, the number of Africans living on less than a dollar a day more than doubled to 313 million people between 1981 and 2001 – or 46% of the whole continent. The role of structural adjustment in creating poverty, as well as severely weakening the continent’s agricultural base and consolidating import dependency, was hard to deny. As the World Bank’s chief economist for Africa admitted, “We did not think that the human costs of these programs could be so great, and the economic gains would be so slow in coming.”(4)

That was, however, a rare moment of candor. What was especially disturbing was that, as Oxford University political economist Ngaire Woods pointed out, the “seeming blindness of the Fund and Bank to the failure of their approach to sub-Saharan Africa persisted even as the studies of the IMF and the World Bank themselves failed to elicit positive investment effects.”(5)

The Case of Malawi

This stubbornness led to tragedy in Malawi.

It was a tragedy preceded by success. In 1998 and 1999, the government initiated a program to give each smallholder family a “starter pack” of free fertilizers and seeds. This followed several years of successful experimentation in which the packs were provided only to the poorest families. The result was a national surplus of corn. What came after, however, is a story that will be enshrined as a classic case study in a future book on the 10 greatest blunders of neoliberal economics.

The World Bank and other aid donors forced the drastic scaling down and eventual scrapping of the program, arguing that the subsidy distorted trade. Without the free packs, food output plummeted. In the meantime, the IMF insisted that the government sell off a large portion of its strategic grain reserves to enable the food reserve agency to settle its commercial debts. The government complied. When the crisis in food production turned into a famine in 2001-2002, there were hardly any reserves left to rush to the countryside. About 1,500 people perished. The IMF, however, was unrepentant; in fact, it suspended its disbursements on an adjustment program with the government on the grounds that “the parastatal sector will continue to pose risks to the successful implementation of the 2002/03 budget. Government interventions in the food and other agricultural markets…crowd out more productive spending.”

When an even worse food crisis developed in 2005, the government finally had enough of the Bank and IMF’s institutionalized stupidity. A new president reintroduced the fertilizer subsidy program, enabling two million households to buy fertilizer at a third of the retail price and seeds at a discount. The results: bumper harvests for two years in a row, a surplus of one million tons of maize, and the country transformed into a supplier of corn to other countries in Southern Africa.

But the World Bank, like its sister agency, still stubbornly clung to the discredited doctrine. As the Bank’s country director told the Toronto Globe and Mail, “All those farmers who begged, borrowed, and stole to buy extra fertilizer last year are now looking at that decision and rethinking it. The lower the maize price, the better for food security but worse for market development.”

>>16751301

>>16751304

>>16751313

>>16404192

>The Presidential Advisory Committee on the Economy in Malawi, which was established by Brenthurst Foundation, is one of the many boards and advisory panels that he [Jonathan Oppenheimer] has sat on.

“Destroying African agriculture” – “From Exporter to Importer” – Part 4

https://www.tni.org/en/article/destroying-african-agriculture

4 June 2008

Fleeing Failure

Malawi’s defiance of the World Bank would probably have been an act of heroic but futile resistance a decade ago. The environment is different today. Owing to the absence of any clear case of success, structural adjustment has been widely discredited throughout Africa. Even some donor governments that once subscribed to it have distanced themselves from the Bank, the most prominent case being the official British aid agency that co-funded the latest subsidized fertilizer program in Malawi. Perhaps the motivation of these institutions is to prevent the further erosion of their diminishing influence in the continent through association with a failed approach and unpopular institutions. At the same time, they are certainly aware that Chinese aid is emerging as an alternative to the conditionalities of the World Bank, IMF, and Western government aid programs.

Beyond Africa, even former supporters of adjustment, like the International Food Policy Research Institute (IFPRI) in Washington and the rabidly neoliberal Economist acknowledged that the state’s abdication from agriculture was a mistake. In a recent commentary on the rise of food prices, for instance, IFPRI asserted that “rural investments have been sorely neglected in recent decades,” and says that it is time for “developing country governments [to] increase their medium- and long-term investments in agricultural research and extension, rural infrastructure, and market access for small farmers.” At the same time, the Bank and IMF’s espousal of free trade came under attack from the heart of the economics establishment itself, with a panel of luminaries headed by Princeton’s Angus Deaton accusing the Bank’s research department of being biased and “selective” in its research and presentation of data. As the old saying goes, success has a thousand parents and failure is an orphan.

Unable to deny the obvious, the Bank has finally acknowledged that the whole structural adjustment enterprise was a mistake, though it smuggled this concession into the middle of the 2008 World Development Report, perhaps in the hope that it would not attract too much attention. Nevertheless, it was a damning admission:

“ Structural adjustment in the 1980’s dismantled the elaborate system of public agencies that provided farmers with access to land, credit, insurance inputs, and cooperative organization. The expectation was that removing the state would free the market for private actors to take over these functions—reducing their costs, improving their quality, and eliminating their regressive bias. Too often, that didn’t happen. In some places, the state’s withdrawal was tentative at best, limiting private entry. Elsewhere, the private sector emerged only slowly and partially—mainly serving commercial farmers but leaving smallholders exposed to extensive market failures, high transaction costs and risks, and service gaps. Incomplete markets and institutional gaps impose huge costs in forgone growth and welfare losses for smallholders, threatening their competitiveness and, in many cases, their survival.”

In sum, biofuel production did not create but only exacerbated the global food crisis. The crisis had been building up for years, as policies promoted by the World Bank, IMF, and WTO systematically discouraged food self-sufficiency and encouraged food importation by destroying the local productive base of smallholder agriculture. Throughout Africa and the global South, these institutions and the policies they promoted are today thoroughly discredited. But whether the damage they have caused can be undone in time to avert more catastrophic consequences than we are now experiencing remains to be seen.

Notes (1) Charles Abugre, “Behind Crowded Shelves: as Assessment of Ghana’s Structural Adjustment Experiences, 1983-1991,” (San Francisco: food First, 1993), p. 87. (2) “Trade Talks Round Going Nowhere sans Progress in Farm Reform,” Business World (Phil), Sept. 8, 2003, p. 15 (3) Quoted in “Cakes and Caviar: the Dunkel Draft and Third World Agriculture,” Ecologist, Vol. 23, No. 6 (Nov-Dec 1993), p. 220 (4) Morris Miller, Debt and the Environment: Converging Crisis (New York: UN, 1991), p. 70. (5) Ngaire Woods, The Globalizers: the IMF, the World Bank, and their Borrowers (Thaca: Cornell University Press, 2006), p. 158. Published by Foreign Policy In Focus (FPIF), a project of the Institute for Policy Studies (IPS). Copyright © 2008, Institute for Policy Studies.

“Satellite Imagery Shows Global Crop Declines – Except For Russia And China”

https://www.zerohedge.com/commodities/satellite-imagery-shows-global-crop-declines-except-russia-and-china

July 16, 2022

Infrared satellite imagery designed to measure moisture levels and the health of farmlands suggests that staple crops such as wheat are in poor condition and in sharp decline among major exporters including the Ukraine, the US and India. Two countries do have bumper crops so far though; namely Russia and China.

It is hard to say which governments and institutions monitor this data, but a few months ago a multitude of political leaders and global banks issued simultaneous warnings of a “global food shortage” and an impending crisis. Such institutions included the IMF, World Bank, the BIS and even the White House. So far, a perfect storm of stagflation, supply chain disruptions and poor weather conditions have combined to disrupt food production around the world.

Price inflation due to central bank stimulus measures has been enough to do incredible damage to the many national economies, but a single bad year for crops on top of this could spell disaster.

Russia and China, on the other hand, are enjoying a strategic advantage. As we entered spring of this year, the mainstream media heralded the end of the Russian economy and the swift collapse of their war efforts in Ukraine. Today, Russia is selling more oil and exporting more commodities than ever before, and both Russia and China now have the most healthy staple crops in the world. It's almost as if the public in the west has been deliberately misled about our economic strength.

Sadly, many people in the west have forgotten the importance of commodities, industry and energy in terms of geopolitical leverage. Without dominance of these three arenas there is no chance for a nation or group of nations to dictate terms to a country that has such advantages. Economic warfare is about independent production and adaptability; these are two things the US and Europe do not have right now.

With declines in crop exports, food prices will rise even further this year and there is also the possibility that Russia could cut off the EU and other nations from access to their agricultural market. Though the Kremlin says this will not happen, given the right trigger event it remains a legitimate threat. Already this month Europe is on the edge of an economic cliff as they wait to see if the Russian “maintenance shutdown” of the Nord Stream 1 pipeline is actually temporary, or the beginning of a full bore energy crisis that will last for years.

In other words, the temptation for the eastern nations to use food as a weapon against NATO countries will be just as high on their list as oil and gas. With food and energy stability in doubt there is also a considerable danger of civil unrest. Third world nations are likely to see the worst of the shortages, but price inflation in necessities is here to stay for first world countries as well. And along with that comes all the associated economic problems, including rising crime, rising unemployment and rising poverty.

“Good for Dutch farmers for fighting back against a gov’t bowing to enviro-radicals” – “they’re inspiring protests by other farmers across Europe, including in Germany, Poland and Italy”

https://nypost.com/2022/07/12/good-for-dutch-farmers-for-fighting-back-against-a-govt-bowing-to-enviro-radicals/

July 12, 2022

Dutch farmers make for an unlikely cause célèbre. For starters, most are conservative, not liberal. And they are fighting against stricter environmental regulations, not for them.

Yet they are winning over liberal-minded people like me who sympathize with the family farmers who provide us with our daily bread and yet receive so little respect from society’s ruling elites. And they’re inspiring protests by other farmers across Europe, including in Germany, Poland and Italy.

“GOVERNMENT TRYING TO CREATE FOOD SHORTAGE – PAYING FARMERS TO DESTROY CROPS; THREATENING NO FARM SUBSIDIES IF THEY REFUSE”

https://seemorerocks.is/government-trying-to-create-food-shortage-paying-farmers-to-destroy-crops-threatening-no-farm-subsidies-if-they-refuse/

19 May 2021

The federal government of the United States is offering farmers 1.5 times the value of their crops . . . if farmers DESTROY those crops! If farmers decline the “offer” that same government will stop all farm subsidies for refusing.

CLIMATE CHANGE AS EXCUSE

The Biden administration announced on Wednesday, 21 April, that it would expand a program that pays farmers to leave land fallow, part of a broader, government-wide effort to cut greenhouse gas emissions in half by 2030. The new initiative will incentivize farmers to take land out of production by raising rental rates and incentive payments.

The Conservation Reserve Program (CRP) was created in 1985 to incentivize landowners to leave some of their marginal land unplanted, a plan meant to protect the environment by reducing agricultural runoff into streams and rivers, preserving wildlife habitats, and preventing erosion. Today, the Department of Agriculture (USDA) “rents” about 21 million acres of farmland from landowners, typically for 10 years at a time—a tiny fraction of the total land farmed nationwide. In recent years, the number of acres enrolled in CRP has fallen, possibly because USDA’s rental payments allegedly have not been competitive with the open market.

Now the operating costs for farmers have become excessive in the US.

A Warning From A Farmer

https://youtu.be/P2FGMg88YsU

“HERE IS THE UPDATED LIST OF U.S.-BASED FOOD MANUFACTURING PLANTS DESTROYED” – Part 1

https://defconnews.com/2022/06/11/here-is-the-updated-list-of-u-s-based-food-manufacturing-plants-destroyed-under-the-illegitimate-biden-regime/

Below is the list of America’s 95 plants that have been destroyed, damaged or impacted by “accidental fires” or disease or general causes:

1. 4/30/21 A fire ignited inside the Smithfield Foods pork processing plant in Monmouth, IL

2. 7/25/21 Three-alarm fire at Kellogg plant in Memphis, 170 emergency personnel responded to the call

3. 7/30/21 Firefighters on Friday battled a large fire at Tyson’s River Valley Ingredients plant in Hanceville, Alabama

4. 8/23/21 Fire crews were called to the Patak Meat Production company on Ewing Road in Austell

5. 9/13/21 A fire at the JBS beef plant in Grand Island, Neb., on Sunday night forced a halt to slaughter and fabrication lines

6. 10/13/21 A five-alarm fire ripped through the Darigold butter production plant in Caldwell, ID

7. 11/15/21 A woman is in custody following a fire at the Garrard County Food Pantry

8. 11/29/21 A fire broke out around 5:30 p.m. at the Maid-Rite Steak Company meat processing plant

9. 12/13/21 West Side food processing plant in San Antonio left with smoke damage after a fire

10. 1/7/22 Damage to a poultry processing plant on Hamilton’s Mountain following an overnight fire

11. 1/11/22 A fire that destroyed 75,000-square-foot processing plant in Fayetteville

12. 1/13/22 Firefighters worked for 12 hours to put a fire out at the Cargill-Nutrena plant in Lecompte, LA

13. 1/31/22 a fertilizer plant with 600 tons of ammonium nitrate inside caught on fire on Cherry Street in Winston-Salem

14. 2/3/22 A massive fire swept through Wisconsin River Meats in Mauston

15. 2/3/22 At least 130 cows were killed in a fire at Percy Farm in Stowe

16. 2/15/22 Bonanza Meat Company goes up in flames in El Paso, Texas

17. 2/15/22 Nearly a week after the fire destroyed most of the Shearer’s Foods plant in Hermiston

18. 2/16/22 A fire had broken at US largest soybean processing and biodiesel plant in Claypool, Indiana

19. 2/18/22 An early morning fire tore through the milk parlor at Bess View Farm

20. 2/19/22 Three people were injured, and one was hospitalized, after an ammonia leak at Lincoln Premium Poultry in Fremont

21. 2/22/22 The Shearer’s Foods plant in Hermiston caught fire after a propane boiler exploded

22. 2/28/22 A smoldering pile of sulfur quickly became a raging chemical fire at Nutrien Ag Solutions

23. 2/28/22 A man was hurt after a fire broke out at the Shadow Brook Farm and Dutch Girl Creamery

24. 3/4/22 294,800 chickens destroyed at farm in Stoddard, Missouri

25. 3/4/22 644,000 chickens destroyed at egg farm in Cecil, Maryland

26. 3/8/22 243,900 chickens destroyed at egg farm in New Castle, Delaware

27. 3/10/22 663,400 chickens destroyed at egg farm in Cecil, MD

28. 3/10/22 915,900 chickens destroyed at egg farm in Taylor, IA

29. 3/14/22 The blaze at 244 Meadow Drive was discovered shortly after 5 p.m. by farm owner Wayne Hoover

30. 3/14/22 2,750,700 chickens destroyed at egg farm in Jefferson, Wisconsin

31. 3/16/22 A fire at a Walmart warehouse distribution center has cast a large plume of smoke visible throughout Indianapolis.

32. 3/16/22 Nestle Food Plant extensively damaged in fire and new production destroyed Jonesboro, Arkansas

33. 3/17/22 5,347,500 chickens destroyed at egg farm in Buena Vista, Iowa

34. 3/17/22 147,600 chickens destroyed at farm in Kent, Delaware

35. 3/18/22 315,400 chickens destroyed at egg farm in Cecil, Maryland

36. 3/22/22 172,000 Turkeys destroyed on farms in South Dakota

37. 3/22/22 570,000 chickens destroyed at farm in Butler, Nebraska

38. 3/24/22 Fire fighters from numerous towns are battling a major fire at the McCrum potato processing facility in Belfast.

39. 3/24/22 418,500 chickens destroyed at farm in Butler, Nebraska

40. 3/25/22 250,300 chickens destroyed at egg farm in Franklin, Iowa

41. 3/26/22 311,000 Turkeys destroyed in Minnesota

42. 3/27/22 126,300 Turkeys destroyed in South Dakota

43. 3/28/22 1,460,000 chickens destroyed at egg farm in Guthrie, Iowa

44. 3/29/22 A massive fire burned 40,000 pounds of food meant to feed people in a food desert near Maricopa

45. 3/31/22 A structure fire caused significant damage to a large portion of key fresh onion packing facilities in south Texas

46. 3/31/22 76,400 Turkeys destroyed in Osceola, Iowa

47. 3/31/22 5,011,700 chickens destroyed at egg farm in Osceola, Iowa

>>16751391

“HERE IS THE UPDATED LIST OF U.S.-BASED FOOD MANUFACTURING PLANTS DESTROYED” – Part 2

https://defconnews.com/2022/06/11/here-is-the-updated-list-of-u-s-based-food-manufacturing-plants-destroyed-under-the-illegitimate-biden-regime/

1. 4/6/22 281,600 chickens destroyed at farm in Wayne, North Carolina

2. 4/9/22 76,400 Turkeys destroyed in Minnesota

3. 4/9/22 208,900 Turkeys destroyed in Minnesota

4. 4/12/22 89,700 chickens destroyed at farm in Wayne, North Carolina

5. 4/12/22 1,746,900 chickens destroyed at egg farm in Dixon, Nebraska

6. 4/12/22 259,000 chickens destroyed at farm in Minnesota

7. 4/13/22 Fire destroys East Conway Beef & Pork Meat Market in Conway, New Hampshire

8. 4/13/22 Plane crashes into Gem State Processing, Idaho potato and food processing plant

9. 4/13/22 77,000 Turkeys destroyed in Minnesota

10. 4/14/22 Taylor Farms Food Processing plant burns down Salinas, California.

11. 4/14/22 99,600 Turkeys destroyed in Minnesota

12. 4/15/22 1,380,500 chickens destroyed at egg farm in Lancaster, Minnesota

13. 4/19/22 Azure Standard nation’s premier independent distributor of organic and healthy food, was destroyed by fire in Dufur, Oregon

14. 4/19/22 339,000 Turkeys destroyed in Minnesota

15. 4/19/22 58,000 chickens destroyed at farm in Montrose, Color

16. 4/20/22 2,000,000 chickens destroyed at egg farm in Minnesota

17. 4/21/22 A small plane crashed in the lot of a General Mills plant in Georgia

18. 4/22/22 197,000 Turkeys destroyed in Minnesota

19. 4/23/22 200,000 Turkeys destroyed in Minnesota

20. 4/25/22 1,501,200 chickens destroyed at egg farm Cache, Utah

21. 4/26/22 307,400 chickens destroyed at farm Lancaster Pennsylvania

22. 4/27/22 2,118,000 chickens destroyed at farm Knox, Nebraska

23. 4/28/22 Egg-laying facility in Iowa kills 5.3 million chickens, fires 200-plus workers

24. 4/28/22 Allen Harim Foods processing plant killed nearly 2M chickens in Delaware

25. 4/2822 110,700 Turkeys destroyed Barron Wisconsin

26. 4/29/22 1,366,200 chickens destroyed at farm Weld Colorado

27. 4/30/22 13,800 chickens destroyed at farm Sequoia Oklahoma

28. 5/3/22 58,000 Turkeys destroyed Barron Wisconsin

29. 5/3/22 118,900 Turkeys destroyed Beadle S Dakota

30. 5/3/22 114,000 ducks destroyed at Duck farm Berks Pennsylvania

31. 5/3/22 118,900 Turkeys destroyed Lyon Minnesota

32. 5/7/22 20,100 Turkeys destroyed Barron Wisconsin

33. 5/10/22 72,300 chickens destroyed at farm Lancaster Pennsylvania

34. 5/10/22 61,000 ducks destroyed at Duck farm Berks Pennsylvania

35. 5/10/22 35,100 Turkeys destroyed Muskegon, Michigan

36. 5/13/22 10,500 Turkeys destroyed Barron Wisconsin

37. 5/14/22 83,400 ducks destroyed at Duck farm Berks Pennsylvania

38. 5/17/22 79,00 chickens destroyed at Duck farm Berks Pennsylvania

39. 5/18/22 7,200 ducks destroyed at Duck farm Berks Pennsylvania

40. 5/19/22 Train carrying limestone derailed Jensen Beach FL

41. 5/21/22 57,000 Turkeys destroyed on farm in Dakota Minnesota

42. 5/23/22 4,000 ducks destroyed at Duck farm Berks Pennsylvania

43. 5/29/22 A Saturday night fire destroyed a poultry building at Forsman Farms

44. 5/31/22 3,000,000 chickens destroyed by fire at Forsman facility in Stockholm Township, Minnesota

45. 6/2/22 30,000 ducks destroyed at Duck farm Berks Pennsylvania

46. 6/7/22 A fire occurred Tuesday evening at the JBS meat packing plant in Green Bay.

47. 6/8/22 Firefighters from Tangipahoa Fire District 1 respond to a fire at the Purina Feed Mill in Arcola

48. 6/9/22 Irrigation water was canceled in California (the #1 producer of food in the US) and storage water flushed directly out to the delta.

“The SECRET Connection Between ANC And Farm Murders - Ernst Roets” – World planning to implement South African policies?

https://youtu.be/jz8PLKa_eC0

Ernst Roets is a civil rights activist, writer, and filmmaker in South Africa. He is Deputy CEO of civil rights group AfriForum and the CEO of the film production company Forum Films.

5:01 – “That was my message at CPAC, that the conservative movement (I’m using the word conservative in the broad sense of the word in the world) should learn from that we [South Africa] have experienced certain things that the rest of the world is still going to experience such as that certain policy ideas that people in America and Europe are flirting with have already been implemented in South Africa.”

>>16758646

Exactly, and…

“Study: Global plant growth surging alongside carbon dioxide”

https://www.noaa.gov/news/study-global-plant-growth-surging-alongside-carbon-dioxide

April 20, 2017

A trace gas present in the atmosphere in miniscule amounts is helping scientists answer one of the biggest questions out there: Has plant growth increased alongside rising levels of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere?

It turns out the answer is Yes – in a big way. A new study published in the April 6 edition of the journal Nature concludes that as emissions of carbon dioxide from burning fossil fuels have increased since the start of the 20th century, plants around the world are utilizing 30 percent more carbon dioxide (CO2), spurring plant growth.

Plants take up CO2 when they photosynthesize, but they release it when they respire, decay or are burned. [What will the “scientists” do about that?]

“The Rich Boys - The Elite Circle of Oil and Mineral Baron Marc Rich” – Part 1

https://redice.tv/news/the-rich-boys-the-elite-circle-of-oil-and-mineral-baron-marc-rich

October 11, 2008

Source: businessweek.com

Ed Comment: This is an excellent article from Business Week, but what they fail to realize is that corporate crooks like Marc Rich are an intricate part the geopolitical chess game. The corporate crooks are in bed with (or even behind) the corrupt politicians (like Bill Clinton, who gave Marc Rich a presidential pardon late in 2001, during Clinton's last day in office.)

Also why royalty like the King of Spain, Juan Carlos I (with the title King of Jerusalem) supported Rich's pardon is not addressed (ref)

Zionist Marc has also been pouring money into Israel and there's possible ties to the Mossad (ref).

In May 2007 Rich received an honorary doctorate from Bar Ilan University in recognition of his contribution to Israel and to the university's research programs. He received the same honor from Ben-Gurion University on November 18, 2007. The Israeli Sheba Medical Center honored Marc Rich with the "Sheba Humanitarian Award 2008".

An ultra-secretive network rules independent oil trading. Its mentor: Marc Rich

One brisk day last fall, globe-trotting oil executive Benjamin R. Pollner was leaving his luxury prewar apartment building on Manhattan's Park Avenue when detectives from Manhattan District Attorney Robert M. Morgenthau's office approached. They began asking him about his alleged involvement in the unfolding U.N. Oil-for-Food scandal.

Pollner, who runs Taurus Petroleum mainly from offices in Geneva and London, hasn't set foot in the U.S. since, investigators believe. He didn't reply to several calls and e-mails.

On the morning of Apr. 14, David Bay Chalmers Jr., 51, who owns privately held oil-trading company Bayoil U.S.A. Inc., emerged handcuffed and bleary-eyed from his high-security mansion in Houston's ritzy River Oaks neighborhood. He had just been indicted by the U.S. Attorney for the Southern District of New York for conspiracy, wire fraud, and trading with a country that supports terrorism Iraq during the U.N. program. Chalmers has pleaded not guilty.

Another trader, Patrick Maugein, nonexecutive chairman of London's SOCO International PLC oil-trading company, has been under scrutiny by the U.N. for his alleged role in a complex oil-smuggling scheme during Oil-for-Food, the U.N. program that allowed Iraq to sell oil for humanitarian purposes during a period of strict sanctions. Although many deals were legitimate, Saddam Hussein at times demanded illegal surcharges for the right to buy oil at below-market prices. Friends of Saddam's regime allegedly received sweetheart oil allocations, investigators say. Maugein denies violating sanctions or paying illegal surcharges.

>>16794975

“The Rich Boys - The Elite Circle of Oil and Mineral Baron Marc Rich” – Part 2

https://redice.tv/news/the-rich-boys-the-elite-circle-of-oil-and-mineral-baron-marc-rich

October 11, 2008

Learning from El Matador

What do the three men have in common, aside from their dubious deals with Iraq? They all belong to the ultrasecretive informal network of traders who dominate global independent oil trading. They don't necessarily act in concert with each other, but they often chase the same opportunities. They are the Rich Boys. All operate in the world of onetime fugitive billionaire Marc Rich, the most-wanted white-collar criminal in U.S. history until his controversial pardon on President Bill Clinton's last day in office in 2001.

Rich came to prominence in the 1970s, when he worked at Phillips Bros. (later Phibro), then the biggest trader. With veteran partner Pincus "Pinky" Green, he pioneered "combat trading" – getting trading rights from countries in turmoil. Rich, called El Matador for his killer instinct, did the deals. Pinky, "The Admiral," arranged shipping.

Over the years, Rich has mentored scores of traders. Although the 70-year-old is past his peak in the business, according to industry experts, his protégés are thriving. "You could call it the University of Marc Rich," says a Senate investigator. As Alaskan and North Sea oil production declines, new supplies increasingly come from some of the most corrupt or politically unstable places on earth, such as Equatorial Guinea and Sudan. These are the new frontiers where major U.S. oil companies fear to tread because of sanctions, embargoes, and antibribery and anti-terrorism laws. But it's where these traders, many like characters out of the James Bond flick Goldfinger, make good money, especially when oil tops $60 a barrel.

Governments and law enforcers have long been suspicious of some Rich Boys. In a six-month investigation, BusinessWeek has pieced together the first comprehensive look at their sprawling and deliberately elusive operations. Our findings:

– Rich has spawned the most powerful informal network of independent commodities traders on earth. He did it primarily by funding spin-offs and startups around the globe for decades, and by training scores of traders who have set up their own shops. Although Rich no longer maintains stakes in most of these outfits, he has helped create a network that, in sum, is far more formidable than his own company in the 1970s and 1980s, when it was the world's premier commodities trader.

– The Rich Boys' often controversial activities are on the rise. They buy oil from places where corruption is extensive: Some of the Rich Boys have been named in scandals in Nigeria and Venezuela. They also sell oil from pariah states to U.S. refiners.

– Although Rich testified in writing in March, 2005, to a House committee investigating the U.N. program that he was not in any way active in the Oil-for-Food program, documents suggest that he bought Iraqi oil in 2001 from various front companies, which BusinessWeek has identified. This took place just one month after his pardon. If so, it seems that Rich may have misled Congress. The CIA, the Senate, and others have concluded that from September, 2000, until September, 2002, buyers in the Oil-for-Food oil program had to pay illegal surcharges that Saddam used in part to buy weapons, though no documents show Rich made such payments. Some investigators believe Iraqi insurgents are now using that money.

– One company from which Rich bought crude during this period was a front for extremist Russian and Ukrainian organizations. All were pro-Saddam; one was a staunch supporter of North Korean dictator Kim Jong Il. Another company was tied to a major money launderer for Saddam.

To reach these conclusions, BusinessWeek traced crucial connections from a number of official inquiries and documents. Key among these documents: shipping tables from the Middle East Economic Survey (MEES), the preeminent authority on tanker activity in the Middle East. These detail the ports, tankers, destinations, and buyers of Iraqi crude. Other insights came from a 2004 CIA report on Iraq, data from Switzerland's Federal Commercial Registry Office, and the many inquiries launched into Oil-for-Food. The Justice Dept., six congressional committees, a U.N. commission, Morgenthau's office, and several countries, including Switzerland, are all investigating the program. Extensive interviews with dozens of oil traders, government investigators, and energy experts around the globe helped form a clearer picture of how the network operates.

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“The Rich Boys - The Elite Circle of Oil and Mineral Baron Marc Rich” – Part 3

https://redice.tv/news/the-rich-boys-the-elite-circle-of-oil-and-mineral-baron-marc-rich

October 11, 2008

Mavericks in the Middle

Like Marc Rich + Co. holding, most of the Rich Boys have offices in the tiny Swiss canton of Zug, with its quaint stores, Gothic architecture, and low tax rates. These maverick middlemen typically don't own or operate oil refineries or wells. Instead, they buy oil from producers, line up buyers to refine it, and charter tankers to ship it. Oil trading is often nebulous and opaque. Title to a tanker's oil, for example, may change a dozen times before the ship reaches port.

Some of the Rich Boys, like Pollner and Chalmers, have never worked for Rich. They've merely done business with him or have connections to him through other traders. Typically, Rich has bankrolled or owned stakes in the traders' companies, or sold them to close associates. Among the mightiest is commodities giant Glencore International, based in a suburb of Zug, which boasts annual turnover of $72 billion, according to its financial disclosures, making it one of the world's largest private companies. Glencore owns scores of other commodities companies from Spain to Australia. Rich sold the firm to its management in 1994, and the company says it now has no connection with Rich. It is run by former Rich lieutenants Ivan Glasenberg and Willy Strothotte, according to its Web site.

Companies run by the Rich Boys span the globe. Consider Netherlands-based Trafigura Group, one of the world's top trading companies. According to industry experts and investigators, it was founded in 1993 by former Rich traders with money from Rich. Experts say he invested in companies like Trafigura to expand his empire, though most contend he no longer has a stake in them. Zug-based Masefield Group was also founded by former Rich traders. In Moscow, there's Milio International Ltd., formed by Rich traders in 1997. Rich's flight to Switzerland in 1983 didn't stop him from financing companies in the U.S., among them Novarco, a White Plains (N.Y.) commodities-trading business he established in 1997. He sold its oil contracts in 2002 to Richmond (Va.)-based Dominion Resources Inc., according to company reports.

Many of the Rich Boys' tactics may be hyperaggressive, but they're perfectly legal. One way they do business: exploiting opportunity in Eastern European or Third World countries in dire need of funding. Rich taught his disciples called Lehrlings, German for apprentices to lend cash-strapped companies money and get the right to buy their commodities, industry experts say. Last year, for example, Glencore loaned $40 million to Peru's second-largest zinc miner, Volcan Compañia Minera. Volcan agreed to sell zinc and other minerals to Glencore from 2004 to 2010.

At times, some Rich boys apparently use front companies opaque holding entities to disguise deals. According to Senate documents, they have set up fronts with innocuous names such as Rescor Inc. or Plasco Shipping. Based in tax havens with strong banking secrecy such as Panama, Liechtenstein, and Gibraltar, they come and go like flickering harbor lights once a deal is done.

David Chalmers found such companies useful in trading Iraqi crude during sanctions, according to the Senate subcommittee on permanent investigations. It alleged he routinely used a company called Italtech to do business in Iraq. The submarine-engine outfit was started in the late '80s by Chilean-Italian arms dealer Augusto Giangrandi, who headed the Bermuda subsidiary of Chalmers' Bayoil. Italtech opportunistically morphed into an oil trader in 1999. Chalmers' lawyer, Bart Dalton, says Italtech "was not a front company."

Ben Pollner, law enforcement officials believe, was behind Fenar Petroleum and Alcon Petroleum, registered in Liechtenstein in 1999, according to corporate registry documents. They were among the largest oil purchasers during Oil-for-Food, together exporting $2.47 billion worth of crude, according to a report by the U.N. Independent Inquiry Committee, chaired by former Federal Reserve Chairman Paul A. Volcker. Investigators allege they paid tens of millions in illegal surcharges. The companies sold almost exclusively to Pollner's company, Taurus, MEES shows. "We've interviewed more than a dozen traders who claim [that although] Pollner was working on his own deals, he was often acting on behalf of Rich, too," says a senior prosecutor investigating possible Oil-for-Food violations.

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“The Rich Boys - The Elite Circle of Oil and Mineral Baron Marc Rich” – Part 4

https://redice.tv/news/the-rich-boys-the-elite-circle-of-oil-and-mineral-baron-marc-rich

October 11, 2008

Thriving in Trouble Spots

One reason the rich boys are so busy these days is because they thrive in a world of high oil prices and scarce reserves. Big U.S. oil companies are desperate for crude yet don't want to dirty their hands getting it from global trouble spots. Says a former partner of Rich's, who requested anonymity because he routinely trades with Big Oil: "Majors don't want to touch the oil, yet they want to buy it. If you think Pablo Escobar [the Colombian drug king] was guilty, weren't people who used cocaine, too?" In fact, half the crude on which Oil-for-Food surcharges were paid ultimately ended up with U.S. majors, according to the Senate. Says Richard Perkins, former director of worldwide oil trading at Chevron Corp.: "The majors are the bread and butter" of traders like the Rich Boys.

U.S. companies are forbidden from bribing officials. If they do, it can prove damaging. The Securities & Exchange Commission, for example, is probing Marathon Oil, ExxonMobil, Amerada Hess (AHC ), Chevron (CVX ), and others for allegedly bribing President Teodoro Obiang Nguema Mbasogo of Equatorial Guinea and his relatives for oil rights. The companies say they're cooperating with the SEC and that they acted lawfully.

Oil majors are also under pressure to shun pariah states. For instance, there are tight limits on deals with war-torn Sudan because it backs terrorism and engages in genocide. But companies set up by the Rich Boys, including Trafigura and Glencore, are among those buying crude there, trade reports say. China is a big customer for the Rich Boys there and elsewhere. Still, says Hal C. Eren, principal attorney at Washington's Eren Law Firm and a former U.S. Treasury Dept. official, tighter controls have "created a situation that's definitely helping independent traders."

Because the Rich Boys operate in such secrecy, one of the few ways to see how they work is when they get busted or investigated. For example, in Nigeria last year, Petrodel, a firm run by former top Rich trader Michael Prest, Glencore, Trafigura, and several other firms, were accused by Nigeria's state oil company of inflating shipping costs by doctoring documents. The Nigerians demanded repayments of more than $100 million. Trafigura denies the allegations and says that all past problems have been resolved. A Glencore spokesman "vigorously disputes" the charges. Petrodel officials and Prest could not be reached for comment.

Some Rich Boys also have their hand in oil-rich Venezuela, whose leftist leader, President Hugo Chávez, is at odds with the Bush Administration. After an oil workers' strike in 2003, Glencore and two U.S. traders allegedly paid kickbacks to secure deals with oil monopoly Petróleos de Venezuela (PDVSA), according to The Wall Street Journal. PDVSA denied accepting bribes and Glencore denied making any illegal payments.

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“The Rich Boys - The Elite Circle of Oil and Mineral Baron Marc Rich” – Part 5

https://redice.tv/news/the-rich-boys-the-elite-circle-of-oil-and-mineral-baron-marc-rich

October 11, 2008

The Saddam Connection

Some of the most compelling details to emerge from Oil-for-Food probes revolve around Rich himself. BusinessWeek has pieced together information suggesting that, despite his denials, Rich did buy Iraqi crude from several questionable companies during the program. His name appears in shipping records compiled by MEES. These show he bought from four separate companies, starting in February, 2001: Onako Oil Co., a subsidiary of Alfa Group, one of Russia's largest conglomerates; an Egyptian company called International Company for Petroleum & Industrial Services (or INCOME, for short); and a Swiss company, Zerich, with ties to some extremist groups. The fourth, EOTC, remains a mystery. Hesham Sheta, vice-chairman of INCOME's parent company in Cairo, Egypt, International Group for Investments, confirmed that "Marc Rich has been INCOME's 'agent' [oil trader] since 1990" and that Rich bought Iraqi crude from INCOME in 2001. Zerich has since been liquidated. Alfa denies paying surcharges.

Even with the new information, it may be difficult for the authorities to prove that Rich did anything illegal. At the time, Saddam offered oil at cut-rate prices to his supporters, who would then sell it for a huge profit on the market. For two years leading up to September, 2002, the dictator demanded surcharges of up to 50 cents a barrel that he deposited in secret bank accounts, according to the CIA, the Volcker committee, and Senate documents.

While Rich's company bought crude from companies acting on behalf of those with allocations, no documents show he paid illegal surcharges. However, allocation holders would typically "pass on the cost of that surcharge," according to a recent Senate report. "[Buyers] were informed of the required surcharges, and either paid them directly or reimbursed the allocation holder." Hesham denies that INCOME paid illegal surcharges.

Saddam banked about $10 billion from oil surcharges and smuggling, says the U.S. Government Accountability Office. Initially it enabled him to live large, buying fleets of Mercedes and the finest wine, according to the CIA. But when pressure from the Bush Administration mounted in 2001, Saddam earmarked the money for a war chest that "is likely funding the current insurgents," says John Fawcett, an independent investigator tracking Iraqi funds who recently testified to the House Committee on Energy & Commerce.

Some Rich Boys were heavy hitters in Oil-for-Food. In February, 2001, for example, the U.N. Security Council reported that Glencore bought 1 million barrels of Iraqi crude destined for the U.S. The oil was diverted to Croatia, where it was sold for a $3 million premium, that went into a secret bank account. Glencore was caught by U.N. overseers, and later agreed to refund the money to the U.N. A Glencore spokeswoman says the oil was shipped to Croatia for storage and later shipment to the U.S. A CIA report alleges that Glencore paid more than $3.2 million in surcharges to Iraq, something it denies.

The numerous investigations into the U.N. program paint a complex picture of how Rich Boys allegedly work. In September, 2001, U.S. and U.N. authorities were tipped off by a Greek shipping captain, who feared his tanker chartered by Trafigura was involved in sanctions busting. Trafigura, run by former Rich traders Claude Dauphin and Eric de Turckheim, bought Iraqi oil from a Bermuda company called Ibex Energy, according to a U.N. report. Ibex was owned by another former Rich trader, Jean-Paul Cayré. SOCO's Patrick Maugein, once a top Rich trader, was close to former Iraqi Deputy Prime Minister Tariq Aziz. The CIA alleges Maugein received oil allocations that he sold through Trafigura. Maugein denies paying illegal surcharges. Maugein says he knows one of Trafigura's founders. Investigators allege he had a contract with or a stake in Trafigura, something both the company and Maugein deny. Maugein and Trafigura also deny having commercial ties to Ibex.

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“The Rich Boys - The Elite Circle of Oil and Mineral Baron Marc Rich” – Part 6

https://redice.tv/news/the-rich-boys-the-elite-circle-of-oil-and-mineral-baron-marc-rich

October 11, 2008

Deals with Extremists

Rich and those like him are so successful because they'll do business with virtually anyone if there are big bucks to be made. Both Rich and Pollner's Taurus Petroleum bought Iraqi crude in 2001 through the now-defunct Zerich, according to MEES shipping records. Zerich was a front for various groups that received oil allocations, a CIA report says.

Some of them, BusinessWeek has learned, are extremists, including Ukranian and Russian outfits that strongly supported Saddam – as well as North Korean strongman Kim Jong Il. One, Russia's Peace & Unity Party, threw a birthday bash in Moscow in January, 2004, in honor of Kim. At it, Peace & Unity Chairwoman Sazhi Zaindinova Umalatova called Kim "an all-powerful treasured sword…when the imperialists are getting more undisguised in their military ambition," according to North Korea's news agency. Zerich also acted for the Ukraine Communist Party and the Ukraine Socialist Party. In all, Zerich bought $422 million worth of oil from Iraq, according to the Volcker committee.

In the early 1990s after the Soviet Union collapsed, Rich quickly became the most powerful trader there. He was "a coach and sort of a godfather for several of the oligarchs," says Vladimir L. Kvint, a professor at American University's Kogod School of Business. Pollner worked for Chalmers at Bayoil then, and all of them sold Russian crude that they got through the oligarchs.

Rich has long had ties to Mikhail Fridman and his mammoth Alfa Group, says Kvint. In 2001, Rich nearly sold his company to an Alfa division: Zug-based Crown Resources Corp. (now called ERC Trading). During the U.N. program both Rich and Chalmers bought oil from Alfa units, according to MEES: Onako and Tyumen Oil Co., respectively. The CIA report alleges that Alfa paid illegal surcharges to Saddam during Oil-for-Food, which Alfa denies.

Rich is legendary for cultivating people in high places. Traders say he could reach practically any diplomat, oil minister, or dictator in an instant with a phone that some joked seemed surgically attached to his ear. Two of his key Mideast connections were the powerful Bakhtiar brothers, Esfandiar and Bahman. The Bakhtiars whose father, investigators believe, headed the Shah of Iran's secret police fled to Iraq after the Shah's ouster. Thanks to family ties, Saddam treated them like "adopted sons," says Jules B. Kroll, founder of Kroll Inc., hired by Kuwait to investigate Saddam's finances in 1991.

The Bakhtiar link helped Rich forge links with the Iraqi dictator, says the Kroll report. Kroll says it obtained faxes between Rich and the Bakhtiars describing Rich's intent to trade Iraqi crude through the brothers. Over two decades, Rich traded allegedly through two companies linked with the Bakhtiars: Jaraco and Dynatrade (now owned by INCOME's parent, IGI). The Bakhtiars set up Jaraco in Geneva in 1981. In 2004, the U.S. Treasury identified Jaraco as a major money-laundering conduit for Saddam's billions. Hesham Sheta says, "[One of the] Bakhtiars still acts as a consultant" to IGI, which in turn owns INCOME, from which Rich bought Iraqi crude during Oil-for-Food.

Rich, along with Pollner and Bayoil's Chalmers, were "very trusted by the Iraqi Oil Ministry," says Axel Busch, chief correspondent for industry newsletter Energy Intelligence. A street-smart Staten Island boy, "Pollner is considered a brilliant trader," says Busch. Cultivating relations with small refineries, particularly in the U.S., enabled him to handle big quantities of Iraqi oil by breaking it into smaller cargoes, say industry experts. Pollner, they say, began trading with Iraq before the 1991 Persian Gulf War and continued after a U.N. embargo.

For his part, Chalmers had loaned money to Iraq since the 1980s and received repayment in oil, according to industry experts. The scion of a wealthy Houston oil family, Chalmers, a tight-lipped trader and tennis ace with a taste for fancy cigars, was used to rubbing shoulders with the elite. But he never worked for Rich. Indeed, his lawyer Dalton says they were always "competitors" and "didn't act together in Oil-for-Food." Still, trade reports and CIA documents show they often did deals with the same people in the same places. Chalmers' deep pockets apparently appealed to Iraq's Oil Ministry. After the U.S. lifted its embargo in May, 2003, the ministry said it would sell only to major refiners, but it still allowed two traders to get supplies – Bayoil and Taurus.

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“The Rich Boys - The Elite Circle of Oil and Mineral Baron Marc Rich” – Part 7

https://redice.tv/news/the-rich-boys-the-elite-circle-of-oil-and-mineral-baron-marc-rich

October 11, 2008

"Eerie" Existence

These days rich has opulent digs in several countries. He owns a palatial Moorish villa on Spain's ritzy Costa del Sol and a ski chalet in Saint Moritz, Switzerland. His powerful pals have included opera star Placido Domingo and former hedge-fund guru Michael Steinhardt, who, in a letter backing the pardon, called Rich "my friend…who has been punished enough." Former traders say Rich spends most of his time at Villa Rosa, his compound on Switzerland's glistening Lake Lucerne, surrounded by Picassos, van Goghs, and Mirós.

Rich has slowed down since his pardon. He sold Marc Rich Investments in 2003 but still runs Marc Rich + Co. Holding, which has a trading operation and a real estate arm. U.S. authorities the Justice Dept., in particular are on Rich's case. As for some of the Rich Boys, it's possible that the U.N. or even the Swiss government, which is conducting its own investigation into Oil-for-Food, may act if they can prove wrongdoing.

Maybe Rich will once again elude his pursuers. He is fast becoming a mythic persona: Word is a TV series based on his life may be in the works. And the Rich Boys his legacy rule.

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>In the early 1990s after the Soviet Union collapsed, Rich quickly became the most powerful trader there. He was "a coach and sort of a godfather for several of the oligarchs," says Vladimir L. Kvint, a professor at American University's Kogod School of Business. Pollner worked for Chalmers at Bayoil then, and all of them sold Russian crude that they got through the oligarchs.

This can explain why we are at this point with regard to Ukraine. It is worth watching in full.

“Russian Godfathers (1 of 3) The Fugitive” - Boris Berezovsky, Neil Bush (George Bush’s brother) was Boris’s partner

https://youtu.be/ZLPxyDlQfBc

This documentary series examines the relationship between Russia's richest men ('the oligarchs') and Putin's administration in the Kremlin. The series follows each one in turn to find out what they were up to in the years leading up to 2005, and the crew is granted intimate access. Two of the five are now in exile, wanted on criminal charges and planning their own anti-Putin campaigns with their wealth and influence.

Broadcast a year before the Litvinenko murder, this fascinating series lifted the lid on the struggle that still continues between Putin, and his adversaries, the Russian Oligarchs. The first part follows exile and Litvenenko associate Boris Berezovsky as he campaigns to fight Putin in the Media and along Russia's borders. Under threat of arrest, Berezovsky travels to revolutionary Ukraine for the campaign to elect Yuschenko.

56:16 - Neil Bush (George Bush’s brother) was Boris Berezovsky’s partner.

“HOW MARC HELPED PLUNDER RUSSIA”

https://nypost.com/2001/02/15/how-marc-helped-plunder-russia/

You can read about it in “Godfather of the Kremlin,” an exhaustively researched book about Russian oligarch Boris Berezovsky, which was published last fall. The author is Paul Klebnikov, an expert on Russia and a Forbes magazine senior editor.

The book details the myriad ways Berezovsky and his minions stole untold sums from the Russian people through international financial schemes.

According to Klebnikov, Rich came into the picture around 1990, when the Soviet Union began to open up to outsiders.

“Governmental authority began to crumble. All these local Communist Party bosses got to strike deals on their own,” the author tells me.

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“Justice Denied: Thoughts on Truth, ‘Canards’and the Marc Rich Case: Part Two of Two” - Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg – Part 1

https://www.theoccidentalobserver.net/2013/05/12/justice-denied-thoughts-on-truth-canardsand-the-marc-rich-case-part-two-of-two/

May 12, 2013

In the aftermath of their indictment, one of the earliest strategies that Rich, Green, and their lawyers attempted to employ was that of claiming anti-Semitism was behind the legal measures brought against them: both claimed that they had been singled out because they were Jews. And so we find ourselves finding truth behind another ‘canard’ — that Jews have used accusations of ‘anti-Semitism’ to avoid scrutiny of their behavior. In our bid to extricate ourselves from this one, let’s rely on the authority of the government investigators: the authors of House Report No. 454 write (p. 157) that this argument was “false,” “preposterous” and a (p. 159) “clumsy attempt to play the race card” that was so poorly executed that it was “rejected by associates like Abraham Foxman.”

The frankly unbelievable level of cynicism seen in Rich’s behaviour towards his daughter, and the deeply immoral core of this particular aspect of the petition was by no means the only significant problem with it. Government investigators state (p. 154) that “the centrepiece of Marc Rich’s effort to obtain a Presidential pardon was the pardon petition, which was put together by the Marc Rich legal team. … The resulting document, which had a number of misrepresentations and factual inaccuracies, was a surprisingly poor effort, considering the amount of time and money that went into it.”

Funny, I was thinking precisely the same thing the other day about the thousands of shoddy works of history, philosophy and junk science that take up valuable space on the shelves of our libraries. The petition consisted of over thirty double-spaced pages, the first twenty of which “attempted to cast Rich and Green in a favorable, even likeable light.” The authors of House Report No. 454 comment that “these statements seem almost laughable given what the world knows about Marc Rich and Pincus Green.”

The statements also resurrected, and not for the last time, the charge of anti-Semitism. Entirely absent from the petition was any reference to the fact that that (p. 155) “Marc Rich’s business was built by supporting corrupt and dictatorial regimes across the world,” or that “deals with Third World countries meant that Rich himself gained monopolies over commodities that often paid developing nations less than fair-market prices.”

In fact, the Jewish activists behind the petition claimed that rescinding the charges on Rich would be in keeping with a ‘confluence of interests’ shared by Rich and the United States. Where have I heard that before? In the petition, signed by, among others, Abraham Foxman, it was stated: “Marc Rich has made amends. Over the past twenty years through his foundations he has donated over $100,000,000 to educational, cultural and social welfare programs. … His life has been committed to making the world a better place.”

A better place for who? For Jews. According to the authors of House Report No. 454 (p. 189), almost every cent that Rich donated went to Jewish causes, Jewish politicians, and Jewish organizations. The logic of the petition then is this: Rich defrauded United States taxpayers, 97% of whom are not Jewish, to the tune of over $100 million, and illegally funded a then enemy power, but because he funnelled this illegal cash into the coffers of his own tiny ethnic group he should be free from punishment.

My, what a fine confluence of interests. I certainly love it when my tax dollars fund Birthright Israel! According to the authors of House Report No.454 (p. 167), Mr. Foxman’s letter was “one of the most prominently displayed in the petition,” something they attributed to the fact that “Rich has given the ADL a total of $250,000 since he fled the country in 1983.” There’s that confluence of interests again — you see, all that illegal cash can now support the ADL’s efforts to teach your children that they’re bigots. [http://archive.adl.org/education/curriculum_connections/]

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“Justice Denied: Thoughts on Truth, ‘Canards’and the Marc Rich Case: Part Two of Two” - Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg – Part 2

https://www.theoccidentalobserver.net/2013/05/12/justice-denied-thoughts-on-truth-canardsand-the-marc-rich-case-part-two-of-two/

May 12, 2013

Although Foxman was to deny any quid pro quo in his involvement in the petition, government investigators wrote (p. 168): “Notwithstanding Foxman’s denial of quid pro quo, the payment to the ADL raises the general question of Marc Rich’s tactics in drumming up support for his pardon petition.”

What they mean by this is that Rich brought the full weight of Jewish influence to bear on his case. Among those organizations that were mobilized, “Marc Rich attempted to secure the assistance of the American Jewish Commmittee (AJC) with the promise of a large contribution.” Rich also “pledged $5 million to Birthright Israel” an organization run by Rich’s “long-time friend,” and fellow crook, Michael Steinhardt. Steinhardt subsequently “wrote a letter that was included in the petition.” The authors of House Report No.454 write that: “As with the public statements of the ADL and the AJC, a spokesman for Birthright Israel denied any quid pro quo relating to the $5 million pledge.” True exemplars of this impeccably moral group!

Further investigations revealed (p. 168) that following more cash donations, “yet another person with a connection to Birthright Israel also wrote a letter on behalf of Marc Rich. Rabbi Irving Greenberg, Chairman of the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum Council, wrote a letter on Holocaust Museum Council letterhead in favor of Marc Rich.” Greenberg was also President of the Jewish Life Network, “an organization that is a partner with Birthright Israel.”

Israeli support came following Rich’s contribution of $25,000 to Jerusalem Mayor Ehud Olmert’s 1993 campaign. Olmert later wrote (p. 169) “a letter to President Clinton that was included in the petition.” The pardon petition (p. 189) contained letters from the Israeli minister for Foreign Affairs, a former Israeli ambassador to the United States, the speaker of the Knesset, a former Minister for Finance, a former Minister for Justice, the Israeli Government Secretary, and a former Director of Mossad. Attempts were also made (p. 190) to enrol Shimon Peres, Israel Singer (Secretary General of the World Jewish Congress), and Edgar Bronfman (President of the World Jewish Congress). Most of the legwork in getting all these figures on board was done by Avner Azulay, whom the authors of House Report No.454 describe (p. 196) as a “former high-ranking Mossad agent.”

Page 171 of the report shows organized international Jewry in all its glory, as letters in support of Rich poured in from the Chief Rabbi of France and the President of the Jewish Committee of Madrid. Both made frequent mention of Rich’s “philanthropy” but no mention of the exclusively Jewish nature of his philanthropy. I don’t know about you, but I just love it when the Chief Rabbi of France gets a say in a legal case pertaining to my tax dollars.

I also sympathize with the Spaniards. The authors of House No.454 state (195) that King Juan Carlos of Spain even wrote letter for Rich. They add that “It is unclear why the King took this action on Rich’s behalf. It is possible that the King was motivated by Rich’s support of Madrid’s Jewish community.”

“Justice Denied: Thoughts on Truth, ‘Canards’and the Marc Rich Case: Part Two of Two” - Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg – Part 3

https://www.theoccidentalobserver.net/2013/05/12/justice-denied-thoughts-on-truth-canardsand-the-marc-rich-case-part-two-of-two/

May 12, 2013

Let’s simplify — King Juan Carlos was motivated by Madrid’s Jewish community, and the authors of House Report No.454 add (p. 195) that the king had also been lobbied by Israeli Foreign Minister, Shlomo Ben Ami. Let’s simplify it further — a group of Jews whistled and the King of Spain rolled over. Unless of course there’s evidence that King Juan Carlos was acting due to another ‘confluence of interests.’

It gets better. Part of the petition was a tax analysis from two academics which ‘proved’ that Rich hadn’t actually committed fraud at all. This particular piece of fiscal sleight of hand was (p. 156) produced by the delightfully named but now both sadly deceased Professors Martin Ginsburg and Bernard Wolfman. You can safely bet your last cent these gentlemen weren’t Episcopalians. On page 160 of House Report No.454, the authors write that although the petition contained pleading claims that Ginsburg and Wolfman were “independent,” this was misleading. The authors write (p. 160): “Professor Ginsburg, husband of Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg, was paid $66,199 for his work on the Rich case.” Wolfman was paid $30,754, after being hired as a consultant by one of Rich’s firms and paid between $300 and $400 per hour. Nor did they come to their conclusions independently of each other — “rather they worked jointly.” The authors add (161) that “Ginsburg and Wolfman sold their names to the highest bidder.” Of course, none of this has been mentioned in the gushing obituaries afforded to both men by such prestigious journals as the Harvard Law Review. Wolfson and Ginsburg weren’t the only ones on the take.

Once the petition was lodged, Jewish America’s much-lauded ‘moral authority’ was brought to bear on the White House. Some wise-guy had the idea that Elie Wiesel possessed the “the moral authority” to present Rich’s case. Wiesel (p. 193) claimed to investigators that he refused these advances, not because of Rich’s obvious guilt but because “he had already written a letter requesting a commutation of Jonathan Pollard’s sentence and … felt that he could not make another request.” Didn’t want to use up all that ‘moral authority’ in one go?

Government investigators subsequently found out that Wiesel was being frugal with the truth (not for the first time in his life I suspect), and that (pp. 193–4) “while this seemingly would have been the end of Wiesel’s involvement in the Rich pardon campaign, there is evidence that it was not. Several e-mails indicate that Wiesel may have lobbied the White House”, including at meetings, and in phone calls. This ‘moral authority,’ together with all the letters, the petition, and the ‘tax analysis’ were added to the once more resurrected claim of anti-Semitism. The authors of House Report No. 454 write (p. 159) that notes from Rich’s lawyer suggest “it is possible that he raised the spectre of anti-Semitism in his last-minute appeal to the President on January 19, 2001. … It is unfortunate the President found Rich’s arguments believable — when in fact they were completely inaccurate — a fact the President could have discovered with minimal due diligence.”

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>>16796461

“Justice Denied: Thoughts on Truth, ‘Canards’and the Marc Rich Case: Part Two of Two” - Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg – Part 4

https://www.theoccidentalobserver.net/2013/05/12/justice-denied-thoughts-on-truth-canardsand-the-marc-rich-case-part-two-of-two/

May 12, 2013

Clinton caved in; the pardon was granted. Facing an outcry due to the obvious injustice of what had taken place, the day after the pardon Clinton wrote in a New York Times op-ed [https://www.nytimes.com/2001/02/18/opinion/my-reasons-for-the-pardons.html?pagewanted=all&src=pm] that he had acted under pressure “from many present and former high-ranking Israeli officials of both major political parties and leaders of Jewish communities in America and Europe.” For this openness, Clinton was accused [http://www.jewishchronicle.org/article.php?article_id=8003] by outraged Jewish leaders of “whipping up anti-Semitism” and “scapegoating” Jews.

Wiesel was partly telling the truth. A miserable Jonathan Pollard told investigators (p. 191) from his cell that he felt Marc Rich’s pardon came at his expense. Pollard is reported as saying “”I should have waved a dollar bill in front of them and convinced them that I had a lot of money. This is the depths to which we have sunk as a nation, that an agent has to bribe his own government to rescue him. This is how low we have sunk.” Of course, Mr. Pollard could have saved himself a lot of trouble by enlightening himself with a subscription to The Occidental Quarterly prior to his act of high treason. [https://www.veteranstoday.com/2011/11/29/israeli-spy-and-american-traitor-jonathan-pollard-pressure-building-for-his-release/]

So what have we learned? Well, it’s clear that the ‘moral authority’ of these organizations is a fable. We need not condemn every Jew, to demonstrate that the many Jewish figures described here constitute an extremely wealthy and cohesive criminal network of international dimensions that has and will bring immeasurable harm. Notice that the Jews aiding Marc Rich are not marginal, isolated individuals; they are Jewish elites—at the center of Jewish life in Israel and the Diaspora. Financial crimes are morally acceptable within the Jewish community, as indicated by the fact that Jews like Marc Rich, Ivan Boesky and Michael Milken are pillars in the Jewish community and major donors to Jewish charities. How many of these fools would be swayed by information that the state of Israel stepped in to help a wealthy ethnic brother because he greased their palms, and because for them the interests of American taxpayers come somewhere beneath those of a bullfrog. It really doesn’t matter how closely anything we have discussed comes to echoing a ‘canard’ because all is truth and ‘canards’ are worthless — fit only for the purpose of assisting the ADL and like organizations in the delusion that they are saintly paupers wandering the earth ever in search of peace and love.

The stance of the ADL is in fact riddled with schizophrenic contradictions which the sane and informed man finds intellectually offensive. In one recent example, during a prolonged rant in Abraham Foxman’s Jews & Money: The Story of a Stereotype, the ADL director claims that, “Jews are just another ethnic minority,”[1] and yet in the same chapter writes: “the Jewish federation movement makes up one of the ten largest charitable organizations in the United States. Bear in mind that Jews constitute just under 2 percent of the total population of the country”[2]; “Jewish foundations represent almost 18 percent of the total 39,000 private foundations identified by the Foundation Centre — another enormous disproportion in view of the tiny size of the Jewish population”[3]; “Jews have enjoyed success in the business world out of proportion to their share of the population”[4]; and that in relation to Jews in the media and Hollywood “the idea that Jews are unusually successful does have a grain of truth.”[5]

Just a grain Mr. Foxman? While we’re at it we may as well call the Sahara a sandbox, and Titanic a bath toy.

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>>16796456

>>16796461

>>16796503

“Justice Denied: Thoughts on Truth, ‘Canards’and the Marc Rich Case: Part Two of Two” - Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg – Part 5

https://www.theoccidentalobserver.net/2013/05/12/justice-denied-thoughts-on-truth-canardsand-the-marc-rich-case-part-two-of-two/

May 12, 2013

You see, according to Mr. Foxman and the ADL, Jews are at one and the same time “just another ethnic minority” and nothing at all like any other ethnic minority. The “rules of the game” are a little different for them. You might say they are equal — just a little more equal than the rest of us.

At the conclusion of Mr. Foxman’s epic tome, he almost plagiarises Kevin Macdonald when he writes: “We all have that grain of tribal loyalty inside us that makes us care just that little bit more about ‘people like us’ than about ‘those others.’ Maybe it has evolutionary roots: There may have been adaptive value to behaviors that increased the survival of ‘my’ genes as opposed to those of the people in the next valley. … It’s usually expressed in such forms as our love for a culture and traditions we find familiar and beautiful, the pride we feel about accomplishments by members of our group, and the desire to see what is best about our heritage preserved and extended into future generations.”[6]

Hear, hear Mr. Foxman, but forgive me if I doubt your sincerity. You and your organizations, pockets bulging with finances of dubious origin, have never shown the slightest acceptance of our desire to preserve our heritage and our people.

I’ll close, as I began, with some words from the noble Marcus Aurelius:

If someone can prove me wrong and show me my mistake in any thought or action, I shall gladly change. I seek the truth, which never harmed anyone: to harm is to persist in one’s self-deception and ignorance.

Marcus Aurelius, Meditations, Book Six, Verse 21.

>>16795048

It is interesting how Jewish Oligarchs are involved in the Ukraine and have a home in London.

“GLOBAL THREATS AND UKRAINE’S CONTRIBUTION.”

https://youtu.be/KWHLea9HGL4

Posted September 11, 2021, on the Victor Pinchuk Foundation channel and opening remarks by Victor Pinchuk. “Steven Sakur and Volodymyr Zelenskyy opened #YESBrainstorming with a panel discussion on global challenges and Ukraine's contribution.”

“Victor Pinchuk and his connections; Ukraine, London, Bill Clinton, Tony Blair, Henry Kissinger, etc.” – Part 1

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2014/apr/03/victor-pinchuk-interpipe-debt-downgraded-junk

3 April 2014

A major company owned by one of Ukraine's wealthiest oligarchs – who boasts a £2bn fortune and counts Tony Blair, Bill Clinton, Elton John and Damien Hirst among his friends – has had its debt downgraded to junk amid concerns about its finances.

Victor Pinchuk, who was reported last year to be bankrolling the former British prime minister's Faith Foundation and owns an £80m home in London, controls the Ukraine industrial pipe manufacturer Interpipe, which is struggling to repay creditors.

The financial crisis at his company comes as the tycoon has become a vocal supporter of the new Ukraine regime – despite his businesses deriving a significant chunk of their sales from Russia.

“As Pro-European Protests Seize Ukraine, Jewish Oligarch Victor Pinchuk Is a Bridge to the West”

https://www.islam-radio.net/islam/english/jewishp/ukraine/pinchuk-ukraine-jew-oligarch.htm

December 13, 2013

The steel magnate—son-in-law of the former president and once a symbol of post-Soviet nepotism—now advocates for the rule of law

One breezy evening last September, Viktor Pinchuk, Ukraine’s second-richest man, stepped onstage at the Livadia Palace in the Black Sea resort of Yalta to introduce the star speaker of the annual international conference he hosts to promote his country’s ties with the West: former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton. Nearby, at a table set for an exquisite five-course meal, sat her husband; they were joined in the hall by Shimon Peres and Tony Blair, as well as a number of former European heads of state, top diplomats, and business tycoons. “Mr. President, you are really a super star,” Pinchuk told Bill Clinton in a seemingly apologetic tone, “but Secretary Clinton, she is a real, real mega star.”

Pinchuk, a Jewish son of the Soviet system who became a steel and media magnate and, more recently, fashioned himself into a billionaire philanthropist, was in his element. At age 52, Pinchuk basks in his newfound role as a global philanthropist and a leading Westernizer of his country—and a man rich and powerful enough to crack jokes at the expense of a former American president.

It’s been a remarkable transformation. Just nine years ago, Pinchuk—the son-in-law of Ukraine’s then-President Leonid Kuchma—was denounced by many of his compatriots as a robber baron who used his personal connections to snap up some of the most valuable assets in Ukraine for a song during the post-Soviet privatization wave while millions of his countrymen struggled to make ends meet. In the fraud-ridden election that triggered Ukraine’s so-called Orange Revolution in 2004, Pinchuk backed Kuchma’s handpicked successor—Viktor Yanukovych, who eventually won the presidency in 2010 and whose recent decision to shelve a key treaty with the European Union and instead embrace Russia triggered the demonstrations that have seized Kiev in recent weeks.

It’s been a remarkable transformation. Just nine years ago, Pinchuk—the son-in-law of Ukraine’s then-President Leonid Kuchma—was denounced by many of his compatriots as a robber baron who used his personal connections to snap up some of the most valuable assets in Ukraine for a song during the post-Soviet privatization wave while millions of his countrymen struggled to make ends meet. In the fraud-ridden election that triggered Ukraine’s so-called Orange Revolution in 2004, Pinchuk backed Kuchma’s handpicked successor—Viktor Yanukovych, who eventually won the presidency in 2010 and whose recent decision to shelve a key treaty with the European Union and instead embrace Russia triggered the demonstrations that have seized Kiev in recent weeks.

But Pinchuk held on. He has spent the years since the Orange Revolution working to build a profile as a philanthropist. He recently pledged half his fortune, estimated by Forbes at $3.8 billion, to charity and has underwritten large-scale AIDS campaigns, opened up a free museum of contemporary art in central Kiev, and teamed up with Steven Spielberg to produce a documentary about the Holocaust in Ukraine. As pro-European reforms have stalled, Pinchuk has emerged as his country’s top advocate in the West, using his annual Yalta summits to push for Ukraine’s closer integration with the European Union.

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“Victor Pinchuk and his connections; Ukraine, London, Bill Clinton, Tony Blair, Henry Kissinger, etc.” – Part 2

https://www.islam-radio.net/islam/english/jewishp/ukraine/pinchuk-ukraine-jew-oligarch.htm

December 13, 2013

Pinchuk initially stayed silent as protesters barricaded themselves in the capital this month, even though his television channels covered them energetically. (His father-in-law Kuchma, one of the targets of the 2004 revolution, has joined two former Ukrainian presidents in signing a letter of support for the demonstrations.) But in the last few days, as the government moved to violently disperse the encampments, Pinchuk finally broke his silence, showing up at the protest camp himself and praising the demonstrators’ spirit. “The most important is that Ukrainian civil society has shown its strength,” he told the Financial Times this week. “Nothing is more powerful. It gives me huge optimism for the future of our country.”

It’s an evolution that people who know Pinchuk say makes sense: The experience of nearly losing his business empire after the Orange Revolution made clear that the post-Soviet system he helped create, in which fortunes could crumble with a change of political winds, was flawed. “He would like to be in a situation where it doesn’t matter to him who the next president of Ukraine is going to be,” said Steven Pifer, who has known Pinchuk since serving as the U.S. ambassador to Ukraine from 1998 to 2000. (Pifer now works at the Brookings Institution in Washington, which receives funding from Pinchuk.) “The advantage for him of Ukraine becoming a rule-of-law society is that it doesn’t matter.”

Pinchuk has close-cropped hair, shrewd brown eyes, and the confidence a wealthy man. His headquarters, in a high-rise in the center of Kiev, is decorated with contemporary art sculptures, part of his multimillion dollar collection. Photos displayed prominently in his office show Pinchuk in the company of Spielberg, Henry Kissinger, and the Obamas. When I visited earlier this month, Pinchuk was accompanied by three aides, armed with a set of recorders. “Are three voice recorders enough?” he teased his staff when we sat down.

Born in Kiev in 1960, Viktor Mikhailovich Pinchuk was raised in the industrial city of Dnipropetrovsk in eastern Ukraine, in a family of Jewish intelligentsia.

Yet the Pinchuks were decidedly Soviet, eating pork and, on the rare occasions they could afford it, black caviar. They decorated a tree at New Year’s—the secular Soviet replacement for Christmas. “When I was young, I felt myself a Soviet man and was proud of it,” Pinchuk recalled.

With the end of the Soviet command economy and the launch of free-market reforms, the state was no longer in charge of economic planning, and the industrial supply chain was crumbling. Pipe factories stood idle without steel, steel plants required coke, coking plants needed coal, and coal miners were in desperate need of pipes—but also wanted the impossible-to-get consumer goods such as refrigerators, microwaves, juicers, and cars that every Soviet man had always dreamed of. Enter Viktor Pinchuk. By procuring the coveted juicers and clunky Tavria cars for coal miners at an exchange in Moscow, he was able to obtain coal for coking plants, which he traded for coke to send to steel factories and then metal for pipe production, eventually walking away with several thousand tons of pipes—which by then had turned into prized hard currency compared to suddenly worthless banknotes. “Juicers turned into pipes,” Pinchuk said of how he became a millionaire.

As his business grew, Pinchuk started buying into steel plants and then teamed up with a woman named Yulia Tymoshenko, a protégée of the feared Dnipropetrovsk governor Pavlo Lazarenko. In the mid-1990s, Pinchuk and Tymoshenko founded Commonwealth, a firm that imported much-needed natural gas from the energy-rich Central Asian states to Ukraine. But the alliance was short-lived: Tymoshenko soon ditched Pinchuk and set up an energy trading firm of her own.

In 1997, while attending a popular Moscow play in a Kiev theater, Pinchuk met Yelena Franchuk, a delicate blonde—and the daughter of then-President Kuchma. Both were married at the time, but they nevertheless felt the spark of romance. Pinchuk asked [Russian conductor Vladimir] Spivakov, who was giving a concert in Kiev that he knew Franchuk was attending the day after her birthday, to perform an encore for “one Kiev birthday girl.” Franchuk realized the surprise was for her, and Spivakov later became a witness at their wedding. (She recently changed her last name to Pinchuk.)

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“Victor Pinchuk and his connections; Ukraine, London, Bill Clinton, Tony Blair, Henry Kissinger, etc.” – Part 3

https://www.islam-radio.net/islam/english/jewishp/ukraine/pinchuk-ukraine-jew-oligarch.htm

December 13, 2013

When they met, Pinchuk already owned two pipe factories that are now worth billions. He likes to say that the only gift he received from Kuchma was his daughter—but not everybody is convinced. Kuchma, now 75, who served as the second president of independent Ukraine, is credited with launching the crucial reforms to steer his country out of the economic ruin that followed the Soviet collapse, but he is also accused of allowing a group of hand-picked businessmen—including Pinchuk—to acquire the country’s top industrial assets at a discount in exchange for their support of his rule.

While in neighboring Russia, oligarchs like the late Boris Berezovsky spent years working their way into the inner circle of Russian President Boris Yeltsin, Pinchuk, his critics say, was spared the effort—Ukraine’s president sat across from him at the dinner table. As Kuchma was nearing the end of his final term in office in the early 2000s, he put top metallurgical and mining plants up for sale; Pinchuk, who by then was also serving as a member of a party in parliament loyal to Kuchma, took an active part in the tenders.

In 2003, Pinchuk won an auction for the majority stake in the Nikopol Ferroalloy Plant, one of the world’s largest producers of ferroalloy, in a tender his rivals called skewed in Pinchuk’s favor, prompting a protracted and messy ownership dispute. The following year, Pinchuk partnered with another oligarch, Rinat Akhmetov—today Ukraine’s richest man—to snap up the country’s biggest steel plant, Krivorozhstal. A year later, the deal was annulled and the plant was sold to British-Indian steel magnate Lakshmi Mittal for $4.8 billion—six times the price paid by Pinchuk and his partner. The sale of Krivorozhstal became a metaphor for corruption under Kuchma, and the affair dealt a harsh blow to Pinchuk’s reputation, not just at home, but in the United States: In a diplomatic cable to Washington released by WikiLeaks, former U.S. Ambassador to Ukraine William Taylor wrote that the two auctions were “rigged” in favor of Pinchuk and sold “for a cut-rate price.”

Ten years later, Pinchuk says he would have handled some of the privatizations differently, knowing then what he knows today. “Being a member of the president’s family is not an easy test,” Pinchuk said. “Yes, I did make some mistakes in that capacity,” he said of the Krivorozhstal purchase. “From the legal standpoint, it was all honest and right,” he went on. “But I shouldn’t have participated in that from a purely political standpoint.” Nikopol, he went on, is a different story. “In the culture, traditions, and aesthetics of that time, it was one of the best examples of privatization,” Pinchuk said. “Clearly, it was not all smiles and sunshine, it wasn’t kosher, but it was one of the best examples. It was in line with the aesthetics of that time.”

But even with all the obvious flaws of post-Soviet capitalists, many experts say that they skirted laws in an environment when laws were still being written and that without their wits and risk-taking, Ukraine, like neighboring Russia and some other ex-Soviet republics, risked sliding into a full economic collapse, a reversion to communism and authoritarianism. “It’s a special kind of people on which capitalism rests,” Aleksandr Paskhaver, head of the Center for Economic Development think tank, said of Pinchuk and other oligarchs. Without them, he added, “I would like to see what this country would have looked like.”

In the freezing winter of 2004, at the height of the Orange Revolution, opposition leader Yuri Lutsenko took a stroll through a protest tent camp set up on the capital’s main street, Khreshchatyk, a prominent tourist destination. Ukrainians had turned out in tens, even hundreds, of thousands to protest what they perceived as an attempt by Kuchma’s protégé Yanukovych to steal the vote and call for a new, honest election.

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“Victor Pinchuk and his connections; Ukraine, London, Bill Clinton, Tony Blair, Henry Kissinger, etc.” – Part 4

https://www.islam-radio.net/islam/english/jewishp/ukraine/pinchuk-ukraine-jew-oligarch.htm

December 13, 2013

Accompanying Lutsenko that evening was Viktor Pinchuk and Maria, his grown daughter from his first marriage, who had just flown to Kiev from London, where she was then studying. Pinchuk—Kuchma’s son-in-law and a public supporter of Yanukovych—was an unlikely figure to show up in the heart of the Orange protest camp, which was dotted with posters and caricatures denouncing Kuchma and even Pinchuk himself. As if to make that point, a young female activist approached Pinchuk and, as Lutsenko remembers it, handed him a ribbon that said “Down with Kuchma,” which he accepted politely and passed on to his daughter. Lutsenko believes that Pinchuk was moved by what he saw around him, even though he probably realized that a victory of the Orange Revolution did not bode well for him personally. “Something historic was happening and if you are a patriot of your country, it doesn’t matter which candidate you support,” Pinchuk told me. “You love this country, you want to take part in building it.”

After the courts annulled Yanukovych’s fraud-marred victory, his opponent, the pro-Western Orange candidate Viktor Yushchenko was elected president in a repeat vote. He picked Yulia Tymoshenko, Pinchuk’s business partner-turned rival, as prime minister and Pinchuk’s fortunes started to dim—literally. After annulling the Krivorozhstal sale and auctioning it off to Mittal Steel, Tymoshenko went after Pinchuk’s Nikopol plant—a key piece of his business empire. But after less than a year in office, Tymoshenko—recognizable to many in the West for her the blond braid she wears coiled around her head—was fired amid accusations that she was lobbying in the interest of Pinchuk’s rival Ihor Kolomoisky, Ukraine’s third richest man. (Both denied it.) A protracted and messy ownership dispute with Kolomoisky over Nikopol ensued, leading to a shaky settlement in 2006. (The truce hasn’t lasted: This past spring, Pinchuk filed suit in London against Kolomoisky and his partner Gennady Bogolyubov—both, like Pinchuk, Jewish oligarchs from Dnipropetrovsk—over the rights to a major ore-mining company.)

While he still lives like an oligarch, buying one of the most expensive mansions in London, paying $23 million for a Jeff Koons sculpture, and spending $5 million on his birthday party at the French ski resort of Courchevel, according to the New York Times and Forbes, he has been devoting an increasing amount of time and effort to philanthropy.

In 2006, Pinchuk left politics and established an eponymous foundation, which has distributed several hundred million dollars on a variety of projects, from funding an English-language economics school to building neonatal clinics. While his fellow post-Soviet oligarchs splurge on soccer teams, Pinchuk has opened a museum of contemporary art in Kiev, one of the largest in Central and Eastern Europe, bringing star artists—Koons, Damien Hirst, and Takashi Murakami—to new terrain and placing Ukraine on the global cultural map.

Pinchuk has also partnered with Steven Spielberg to produce Spell Your Name, a documentary about the Babi Yar massacre of over 33,000 Jews in a Kiev ravine in Nazi-occupied Kiev in one of the bloodiest chapters of the Holocaust in Ukraine. Pinchuk, whose family managed to escape Babi Yar but had friends who perished there, invested some $1 million into the movie, according to Lifestyles magazine. The film was also made into a learning manual for Ukrainian teachers to promote tolerance among Ukraine’s young. Pinchuk has also funded Holocaust by Bullets, a project of Fr. Patrick Desbois, a French Catholic priest who has spent several years canvassing Ukraine, Russia, and Belarus in search for the unmarked graves of hundreds of thousands of Jews who were gunned down by the Nazis and their collaborators before gas chambers were put to use.

He supports Ukraine’s resurgent Jewish community both financially and morally. On Pinchuk’s invitation, Tony Blair donned a yarmulke and toured Dnipropetrovsk’s gleaming new synagogue; the billionaire also took Chelsea Clinton with her Jewish husband Marc Mezvinsky, whose ancestors are from Ukraine, to the synagogue in Kiev.

In 2008, he invited Paul McCartney to sing in front of several hundred thousand euphoric Ukrainians on Kiev’s Independence Square, the site of the Orange Revolution protests and to millions more who watched Pinchuk’s TV channels, saying that a country cannot be considered democratic unless the Beatles sing there. The charity concert, which raised about half a million dollars to fight cancer, cost Pinchuk $5 million, according to the New York Times.

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“Victor Pinchuk and his connections; Ukraine, London, Bill Clinton, Tony Blair, Henry Kissinger, etc.” – Part 5

https://www.islam-radio.net/islam/english/jewishp/ukraine/pinchuk-ukraine-jew-oligarch.htm

December 13, 2013

Pinchuk’s two other pet projects, the Yalta European Strategy conference and the Ukrainian lunch at the annual World Economic Forum at Davos, have helped open Ukraine to the West. The speakers at Yalta have included Shimon Peres, Newt Gingrich, Condoleezza Rice, Richard Branson, and, this year, Tony Blair and the Clintons. (Pinchuk is a generous contributor to both Blair’s and Clinton’s foundations.) But in the past three years, since Yanukovych, the target of the 2004 protests, was elected president, Pinchuk’s Yalta summits have become platforms for drawing Yanukovych, and Ukraine, toward the West, away from Moscow.

The conferences have also provided a kind of open debate that has been unseen elsewhere in Ukraine in recent years, let alone in much of the post-Soviet Union. This year, Vitaly Klitschko, the world heavyweight boxing champion and a top opposition leader, stood up from his seat, towering over the audience at 6 feet 7 inches, and asked Yanukovych point blank whether he would have the guts to resign. Lutsenko—who was jailed, along with Tymoshenko, after Yanukovych came to power—stood and begged Yanukovych to set Tymoshenko free. Finally, Hillary Clinton used her keynote speech to compliment Ukrainian chocolates, which are banned in Russia as retaliation for Kiev’s moves toward the European Union. This week, after Yanukovych flooded Kiev with riot police, Clinton called on the government to “choose dialogue with its people, not force.”

“Pinchuk was the first one to understand the necessity of capitalization of not only of his business, but also of the country,” Lutsenko said. “Today he is the promoter of Ukraine’s European path.”

Pinchuk is clearly also aware that his charitable work gives him a valuable venue for improving his reputation, befriending influential people in the West and, ultimately, securing protection for his family and assets at home. Last year, he signed up for the Giving Pledge, a movement led by Bill Gates and Warren Buffet to get the world’s billionaires to donate half of their money to charity. “It doesn’t really matter what a person begins from,” Pinchuk said, waving off a question about his intentions. “What matters is what he does and what he achieves in the end.”

>>16827001 - John Bolton was in the audience at 4:19

>“GLOBAL THREATS AND UKRAINE’S CONTRIBUTION.”

>https://youtu.be/KWHLea9HGL4

>Posted September 11, 2021, on the Victor Pinchuk Foundation channel and opening remarks by Victor Pinchuk. “Steven Sakur and Volodymyr Zelenskyy opened #YESBrainstorming with a panel discussion on global challenges and Ukraine's contribution.”

“John Bolton on Russia's War in Ukraine | Emma Barnett Meets” - https://youtu.be/vya8YbN6SnI

“ABOUT JOHN BOLTON TAKING CORRUPT UKRAINIAN MONEY. IT’S TRUE AND HE WASN’T ALONE.”

https://politicalarena.org/2020/01/29/about-john-bolton-taking-corrupt-ukrainian-money-its-true-and-he-wasnt-alone/

January 29, 2020

I have researched it and yes John Bolton did take $115,000 which was largely supplied by Victor Pinchuk, to attend a conference and give a speech.

Pinchuk is a corrupt Ukrainian Oligarch who was in part behind the phony “Russian Dossier” and protecting Burisma, Hunter Biden etc. Pinchuk also have the Clinton Foundation $29 million.

Other Republicans including Condoleezza Rice and Newt Gingrich took money to speak there as well. They should have known better.

The Atlantic Council (which spreads lots of money to American politicians, mostly Democrats) and the YES (Yalta European Strategy) Foundation are fronts for Pinchuk and his cabal of corruption.

LINKS:

https://pinchukfund.org/en/projects/18442/

https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/jared-kushner-and-ivanka-trump-made-at-least-82-million-in-outside-income-last-year-while-serving-in-the-white-house-filings-show/2018/06/11/a41d0720-6dab-11e8-bd50-b80389a4e569_story.html

https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/john-bolton-was-paid-115000-to-participate-in-two-panels-sponsored-by-foundation-of-ukrainian-steel-magnate/2018/06/12/df6d48a0-6e67-11e8-afd5-778aca903bbe_story.html

“Victor Pinchuk, the Clintons & Endless Connections” – Part 1

https://themarketswork.com/2018/03/11/victor-pinchuk-the-clintons-endless-connections/

http://web.archive.org/web/20180716031557/https://themarketswork.com/2018/03/11/victor-pinchuk-the-clintons-endless-connections/

March 11, 2018

I wrote on the role of Alexandra Chalupa – a Ukrainian-American DNC operative – who appears at the center of the DNC’s construction of information used in the Steele Dossier.

The role of former Assistant Secretary of State Victoria Nuland in disseminating the Dossier – along with her involvement in shaping Ukraine – was also discussed.

The name Victor Pinchuk was mentioned.

Victor Pinchuk is a Ukrainian billionaire.

He is the founder of Interpipe, a steel pipe manufacturer. He also owns Credit Dnipro Bank, some ferroalloy plants and a media empire.

He is married to Elena Pinchuk, the daughter of former Ukrainian President Leonid Kuchma.

Pinchuk’s been accused of profiting immensely from the purchase of state-owned assets at severely below-market prices through political favoritism.

Pinchuk used his media empire to deflect blame from his father-in-law, Kuchma, for the September 16, 2000 murder of journalist Georgiy Gongadze. Kuchma was never charged but is widely believed to have ordered the murder. A series of recordings would seem to back up this assertion.

On April 4 through April 12 2016, Ukrainian Parliamentarian Olga Bielkov had four meetings – with Samuel Charap (International Institute for Strategic Studies), Liz Zentos (National Security Council), Michael Kimmage (State Dept) and David Kramer (McCain Institute).

Doug Schoen filed FARA documents [https://efile.fara.gov/docs/6071-Supplemental-Statement-20160517-10.pdf] showing that he was paid $40,000 a month by Victor Pinchuk (page 5) – in part to arrange these meetings.

Schoen attempted to arrange another 72 meetings with Congressmen and media (page 10). It is unknown how many meetings took place.

Schoen has worked for both Bill and Hillary Clinton.

Schoen helped Pinchuk establish ties with the Clinton Foundation. The Wall Street Journal reported [https://www.wsj.com/articles/clinton-charity-tapped-foreign-friends-1426818602] how Schoen connected Pinchuk with senior Clinton State Department staffers in order to pressure former Ukrainian President Yanukovych to release Yulia Tymoshenko – a political rival of Yanukovych – from jail.

The relationship between Pinchuk and the Clintons continued.

From the Kyiv Post:

In 2013, Ukrainian billionaire Victor Pinchuk welcomed current U.S. Democratic Party presidential nominee Hillary Clinton onto the stage at his Yalta European Strategy, an annual conference he funds to promote Ukraine’s European integration and strategy, calling her: “a real megastar.”

Clinton and her husband Bill, the 42nd U.S. president, have been paid speakers at the annual YES and other Pinchuk events. They describe themselves as friends of Pinchuk, who is known internationally as a businessman and philanthropist.

>>16827194

“Victor Pinchuk, the Clintons & Endless Connections” – Part 2

https://themarketswork.com/2018/03/11/victor-pinchuk-the-clintons-endless-connections/

http://web.archive.org/web/20180716031557/https://themarketswork.com/2018/03/11/victor-pinchuk-the-clintons-endless-connections/

March 11, 2018

To date, Pinchuk’s charitable foundation has given $125 million to various causes, according to his spokespeople.

Although exact numbers are not clear, reports filed by the Clinton Foundation indicate that as much as $25 million of Pinchuk’s “charitable donations” went to the Clinton organization.

From a New York Times article:

Victor Pinchuk, a steel magnate whose father-in-law, Leonid Kuchma, was president of Ukraine from 1994 to 2005, has directed between $10 million and $25 million to the foundation. He has lent his private plane to the Clintons and traveled to Los Angeles in 2011 to attend Mr. Clinton’s star-studded 65th birthday celebration.

Later, the Clintons would try to distance themselves from Pinchuk.

From a Washington Examiner article [http://web.archive.org/web/20180504031122/https://www.washingtonexaminer.com/emails-show-clinton-denied-then-met-with-ukrainian-donor/article/2600040]:

Emails made public Tuesday show a Ukrainian businessman and major Clinton Foundation donor was invited to Hillary Clinton’s home during the final year of her diplomatic tenure, despite her spokesman’s insistence in 2014 that the donor never crossed paths with Clinton while she served as secretary of state.

Amid scrutiny of Clinton’s ties to Pinchuk in 2014, the Democratic nominee’s spokesman, Nick Merrill, said Pinchuk had never met with Clinton during that time. He told the New York Times that, “from Jan. 21, 2009, to Feb. 1, 2013,” the Ukrainian businessman “was never on her schedule.”

Pinchuk, who has given up to $25 million to the Clinton Foundation, appeared on the guest list that was sent between Dennis Cheng, an executive at the foundation, and Huma Abedin, then Clinton’s deputy chief of staff at the State Department, ahead of a June 2012 dinner. Abedin noted in a subsequent email that the gathering would be hosted in Clinton’s home.

Pinchuk’s dinner invitation was exposed in a series of emails obtained by Citizens United.

There has been a repeated pattern of denial between the Clintons and their major donors. See: A Uranium One Primer – Clinton, Giustra & Kazakhstan’s Uranium Assets.

More from the article:

Melanne Verveer, a senior Ukrainian-American official at the State Department, often acted as a go-between for Clinton and Pinchuk. Verveer conveyed Pinchuk’s best wishes to the secretary of state in Feb. 2010 after meeting with him in Ukraine.

After speaking with Pinchuk in Sept. 2011, Verveer informed Clinton that the businessman had been asked by Viktor Yanukovych, then the president of Ukraine, to relay to her some of his diplomatic interests in deepening ties to the rest of Europe.

The intersection of Pinchuk’s advocacy for Yanukovych with Clinton’s State Department is noteworthy because Paul Manafort, former campaign manager for Donald Trump, was felled by his connections to Yanukovych. Manafort resigned from the Trump campaign last week.

Hacked Podesta emails released via Wikileaks showed ongoing contact between Pinchuk and the Clintons. From a March 30, 2015 email:

Victor Pinchuk is relentlessly following up (including this morning) about a meeting with WJC in London or anywhere in Europe. Ideally he wants to bring together a few western leaders to show support for Ukraine, with WJC probably their most important participant.

I sense this is so important because Pinchuk is under Putin’s heel right now, feeling a great degree of pressure and pain for his many years of nurturing stronger ties with the West.

>>16827194

>>16827198

“Victor Pinchuk, the Clintons & Endless Connections” – Part 3

https://themarketswork.com/2018/03/11/victor-pinchuk-the-clintons-endless-connections/

http://web.archive.org/web/20180716031557/https://themarketswork.com/2018/03/11/victor-pinchuk-the-clintons-endless-connections/

March 11, 2018

In addition to being a Clinton Foundation donor, Pinchuk is also on the International Advisory Board of the Atlantic Counsel – an NATO-aligned American think tank specializing in the field of international affairs.

Pinchuk’s fellow Advisory Board members are industry leaders and former heads of state.

Their Board of Directors list is equally – if not more – impressive.

The Atlantic Counsel has been historically active in Ukraine through their Ukraine in Europe Initiative. More recently, on January 19, 2017, the Atlantic Counsel announced a partnership with Ukrainian natural gas company Burisma Group.

Hunter Biden, former VP Joe Biden’s son, sits on Burisma’s board.

Biden was placed on Burisma’s board after Victoria Nuland and U.S. Ambassador to Ukraine Geoffrey Pyatt held a phone conversation regarding installation of Arseniy Yatsenyuk in place of then-President Yanukovych. Need of support from VP Biden was noted (more here):

On or before February 4 2014 – Call between Pyatt and Nuland discussing removal of Yanukovych and installation of Yatsenyuk.

February 22, 2014 – Yanukovych was removed as President of Ukraine.

February 27 2014 – Yatsenyuk was installed as Prime Minister of Ukraine. Yatsenyuk would resign in April 2016 amidst corruption accusations.

April 18 2014 – Hunter Biden was appointed to the Board of Directors for Burisma – one of the largest natural gas companies in Ukraine.

April 22 2014 – VP Biden travels to Ukraine and offers support and $50 million in aid for Yatsenyuk’s shaky new government.

The Atlantic Council, along with the Brookings Institute and the Center for Strategic and International Studies, were the subject of an unflattering portrayal in a New York Times article, Foreign Powers Buy Influence at Think Tanks:

More than a dozen prominent Washington research groups have received tens of millions of dollars from foreign governments in recent years while pushing United States government officials to adopt policies that often reflect the donors’ priorities, an investigation by The New York Times has found.

The think tanks do not disclose the terms of the agreements they have reached with foreign governments. And they have not registered with the United States government as representatives of the donor countries, an omission that appears, in some cases, to be a violation of federal law.

As a result, policy makers who rely on think tanks are often unaware of the role of foreign governments in funding the research.

The arrangements involve Washington’s most influential think tanks, including the Brookings Institution, the Center for Strategic and International Studies, and the Atlantic Council.

Each is a major recipient of overseas funds, producing policy papers, hosting forums and organizing private briefings for senior United States government officials that typically align with the foreign governments’ agendas.

Some interesting connections run through the Atlantic Council.

>>16827194

>>16827198

>>16827204

“Victor Pinchuk, the Clintons & Endless Connections” – Part 4

https://themarketswork.com/2018/03/11/victor-pinchuk-the-clintons-endless-connections/

http://web.archive.org/web/20180716031557/https://themarketswork.com/2018/03/11/victor-pinchuk-the-clintons-endless-connections/

March 11, 2018

Dimitry Alperovich – the CEO of Crowdstrike that “investigated” the hacking of the DNC’s servers is a Non-Resident Senior Fellow at Atlantic. The FBI was refused access to independently examine the DNC servers. Interestingly, Alperovich’s bio appears to have been disabled.

The Crowdstrike findings have been repeatedly called into questioned:

A New Report Raises Big Questions About Last Year’s DNC Hack – forensics indicate that DNC emails were copied by an insider via USB and not hacked via external actors.

Intel Vets Challenge ‘Russia Hack’ Evidence – DNC data was copied onto a storage device at a speed that far exceeds an Internet capability for a remote hack. Forensics show that the copying was performed on the East coast of the U.S.

New Questions Over Claim Russia Hacked the Election – Cybersecurity experts who were first to conclude that Putin hacked presidential election abandon some of their claims against Russia – and refuse to co-operate with Congress.

James Clapper – Obama’s Director of National Intelligence, serves on the Atlantic Council’s International Advisory Board. Clapper was the architect of the report on Russian Election Interference – Assessing Russian Activities and Intentions in Recent U.S. Elections.

I encourage you to read the report. I think you’ll find it surprisingly lacking in detail – highly generalized with very little in the way of substance.

The report was technically created by a joint effort between the CIA (former Director John Brennan), FBI (former Director James Comey) and the NSA (current Director Mike Rogers) – and assembled by the DNI (former Director James Clapper).

The joint report contains one significant caveat:

CIA and FBI have high confidence in this judgment; NSA has only moderate confidence.

Actually, NSA Director Admiral Mike Rogers stated in Senate hearing testimony that his confidence did not reach even this threshold:

I wouldn’t call it a discrepancy, I’d call it an honest difference of opinion between three different organizations and in the end I made that call.…It didn’t have the same level of sourcing and the same level of multiple sources.

In essence, the DNI’s report was constructed by just three men – former DNI Director Clapper, former CIA Director Brennan and former FBI Director Comey.

This report was then used to push the entire Russian Narrative.

It’s appearing increasingly likely that Clapper either used or affirmed some data from the Steele Dossier in the IC Assessment Report.

Evelyn Farkas – who famously disclosed the plan to disseminate information gathered on President Trump, is a Non-Resident Senior Fellow at Atlantic. Farkas served as Obama’s Deputy Assistant Secretary of Defense for Russia/Ukraine/Eurasia.

The Trump folks, if they found out how we knew what we knew about the Trump staff dealing with Russians, that they would try to compromise those sources and methods, meaning we would no longer have access to that intelligence.

Irena Chalupa – possibly related to Alexandra Chalupa (I’ve been unable to confirm and have seen conflicting reports) – is a Non-Resident Fellow at Atlantic. Irena Chalupa is also a senior correspondent at Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty. She is a former Director of the Ukrainian National Information Service (UNIS) – the Ukrainian Congress Committee of America’s Washington public affairs bureau.

Irena Chalupa is also a member of StopFake.org – Struggle Against Fake Information About Events In Ukraine.

Irena Chalupa’s ideological interests in Ukraine are aligned directly with those of Alexandra Chalupa.

Evelyn Farkas and Irena Chalupa worked together in 2014 on the Atlantic Council’s Coordinating on Ukraine.

It seems the more one looks, the more connections one finds.

>>16827194

>>16827198

>>16827204

>>16827217

“Victor Pinchuk, the Clintons & Endless Connections” – Part 5

https://themarketswork.com/2018/03/11/victor-pinchuk-the-clintons-endless-connections/

http://web.archive.org/web/20180716031557/https://themarketswork.com/2018/03/11/victor-pinchuk-the-clintons-endless-connections/

March 11, 2018

Oleg Deripensky, a Russian oligarch once linked to Paul Manafort, published an Op-Ed in which he made the claim that George Soros was helping fund Fusion GPS.

He also highlighted a conversation between Senator Sheldon Whitehouse and Victoria Nuland at the Munich Security Conference in February 2018.

I highlighted Nuland’s role in structuring the Ukrainian government in 2014.

I don’t know about the Soros connection but I did find the Whitehouse-Nuland conversation (https://youtu.be/MOAIPRy5CkY)

WHITEHOUSE: Even in an area [Climate Change] where the administration has carved out perhaps the most irresponsible position it could, on an issue of global significance, nevertheless you can’t really resist the pressure of fact and science – and I guess what the Breitbart crowd would call the Deep State – but what many of us would call knowledgeable professionals who’ve given their lives to these things and actually know what they’re talking about…

…So even on that worst of all issues there’s still a hope for continuity – at least in the Deep State.

Note John Kerry smiling and applauding in the crowd.

NULAND: Well colleagues, you’ve now heard our bi-partisan, bicameral panel of Deep State crowd loyalists give broad reassurance about continuity in U.S. leadership and in U.S. policy overall.

For the record, Sheldon Whitehouse is a blithering idiot.

Continue watching the video a moment longer to see Ex-Representative Jane Harman pay homage to John McCain:

HARMAN: His voice, his presence, was instrumental in training generations of members of the U.S. Congress on foreign policy issues.

NULAND: And the U.S. State Department…

HARMAN: And the U.S. State Department too. He had his favorites, you being one Victoria.

I doubt John McCain has ever been right – in either policy or ideology. But he did leave quite an unfortunate influence.

These people all think the same. And they all think they know better than anyone else.

Despite a tedious repetition of corruption and policy failures.

>>16476818

>“The Great Deceptions of Robert Mueller: The Art of the Limited Hangout” – Marc Rich, Glencore, Clintons, etc.

>>16476838

>“Pan Am Flight 103: Robert Mueller’s 30-Year Search for Justice”

>>16476897

>“After Conviction of “El Chapo” Info Surfaces that James Comey was El Chapo’s Bank Money Laundering Fixer” – HSBC, Robert Mueller, Eric Holder, etc.

“Obama, the Bidens, the Clintons, the IMF and Others Pillaged Ukraine Then Forced Its Citizens to Pay Excessive Natural Gas Prices at 50% Above Market” – Part 1

https://www.thegatewaypundit.com/2019/09/obama-the-bidens-the-clintons-the-imf-and-others-pillaged-ukraine-then-forced-its-citizens-to-pay-excessive-natural-gas-prices-at-50-above-market/

September 24, 2019

President Obama, his Vice President Biden and his son, Hillary Clinton, the Clinton Foundation, Mueller, the Podestas, the IMF and others all pillaged the Ukraine and then delayed loans to the country before forcing Ukrainians to pay grossly inflated natural gas prices. Now these vultures claim they are innocent.

More than a year ago we reported that Robert Mueller was charging Paul Manafort for actions that Mueller committed himself.

The Gateway Pundit reported in August last year that Paul Manafort sits in solitary confinement for crimes he allegedly committed stemming from his work as a lobbyist in Ukraine years ago before Donald Trump ran for president.

For a little back story, Yulia Tymoshenko runs for reelection in Ukraine, she loses, and just like Hillary, Tymoshenko fails to lose gracefully and promises to #Resist. Her victorious opponent, Viktor Yanukovytch, throws her in jail for what many claim to be bogus charges.

We continued:

Anyway, due to all the negative publicity stemming from the Tymoshenko debacle, Yanukovytch tried to repair his image before the public, so he hired the lobbyist, Paul Manafort, who then hires John Podesta’s lobbying outfit. Their job was to make Yanukovytch seem like a really likable guy to the Ukrainian public, so Podesta gets both Obama, Hillary Clinton, and John Kerry’s State Department to do photo ops with Yanukovytch because, you know, the DNC coffers needed to be filled during election time, so they had to sell Yanukovytch as a real class act to the adoring public. Obama even went so far as to declare the Ukrainian election to be free and fair.

But guess who else did photo ops with Yanukovytch? Bob Mueller, the same Mueller that’s now prosecuting these very people. Rod Rosenstein’s memo said Mueller was specifically authorized to investigate allegations that Manafort “[c]ommitted a crime or crimes arising out of payments he received from the Ukrainian government before and during the tenure of President Viktor Yanukovych.”

Of course Mueller never recused himself from the Trump-Russia sham investigation due to his activities in the Ukraine. Meanwhile, Manafort rots in prison for his actions in the Ukraine working with Hillary Clinton’s Campaign Manager John Podesta. Mueller even gave Podesta’s brother Tony immunity during his corrupt ‘witch hunt’.

But this was just a small part of the corruption and pillaging of the Ukraine by the Democrat Party leaders.

We also reported that Oligarch Victor Pinchuk may have helped divert IMF funds to Hillary Clinton’s 2016 presidential campaign.

As we reported previously:

Also serving on the International Advisory Board of the Atlantic Council is James Clapper, who served as Obama’s Director of National Intelligence. Funnily enough, Bongino discovered that the Chief Technology Officer of “the only company that investigated the hacking of the DNC’s servers and quickly determined it was the Russians, is a nonresident senior fellow in cybersecurity” at the Atlantic Council. His name is Dmitri Alperovitch (owner of CrowdStrike).”

So the Clintons, Obama, the Bidens, Mueller, the Podestas and the Atlantic Council all were involved in the Ukraine. But this is just the tip of the iceberg. The IMF also had shady dealings with the Ukraine related to these same Democrats.

>>16827303

“Obama, the Bidens, the Clintons, the IMF and Others Pillaged Ukraine Then Forced Its Citizens to Pay Excessive Natural Gas Prices at 50% Above Market” – Part 2

https://www.thegatewaypundit.com/2019/09/obama-the-bidens-the-clintons-the-imf-and-others-pillaged-ukraine-then-forced-its-citizens-to-pay-excessive-natural-gas-prices-at-50-above-market/

September 24, 2019

According to Wikipedia –

On 28 July 2010, the IMF approved a 29-month $15.15 billion loan to Ukraine.[7] Among others this led to a 50 percent increase on household natural gas utility prices in July 2010 for Ukrainian consumers (a key demand of the IMF in exchange of the loan).[8][9]

By December 2013, the Ukrainian Prime Minister, Mykola Azarov, stated “the extremely harsh conditions” of a renewed IMF loan (presented by the IMF on 20 November 2013), which included big budget cuts and a 40% increase in natural gas bills, had been the last argument in favor of the Ukrainian government’s decision to suspend preparations for signing the Ukraine–European Union Association Agreement on 21 November 2013.[11][12][13] The decision to put off signing this EU-Ukraine Association Agreement lead [sic] to massive protests in Ukraine.[14][nb 1]

Then on December 10, 2013, President Yanukovych stated “We will certainly resume the IMF negotiations. If there are conditions that suit us, we will take that path”.[22] However, Yanukovych also (once again) stated that the conditions put forward by the IMF were unacceptable “I had a conversation with U.S. Vice President Joseph Biden, who told me that the issue of the IMF loan has almost been solved, but I told him that if the conditions remained… we did not need such loans”.[22]

In February 2014 Yanukovych and Azarov were forcibly removed from power (as a result of the pro-EU-Ukraine Association Agreement coup) and replaced by the Yatsenyuk Government.[24]

In March 2014 the IMF required the Ukraine to reform natural gas price subsidies in order to provide it with an aid package worth about $15 billion.[25] One of the expected effects was a 50% price hike on natural gas sold to domestic Ukrainian consumers.[25]

The Markets Work reported that Hunter Biden was placed on Burisma’s board after Obama’s State Department employee Victoria Nuland and the U.S. Ambassador to Ukraine Geoffrey Pyatt held a phone conversation regarding installation of Arseniy Yatsenyuk in place of then-President Yanukovych. This call occurred on or before February 4, 2014.

On February 22, 2014, Yanukovych was removed as President of Ukraine and on February 27, 2014, Yatsenyuk was installed as Prime Minister of Ukraine. (Yatsenyuk would resign in April 2016 amidst corruption accusations.)

On April 18 2014, Hunter Biden was appointed to the Board of Directors for Burisma – one of the largest natural gas companies in Ukraine. Then on April 22, 2014, Obama’s Vice President Biden traveled to the Ukraine and offered support and $50 million in aid for Yatsenyuk’s shaky new government.

As a result of all this activity, the Bidens got a place on the Board of one of the largest natural gas companies in the Ukraine, the Clintons received millions from a Ukrainian Oligarch, the IMF got billions in loans with the Ukraine, and the people of the Ukraine were burdened with excessive natural gas prices.

And there it is.

Hat tip D. Manny

>>17382604

>“A Tribute To Photographer Kevin Carter (who apparently killed himself 4 months later)” - https://youtu.be/FC7UyAN-jrY

>Remember, the ANC stated that the homeland, Bophuthatswana, was a puppet of the Apartheid government. The right wing AWB tried to help its government to keep its independence. On their way back to South Africa, some were gunned down in front of about 24 members of the press by Bop’s military. The press reported that the AWB indiscriminately killed civilians on their way out of the homeland but there was no footage of these incidents. Yet many of them were waiting to witness the murder of these members. As someone stated in the video at 1:23, “it was almost like a movie set.”

>Shabtai Kalmanowitch (Lithuanian-born Israeli citizen) “dominated the economies and government of” Bophuthatswana, “an operative for Marc Rich”, protected by Mossad

It gives further perspective concerning this propaganda hit piece regarding the murder of 3 AWB members which happened about a month before the first ‘democratic’ election.

“Death of Apartheid: The Whites' Last Stand. 4/6” [11/12 March 1994] – Fall of Bophuthatswana

https://youtu.be/PPvuAVO2-NI

0:00 – “There were also reports that the white right particularly Constand Viljoen group had access to the commandos in the SADF that the loyalty of the police went to the right wing also. Therefore extending beyond that scenario, there is a prospect that the De Klerk government could be toppled by the military. Steyn took his men to Bop’s [Bophuthatswana] military airbase. They were to sleep in the hangars there and get the weapons they needed. The next day armed they were to restore order and keep Bop’s independence intact.”

3:23 – “They [Bop soldiers] even said that they were preparing to attack those people if those people did not leave immediately.”

5:55 - “There they murdered them, they just murdered them. What you saw on television.”

6:22 – [Johan Kriegler, former Electoral Commission Chairman and SA judge] “Three of them were shot like dogs in the glaring publicity of television lights and cameras. That had an enormous effect on the right wing willingness to resist the elections further by means of violence and terrorism.” [Then about 2 weeks, 28 March 1994, later IFP members were gunned in front of the ANC building, known as the Shell House massacre… Also televised!]

6:38 – [Mac Maharaj, ANC] “I think mothers, wives, parents for the first time realized that this talk of fighting it for a Boere staat [Boer state] meant that their sons and daughters would be killed no matter how tough they talk.” [IFP also wanted their own state as they were predominantly Zulus.]

6:53 – [Leon Wessels, Cabinet Minister] “The events were sad but it did have the effect that you cannot play with a peace process in this country and this country is simply not up for grabs.”

7:08 – [Eugene Terreblanche, AWB leader] “Now you hold me responsible. At least the AWB tried to help and what is more interesting is at least on record there it stands now that we were willing to die for black people. For an independent black state of Bophuthatswana. How can I feel myself responsible.”

8:02 – “The government now decided to get rid of Mangope. The ANC assigned a top man to ensure that this was done. He was Mac Maharaj, a member of the transitional council. [Making sure that the ANC gets to rule South Africa.] Six years before, when Mangope was the South African government’s pet tribal ruler, they had rescued him from a coup. Now deferring to Bop’s foreign status, the Foreign Minister Pik Botha was sent to depose him.” [He was involved in Namibia’s transition after Bernt Carlsson’s death. >>17069544 ]

8:58 – [Mangope’s son] “President Mangope’s association with the South African government in particular with Mr Pik Botha. They have been together for 17 years.”

>>17397986

>6:22 – [Johan Kriegler, former Electoral Commission Chairman and SA judge] “Three of them were shot like dogs in the glaring publicity of television lights and cameras. That had an enormous effect on the right wing willingness to resist the elections further by means of violence and terrorism.” [Then about 2 weeks, 28 March 1994, later IFP members were gunned in front of the ANC building, known as the Shell House massacre… Also televised!]

>

>6:38 – [Mac Maharaj, ANC] “I think mothers, wives, parents for the first time realized that this talk of fighting it for a Boere staat [Boer state] meant that their sons and daughters would be killed no matter how tough they talk.” [IFP also wanted their own state as they were predominantly Zulus.]

“South Africa March 28 1994 Pre-Election Zulu-ANC Violence in Johannesburg”

https://youtu.be/H18dCmjTlmo

>>17397986

>7:08 – [Eugene Terreblanche, AWB leader] “Now you hold me responsible. At least the AWB tried to help and what is more interesting is at least on record there it stands now that we were willing to die for black people. For an independent black state of Bophuthatswana. How can I feel myself responsible.”

“'ET's [Eugene Terreblanche] kindness led to his death'”

https://www.iol.co.za/news/south-africa/ets-kindness-led-to-his-death-480513

April 14, 2010

As Eugene Terre'Blanche's alleged killers are due to appear in court today, it has emerged that the AWB leader's decision to pay for his domestic worker's funeral could have led to his murder.

A week before he was bludgeoned to death, Terre'Blanche's domestic worker of 20 years died and he paid a sum of R7 000 to a local funeral parlour towards the burial of Rose Matheu.

Members of the AWB claim Matheu was killed because she had uncovered a plot to kill their leader, and they want her body exhumed.

But her family said she died of natural causes at Tshepong Hospital in Klerksdorp on March 29.

On the morning of Terre'Blanche's murder, his alleged killers had apparently gone to his Ventersdorp house demanding their wages.

Another employee, Thozamile Lephonda, 17, said he also went to the right-winger's house that morning.

"I met the two (alleged killers) there, who were also complaining about their wages. Terre'Blanche's wife told us that they paid for the funeral costs (of Matheu) and she asked me to return the next day for my pay," Thozamile said.

He said he heard about Terre'Blanche's death when he switched on his radio the next day.

Police are investigating whether Terre'Blanche's murder related to his non-payment of staff or his alleged sexual involvement with the accused, after a used condom was allegedly found at the scene.

Speaking to The Star yesterday, Thozamile said both he and the accused were upset that they hadn't been paid on time.

Gars Esterhuysen, from Doves funeral home in Ventersdorp, said yesterday that Matheu, 48, had been buried on April 8 and confirmed that Terre'Blanche had taken her family to the funeral home.

"Eugene was here with the family; he was helping them organise the funeral. If there was plot on his life, he would have known about it," Esterhuysen said.

Matheu was buried at Tshing Cemetery a day before her boss was buried on his farm.

Matheu's family said she spent her weekends drinking excessively, despite suffering from high blood pressure. At the time of her death, she was working at the house occupied by Terre'Blanche's estranged wife Martie in Roth Street in Ventersdorp.

Her sister, Susan Londt, told The Star the family had "received a report that the police found her lying on the ground a few streets away from the (Matheu) house".

While Rose's family said no post-mortem was done, they do not believe she was murdered because "she did not have a single wound on her".

Esterhuysen said Terre'Blanche had shown no racism when he sat at the home arranging the funeral.

"I saw the other side of Eugene that day. He sat together with the family, there was no racism, and he even offered the sister (Londt) a part-time job to help them through."

According to Tshepong Hospital communications manager Nico Masiu, Matheu suffered massive internal bleeding in her brain, which led to her death.

Masiu said the hospital had treated Matheu for six days after she had been brought to them for further treatment from Ventersdorp Hospital.

He said Matheu arrived at the hospital on March 23 and was in a coma for most of the time.

"Even if she had woken up, something she did for a short period of time, she would have suffered a stroke because alcohol was also a contributing factor to her health," he said.

"The CT scan report revealed significant subarachnoid haemorrhage (bleeding around the brain), and this bleeding extended into the brain," Masiu said.

Meanwhile, the Ventersdorp Magistrate's Court was today due to hear the media's arguments for access to the trial of the two people accused of killing Terre'Blanche before the actual murder case, a law firm said.

"We are bringing an application for authorisation in terms of the Child Justice Act for the public and media to attend the proceedings, not only for the bail application on Wednesday, but the entire trial," attorney Dario Milo, of Webber Wentzel, told Sapa yesterday.

The firm was acting on behalf of Independent Newspapers, Media 24 and the SA National Editors' Forum.

Milo emphasised that the identity of one of the accused, who is 15, would be protected at all times.

"However, the general principles of open justice demand that court proceedings be heard in public, and to exclude the media and public would be a disproportionate restriction on media freedom."

>>16941522

>Phalatse’s appointment at Armscor, the state arms procurement body, was announced by Minister of Defence Mosiuoa Lekota on Wednesday. Phalatse is among four new board members expected to steer the troubled arms parastatal into calmer waters. Another surprise appointment is Constand Viljoen, the former South African Defence Force chief and Freedom Front leader.

“GENERAL CONSTAND VILJOEN PASSES AWAY AGED 86” – “In March 1994, Viljoen led an effort by several thousand Volksfront militia to protect the bantustan president Lucas Mangope, in Bophuthatswana against a coup d’état.”

https://www.georgeherald.com/News/Article/National/general-constand-viljoen-passes-away-aged-86-202004030515

3 April 2020

He was partly credited with preventing the outbreak of armed violence by disaffected white South Africans prior to the post-apartheid general elections.

He had been the senior SADF military officer directing Operation Savannah in 1975. He is also credited with planning the first major airborne assault in South African military history, Cassinga, a raid carried out against SWAPO insurgents. Despite his rank, Viljoen was present during the battle, offering what was described as a “swashbuckling” front-line leadership, which won him the respect of many fellow Afrikaners.

Viljoen was credited by some with making overtures that helped lead to white South Africans’ acceptance of universal suffrage and free elections, such as with his famous speech at the Broederbond annual assembly in Voortrekkerhoogte, saying of the Black South Africans in his army, As hulle kan veg vir Suid-Afrika, kan hulle stem vir Suid-Afrika! (“If they can fight for South Africa, then they can vote for South Africa!”).

In 1993, Viljoen and fellow retired generals formed the Afrikaner Volksfront (Afrikaner People’s Front), an umbrella body for conservative Afrikaners. However, Viljoen had strained relationships with the leaders of other right-wing parties, who considered him too moderate.

Immediately prior to the 1994 elections Viljoen had a force of between 50,000 and 60,000 trained paramilitary personnel at his command, with the ability to seize large sections of the country. The force was assembled in preparation for war with Umkhonto weSizwe, the military wing of the African National Congress, as a potential contingency to protect Afrikaner interests.

In March 1994, Viljoen led an effort by several thousand Volksfront militia to protect the bantustan president Lucas Mangope, in Bophuthatswana against a coup d’état. Despite being requested not to participate in the action because of extremist views, militants of the Afrikaner Weerstandsbeweging also advanced into Bophuthatswana, sparking clashes with the security forces.

Immediately after the incident, Viljoen split from the Volksfront. and initiated a legitimate election campaign, co-founding and becoming leader of the Freedom Front, a new political party representing white conservatives. His decision to take part in the elections is believed to have prevented armed resistance by the far right and on the occasion of his retirement from politics, the South African government recognised him for preventing bloodshed.

In 2001, Viljoen handed over the leadership of the Freedom Front to Pieter Mulder and retired from politics, citing his frustration working with a parliament dominated by the ANC.

In 2003, it emerged that Viljoen had been a target of the Boeremag paramilitary right-wing group, which considered him a traitor who had underhandedly sold out the Afrikaner people.

>>17397990

>>17397986

>>17398039

Constand Viljoen is included in the attached 1994 ballot.

“The Aftermath of the Shell House massacre”

https://ourconstitution.constitutionhill.org.za/the-shell-house-massacre-and-the-road-to-the-ifps-participation-in-the-election/

Directly after the Shell House massacre:

A state of emergency was declared across eleven districts in the East Rand and across the KwaZulu province in an attempt to halt the escalation of violence as well as ensure free and fair elections. IFP leader Chief Buthelezi vowed to fight the ANC “to the finish” unless the elections were postponed. President De Klerk appointed an inquest, led by Judge Robert Nugent, to investigate the massacre. Mandela later stated that he had given the instruction to ANC guards to repel an IFP attack “even if they had to kill people”. (At the Truth and Reconciliation Commission (TRC), 11 ANC staff members were granted amnesty for the massacre.)

Just 18 days before the election:

During a summit on 8 April 1994, seen by the country as the last chance for peace, Chief Buthelezi, King Zwelithini, the ANC, and the NP deadlocked after fourteen hours of talks on the issue of the IFP’s demands for a federal constitution and the right of the Zulu to be constitutionally recognised. The summit collapsed.

Elections to go ahead:

Both the ANC and the NP were nonetheless determined to push forward with elections. “We cannot postpone our freedom”, Mandela proclaimed. In the meantime, Chief Buthelezi and other leaders of the IFP threatened that the Zulu campaign to get the right deal ‘would continue for another 100 years if necessary’.

International mediation:

In a final bid to find a solution, Chief Buthelezi called for international mediation to reconcile the IFP’s demands with the terms of the Interim Constitution. On 14 April 1994, Kenyan diplomat, Washington Okumu, arrived in South Africa to lead talks with the IFP. After meeting Chief Buthelezi at a corporate retreat in the Eastern Transvaal, Okumu reported that the IFP leader was prepared to negotiate further if the position of the Zulu kingdom could be guaranteed.

The IFP’s proposal:

Delegates from the KwaZulu Government (KZG) proposed first, amending the Interim Constitution to recognise the Zulu King; second to promise further international mediation after the election; and third, to establish a trust to govern KwaZulu. This trust would comprise 29.67% of the land of KwaZulu and become the custodian of the land. King Zwelithini was to be its sole trustee thus creating a mechanism to preserve tribal interests in the land.

A final amendment:

On 25 April 1994, Parliament gathered a final time to amend the Interim Constitution to recognise the Zulu king, and to legislate that there would be no substantial reduction of provincial powers in the final constitution as compared to the Interim Constitution. The deal secured the legitimacy of the elections and staved off a possible explosion of violence. The same day, De Klerk quietly signed the Ingonyama Trust Act into law. (In 2019, a high-level panel on land reform recommended that Parliament scrap the law.)

Implications of the last-minute change in the electoral process:

Between 25 and 29 April 1994, the IEC issued an additional 700 000 temporary voters’ cards in KwaZulu; between 600 and 700 more polling stations were identified and set up; and an additional 13 000 staff were recruited. Eighty million ballots had already been printed in England at considerable expense, and because of limited time a reprint was not an option. Instead, 80 million stickers with the IFP’s voting details were added by hand to both the national and the provincial ballots.

[General elections were held in South Africa between 26 and 29 April 1994. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1994_South_African_general_election]

>>17397986

>6:22 – [Johan Kriegler, former Electoral Commission Chairman and SA judge] “Three of them were shot like dogs in the glaring publicity of television lights and cameras. That had an enormous effect on the right wing willingness to resist the elections further by means of violence and terrorism.” [Then about 2 weeks, 28 March 1994, later IFP members were gunned in front of the ANC building, known as the Shell House massacre… Also televised!]

>>17398155

>Eighty million ballots had already been printed in England at considerable expense, and because of limited time a reprint was not an option. Instead, 80 million stickers with the IFP’s voting details were added by hand to both the national and the provincial ballots.

>[General elections were held in South Africa between 26 and 29 April 1994. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1994_South_African_general_election]

They had plenty of opportunity to rig the election – SA total population was 43,267,982 in 1994 but printed 80,000,000 ballots in England?

https://www.macrotrends.net/countries/ZAF/south-africa/population

>>16303715

>“THE SOUTH AFRICAN VOTE: THE VOTING; Was the Election Fair? Voting Chief Is Satisfied” – Dated May 3, 1994

>[The ANC has ruled SA ever since!]

>https://www.nytimes.com/1994/05/03/world/south-african-vote-voting-was-election-fair-voting-chief-satisfied.html

>Judge Johann Kriegler [was a board member of Oppenheimer’s Urban Foundation] casually uses the word "breakdown" to describe the election he is running.

>He concedes that many ballots never left the warehouse, that polling places failed to open, that ballot boxes were stuffed "to a significant degree," that voting places often had no impartial monitors and that some election officials were partisan, if not crooked.

>But there is no doubt in South Africa that within a few days he will baptize the new democracy by pronouncing the required four-word benediction "substantially free and fair" over the results.

>"From the outset the commission had no illusions that it could mount a really efficient election," the judge said today during an intermission from the crises that still beset the counting of votes. "It is an Africa-style election. It is not to be measured by European or North American standards. What we're trying to do is put together a credible test of the will of the people."

>>17398910

>>17398910

Actually, "on Jan. 20, 2001, his last day in office, Bill Clinton issued a pardon for international fugitive Marc Rich." https://nypost.com/2016/01/17/after-pardoning-criminal-marc-rich-clintons-made-millions-off-friends/

>>17446271

>“The South African town destroyed to make way for a whites-only suburb – BBC [British] News” - https://youtu.be/d7YY-B-ohUY

Ironically, ANC evicts their own people – Red Ants

“Evictions | Red Ants out in force” - https://youtu.be/TD-3nN3lvV8 , posted April 6, 2021 (embedded)

“SOUTH AFRICA: Residents battle ANC, 'Red Ants' over evictions”

https://www.greenleft.org.au/content/south-africa-residents-battle-anc-red-ants-over-evictions

September 25, 2002

JOHANNESBURG —In a show of people's power, 6000 residents of KwaMasiza Hostel in Sebokeng reoccupied their homes on September 12 after being forcibly evicted a day earlier by thugs employed by a company partly owned by African National Congress (ANC) local government councillors.

In an incredible example of the growing inhumanity with which the poor in the "new" South Africa are treated, armed police and Wozani Security guards (the hated "Red Ants") threw the residents and their belongings into the street without any alternative shelter being offered. Police used water cannon to disperse protesters. It was one of the coldest days of the year. Vicva Investment Trading Company, which is partly owned by three local ANC councillors, initiated the evictions.

During the eviction, police cordoned off the entire hostel area with barbed wire and threatened residents and activists from the Soweto Electricity Crisis Committee, who had joined the residents to protest against the eviction. Assisted by the Red Ants, the cops attempted to chase the SECC activists away and harassed and intimidated the residents. The protest was declared an "illegal gathering".

The residents have lived in KwaMasiza for many years. For months, Vicva (which bought the hostel from the state-owned Iscor corporation under controversial circumstances) has been attempting to evict the residents. The residents have been assisted by activists of the Anti-Privatisation Forum (APF) in their struggle against Vicva over the last several months.

During the reoccupation, one woman was shot in the legs by police. On September 14, members of Wozani Security attempted to re-evict the families. Outrageously, the Red Ants told the residents that they were engaged in an "illegal gathering" and then, without warning, opened fire with live ammunition. Four people were seriously wounded, including a Wozani Security guard who died at the scene.

For both the residents and the APF, this entire sorry saga is further confirmation of the political hypocrisy and callousness that is an integral part of the privatisation of basic services under the ANC government.

While the ANC publicly claims to be acting on behalf of the poor, its political representatives at all levels of government are involved in corrupt and secretive privatisation deals that bring personal enrichment for themselves at the expense of the poor.

How can South Africa's workers and poor take the ANC's rhetoric ("people-driven development") and campaigns seriously when it is clear, time and again, that it is ANC politicians who are orchestrating the attacks on the poor through their privatisation program?

“South Africa forced evictions: Who are the Red Ants?”

https://www.ibtimes.co.uk/south-africa-forced-evictions-who-are-red-ants-1561728

05/24/16 AT 3:12 PM

The security company known as the Red Ants were involved in a violent protest against forced evictions in Hammanskraal, South Africa, on 23 May, that left at least two people dead and six injured. So-called because of their red overalls, the Red Ants are hired by the government or private property owners to evict people and dismantle illegally occupied houses and lands.

The Red Ant Security and Eviction Services was founded in 1998 by local entrepreneurs to support the "social, economic and infrastructure development requirements of South Africa." Among other things, the company also provides security training and sanitation services.

In several cases, residents who are being evicted refuse to leave their houses and stage demonstrations against the Red Ants. In some instances, people who are evicted are not relocated and become homeless after their shacks are demolished.

>>17454438

Red Ant Security Relocation & Eviction Services ( a.k.a. Red Ants)

https://red-ants.co.za/about-us/

The Aim of the Company is to deliver a one stop all encompassing Urban Management Support Services for Human Settlements.

The South African economy is highly subscribed, with large Multi-Nationals dominating many sectors of the economy since the dawn of democratic elections in 1994. Regulatory changes and promotion of local enterprises has forged an opportunity for Companies such as Red Ants to showcase their capacity to tackle and deliver on projects as required by the relevant authorities.

22 year experience in the industry

Red Ant Security Relocation & Eviction Services ( a.k.a. Red Ants) is a multi-disciplinary Company offering services in the Build Environment, Security and Sanitation. The Company was founded by local entrepreneurs to support the social, economic and infrastructure development requirements of South Africa. Red Ants provides services across many sectors of the economy to both public and private clientele across the country. Red Ants was incorporated in 1998.

The formation of Red Ants came about through the realization that the security, construction are predominantly owned by large multi-national Companies. With local flair, Red Ants is actively pursuing strategies to grow market share through the provision of excellent service and relevant product offerings.

Private Public Partnerships

On-going changes in the growth and development of the Company are geared to ensure that we take maximum advantage of opportunities in the market place. We have seen a definite shift in industry trends with a move away from traditional public sector work towards Private Public Partnerships (PPPs). This comes about as a realization that governments worldwide can no longer be expected to carry the burden of infrastructure development alone given the many competing socio-political priorities. As a Company we have realised this and we in a position to participate in PPP opportunities.

Corporate Social Responsibility

Red Ants has a strong client base in Both the Public and Private Sector. Some of our clients are listed below:

• National Departments

• Provincial Governmen

• Municipalities

• Private Clients

Staff

Our most valuable asset at Red Ants is our staff. They form the life blood and backbone of our operations. As a truly South African Company, we support and drive transformation. We are proud of our staff, 98% are historically disadvantaged individuals.

The Red Ants board adheres to strict corporate governance values.

https://red-ants.co.za/security/

Always there for you

Red Ants Security have assisted many clients to execute eviction notices lawfully granted by courts to remove unlawfully occupied premises. Over the years Red Ants have gathered a reputation of being tough whilst remaining professional and sensitive to the matter at hand.

We have provided many clients with Guards for private residences, for commercial and major events where the need for well organised security was a priority.

Red Ants Security has also worked closely with the South African Police to tackle security related incidences such as removal of illegal electrical connections in various townships. The Company has also assisted various security organisations to help arrest criminal elements within our communities. We have partnered with Municipalities and State Owned Enterprises (SOEs) such as:

• Eskom

• PRASA

• City of Johannesburg

• City of Cape Town

• Western Cape Provincial Department of Human Settlement

• Kysna Municipality

• Mossel Bay Municipality

• City of Ekurhuleni

• Emfuleni Municipality

“SAPS ‘humiliated’, after police station ROBBED in Mpumalanga”

https://www.thesouthafrican.com/news/breaking-saps-police-station-robbed-mpumalanga-sunday-4-september/

04-09-2022 14:55

An actual police station has been ransacked by armed thugs this weekend, leaving SAPS officials in Mpumalanga stunned.

We know the criminals of South Africa can be quite brazen at the best of times – but this surely takes the cake? A set of armed thieves in Mpumalanga robbed a police station over the weekend, taking away a large number of firearms and ammunition.

POLICE STATION ROBBERY LEAVES BOYS IN BLUE RED-FACED!

The Grootvlei Police Station was the scene of this embarrassing exchange, with some crime experts stating that SAPS ‘now finds itself in crisis’. Multiple suspects stormed the building, demanding access to the police’s weapons and defensive equipment.

Police Minister Bheki Cele, who finds himself under increasing pressure amid a backdrop of rising crime and numerous personal scandals, is yet to make a statement on the matter. However, critics are already lamenting the ‘crumbling institutions’ that represent SAPS.

MPUMALANGA SAPS ‘NOT ALONE’ IN THIS ORDEAL

This isn’t the first time such a robbery has occurred in South Africa. In fact, there was a rather high-profile incident just ten months ago:

The Malamulele Police Station in Limpopo was allegedly ransacked by heavily armed suspects last November. The suspects stole firearms from the station and locked the police officers on duty inside a vehicle.

After leaving the station, the suspects allegedly proceeded to rob a nearby food outlet and filling station. They also robbed the businesses of an undisclosed amount of cash. Witnesses said they saw the group travelling in a bakkie.

Earlier this year, an image of four SAPS officers being humiliated by a gang of criminals went viral online. But police representatives say the picture – and its accompanying caption – is a load of baloney…

It’s understood that this event never took place, and was merely as scene ‘depicted from a television drama’. SAPS have branded the image as ‘totally misleading’, and they are encouraging people not to share the original post, as it is peddling a clear and obvious falsehood.

“Man beaten to death after he was allegedly caught raping a goat”

https://www.thesouthafrican.com/news/man-beaten-to-death-after-he-was-allegedly-caught-raping-a-goat/

06-09-2022 08:05

Initially the man wanted to rape an elderly woman and upon failing to do so, he opted for the goat and was then beaten to death.

A young man from Mtunzini in KwaZulu-Natal was allegedly beaten to death by community members after he was allegedly caught sexually abusing a goat.

The incident reportedly happened just before 00:00 on Monday, 5 September 2022.

MAN BEATEN TO DEATH FOR RAPING A GOAT

According to 1KZNTV News, the man wanted to rape a 61-year-old woman when he attempted to break into her home but she managed to fight back and threatened to decapitate the man.

Following the attempted house break-in, the woman was awoken by the sound of a crying goat, reportedly. Upon further investigation, the man was allegedly caught red-handed raping a goat.

Members of the community then gathered at the elderly woman’s home and took the law into their hands by beating the man to death.

In July this year, the mysterious death of goats in a village in the Eastern Cape was finally resolved after a man called Mamboyi admitted to having ‘non consensual’ intercourse with the animals.

The latest death of a goat in the community at the time trapped Mamboyi, who is said to be a shepherd, after he was last seen with the animal.

In a video that was widely circulated online, scores of community members, particularly angry women confronted the accused for raping the goat.

Following the use of a strong tone from the women, Mamboyi eventually confessed to his multiple affairs with the animal which sadly died after the intercourse.

ALSO READ: SPCA offers reward for a man who had sex with a pregnant goat (08-04-2022 11:15) - https://www.thesouthafrican.com/news/cape-of-good-hope-spca-r6000-reward-for-man-who-had-sex-with-a-pregnant-goat/

“Watch: KZN teens TORCH their school – after phones ‘taken away’”

https://www.thesouthafrican.com/news/breaking-watch-kzn-learners-torch-burn-school-classrooms-phones-taken-monday-5-september/

05-09-2022 12:08

This is pure anarchy: Students at a school in KZN set their classrooms ablaze last week, following a row about cell phones.

Pupils at a high school in West Durban were left seething at the back end of last week, after they had their phones confiscated during a ‘surprise inspection’. Hundreds of the devices were taken away in this part of KZN, sparking a fiery retaliation.

NDENGETHO HIGH SCHOOL FIRE: FURIOUS PUPILS LEAD SCATHING PROTEST

Learners were left enraged by the way the inspection was conducted. Local police offers were invited into the facility, in order to flush out any contraband drugs or weapons. Instead, the school ended up enforcing its ‘no phones allowed’ policy in a strict and rigid manner.

Despite the policy being written into Ndengetho High School’s Code of Conduct, staff have chosen to look the other way in recent years. Alas, confusion over the enforcement of these rules led to a very serious confrontation.

LEARNERS START FIRES IN KZN SCHOOL AFTER PHONES CONFISCATED

A group of miffed students made a plan to hit back during one of their break times. Several classrooms were set on fire, as doors and windows were also broken. The chaotic scenes were caught on camera, and uploaded to Facebook over the weekend.

WATCH: KZN LEARNERS TORCH CLASSROOMS OVER PHONE POLICIES

Teens who attend the school have since commented on the video, and they remain adamant that ‘there was no reason’ to seize so many phones. In the clip, we can see small fires springing up in several rooms, as staff scramble to get everyone to safety.

WHY WERE SO MANY PHONES CONFISCATED?

Menzi Busani, the school principal, explained his decision to confiscate more than 400 phones from the students. He reasoned that the decision was based on ‘security’, due to issues with Ndengetho’s capacity for safe storage. Pupils didn’t agree with his logic, however.

“Over 400 phones were confiscated. There was no way they’d fit into the school’s safe, and it would be unsafe to keep that many phones in the school premises. I informed the children that the police would be taking the phones and keeping them at the police station.” | Menzi Busani

“Mob justice on the rise in Limpopo due to slow police response”

https://www.thesouthafrican.com/news/mob-justice-on-the-rise-in-limpopo-latest-04-september-2022/

04-09-2022 23:46

Residents chased after suspects who fled in their getaway car and burned them to death in a mob justice attack for robbing a young woman.

The Police Ministry urges communities in the country to put an end to mob justice and taking the law into their hands. This is despite communities complaining about crime in their areas and allegations of police corruption.

INCREASE IN MOB JUSTICE IN LIMPOPO

There has been an increase of mob justice incidents in Limpopo, particularly in the Sekhukhune policing district. Four people have lost their lives due to these attacks in recent weeks.

Police Minister Bheki Cele and South African Police Service Management led a crime prevention Imbizo in Limpopo on Friday. Residents from villages in and around the Sekhukhune District attended, Police Ministry spokesperson Lirandzu Themba said.

“During this community engagement, residents of the rural communities tabled their crime concerns, relating to amongst other things; allegations of police corruption and slow response by the local police to their safety needs.”

COMMUNITIES HAVE DECIDED TO TAKE THE LAW INTO THEIR OWN HANDS

Just this past Friday, two alleged cellphone thieves were killed in a mob justice attack. The two had allegedly stolen a cellphone and were attacked near a mall.

In another incident last month, two suspected robbers in the Siloam policing area outside Thohoyandou were brutally killed.

The two men were stoned to death in an apparent mob justice attack. Their bodies were burnt allegedly by residents of the Tshavhalavhodzi village, Themba said.

“According to police reports, three suspects allegedly robbed a 23-year-old woman of her cellphone and other belongings at the local plaza. They then attempted to kidnap her in full view of the bystanders. But they left her and drove off after she screamed for help.”

Lirandzu Themba

Residents chased after the men in their getaway vehicle and eventually caught up with the robbers. Two of the suspects were killed during the mob justice. The third suspect was rescued by the police and was arrested, said Themba.

“The suspects’ motor vehicle was also torched during the incident,” she said.

RESIDENTS ANGERED BY SLOW RESPONSE FROM THE POLICE

During the Ministerial Crime Prevention Imbizo, hosted in Jane Furse, residents attributed mob justice to criminals not facing the full might of the law.

At times, the slow response times from the police were also a contributing factor, said Themba.

Addressing the Imbizo, Cele strongly condemned and discouraged these violent and criminal mob attacks.

“We accept that policing service delivery can and should be improved but at no point can taking matters into your own hands as residents, be condoned or accepted as a normal practice in any society. There simply is no justice in the so-called ‘mob justice’. It is criminal acts that will be harshly dealt with.”

Below are a few more example of reports.

“Two alleged child kidnappers burnt alive by angry mob” - https://www.thesouthafrican.com/news/south-africa/limpopo/two-alleged-child-kidnappers-burnt-alive-by-angry-mob-wednesday-17-august-2022-latest/

“Mob justice: 18-year old burned alive” - https://www.citizen.co.za/news/south-africa/crime/2342709/mob-justice-18-year-old-burned-alive/

“One of three people burned to death in Cape 'mob justice' attack identified” - https://www.iol.co.za/news/south-africa/western-cape/one-of-three-people-burned-to-death-in-cape-mob-justice-attack-identified-42910160

“'Murderers' rounded up and burned alive by vigilante mob in South Africa after they had 'beaten a man to death in the streets'” - https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-3054070/Murderers-rounded-burned-alive-vigilante-mob-South-Africa-beaten-man-death-streets.html [“A horrific case of mob justice played out in Rustenburg” - https://youtu.be/Qn5-DB1X72Q (2015), embedded)]

>>17505722

>>17505633

>>17505615

“3rd Degree | Mob Justice (Part one)”

https://youtu.be/MKVBrR5YMJ0

Posted January 25, 2013

Diepsloot residents have had enough of crime. They say police are lazy and inefficient and incapable of doing their jobs. One response has been to take the law into their own hands. We have horrifying accounts of mob justice in many cases victims have been wrongly accused of crimes they never committed. We look at the rise of vigilantism in some townships and we raise the question is sloppy policing to blame.

7:09 – “It happens all the time or most of the time. Then the children learn this violent behaviour and it can form part of their lives. They can feel like this is how you’ll react to situations. This is how you solve problems by engaging into groups and performing acts that may be violent or undesirable in nature.”

>>17505733

>>17505722

>>17505615

>>17505608

“Mob justice: cops watch killing” (2013) - https://youtu.be/8AIRGnIZiEA

SAPS officers too scared to intervene as man is attacked and stoned to death by an angry mob (Warning, the video is of a graphic nature!).

“Locations of SA’s best – and worst – 10111 response times revealed”

https://www.thesouthafrican.com/news/breaking-best-worst-10111-response-times-south-africa-monday-5-september/

05-09-2022 14:34

Worryingly, fewer than HALF of all police stations dialled actually answered their phones in this survey regarding 10111 response times.

We all know that calling 10111 during an emergency is a nightmare in itself. However, some South Africans have it worse than others – and it all comes down to the lottery of where you live…

WHERE ARE THE BEST AND WORST 10111 RESPONSE TIMES IN SOUTH AFRICA?

Two regions have been clearly identified as both the best and the worst in terms of response times. A DA-led survey perhaps churned out no surprised with its number one pick – but the situation across its provincial border couldn’t be any more different.

THE BEST… WESTERN CAPE

• The province was ranked first amongst eight other competitors for its 10111 response times

• An estimated 77% of stations were able to respond to a distress call ‘within two minutes’.

• This is way higher than the average number for the rest of SA.

• However, there’s still work to be done – just under a quarter of provincial stations failed to answer at all.

THE WORST… EASTERN CAPE

• The Eastern Cape finished bottom of all nine provinces surveyed.

• Embarrassingly, 18 of the 30 stations called did not have a working phone line.

• Four of the provincial stations surveyed only answered 10111 calls after two minutes or more of dialling.

• In summary, only 27% of stations in the Eastern Cape are properly equipped to respond to emergency calls.

AND THE REST… ALL OF SOUTH AFRICA

• Under half of the 270 SAPS stations surveyed by the DA (44%) actually answered the phone.

• Roughly 40% of this sample size had faulty numbers – or ‘were not operable’.

• Of the hundreds of stations called, 15% did not even answer their phones at all, despite two minutes of ringing.

• Six of the nine worst stations for murder and rape (as per SAPS crime stats) also didn’t pick-up.

DA LASH OUT AT BHEKI CELE AFTER SAPS STATION EXPERIMENT

Andrew Whitfield is the Shadow Minister of Police. He presented the survey data on Monday, and was horrified by the results. The DA representative is pointing the finger squarely at his opposite number in government, Bheki Cele – who has been accused of ‘ignoring the real issues’ in Mzansi.

“If SAPS members are not even able to answer the public’s calls, how can it possible effectively fight crime? Bheki Cele has shown time after time that he would rather pose for cameras pouring alcohol down drains than trying to fix the basic problems within the police service.”

“The DA is sick and tired of seeing the people of South Africa suffer under the Police Minister’s lack of leadership. For this reason, the DA will tomorrow march to his office in Pretoria, with the clear message that enough is enough and he must go.” | Andrew Whitfield

“Up in smoke: Fire engulfs conveyor belt at ‘troubled’ Eskom site”

https://www.thesouthafrican.com/news/breaking-watch-fire-eskom-kriel-mine-video-monday-19-september/

19-09-2022 14:43

A key Eskom site was caught up in a blazing inferno this morning – as South Africa continues to grapple with high levels of load shedding.

Perhaps there is no greater visual representation of Eskom’s current situation than one of its own conveyer belts catching fire. The site at Kriel has left onlookers concerned, after huge flames and billowing smoke filled the skies above.

ESKOM MINE GOES UP IN SMOKE

Kriel was one of the power plants that experienced a unit failure over the weekend, plunging South Africa in Stage 6 of load shedding. The plant itself has been something of a ‘problem child’ over the years for Eskom – and this incident has proved to be no exception.

Stage 5 outages will remain in place into Tuesday. Cape Town gets some very mild relief, and will only operate at Stage 4. The punishing power cuts have forced Cyril Ramaphosa to cancel his remaining foreign engagements, and he is heading home to Mzansi this afternoon.

KRIEL CATCHES FIRE – BUT THERE IS SOME GOOD NEWS, WE SUPPOSE…

The large scale fire has caused some anxiety amongst the general public, who have been left to wonder if this is the final nail in the coffin which takes us through to STAGE 8 load shedding. However, Eskom has provided some reassurance to the nation.

In a statement shared to Twitter, the utility revealed that the fire had only impacted a conveyor belt at Kriel Mine. The power plant itself remains unaffected. That means there will be no detriment to the energy grid, and the rest of us can breathe an almighty sigh of relief:

“The video below depicts a fire impacting a conveyor belt at Kriel Mine – not at the power station. This will have no impact on the power station as it is receiving coal from an open pit and by road.” | Eskom statement

WATCH: CONVEYOR BELT ON FIRE AT ESKOM PLANT

It really does come to something when one of your mines is burning down, and the official response is along the lines of; ‘it could be worse’. Kriel will continue to contribute to the national energy supply, while emergency crews response to the blaze…

“Phala Phala saga: Fraser asked why he reported Ramaphosa”

https://www.thesouthafrican.com/news/breaking-phala-phala-arthur-fraser-asked-why-he-reported-ramaphosa/

18-09-2022 19:54

It was former spy boss Arthur Fraser who reported President Cyril Ramaphosa to SAPS, over the robbery on his Phala Phala farm

The Public Protector’s Office has asked former spy boss Arthur Fraser to explain why he decided to report President Cyril Ramaphosa over the robbery on his Phala Phala farm in Limpopo.

According to Sunday Independent, the office has submitted questions to Fraser, in relation to the robbery.

BACKGROUND: Back in June, Fraser laid criminal charges against Ramaphosa, claiming that he concealed the theft of R62 million that had been kept on his farm in Phala Phala, Limpopo two years ago. He also alleges that the suspects were kidnapped and interrogated, before being offered money for their silence. Ramaphosa has admitted there was a robbery on his property, but denies being criminally liable and says the monies stolen were proceeds from the sale of cattle on his farm.

PUBLIC PROTECTOR’S OFFICE SENDS QUESTIONS TO FRASER

Public Protector, Advocate Busisiwe Mkhwebane, currently on suspension, launched a probe into the scandal after receiving a complaint. Gcaleka, Mkhwebane’s deputy, had to take over the reins after Ramaphosa suspended her (Mkhwebane).

According to Sunday Independent, the Public Protector’s Office also wants Arthur Fraser to reveal who are the sources of his information on the Phala Phala farm robbery are. The office reportedly sent a letter to Fraser’s lawyer, Eric Mabuza, which included a veiled threat of a fine or prison, should he refuse to disclose the source.

In addition, the Public Protector’s office wants Fraser to supply them with any evidence linking Ramaphosa directly or his active involvement in the clandestine Phala Phala farm robbery investigation that was headed by his head of security, General Wally Rhoode.

“Confidant of Zulu king assassinated after eNyokeni reed dance”

https://www.iol.co.za/news/confidant-of-zulu-king-assassinated-after-enyokeni-reed-dance-2d57ab4b-3720-47e1-b6a5-797ee9b29a02

Sep 18, 2022

Nongoma – A senior member of the Osuthu royal council was killed on Saturday night shortly after returning home from taking part in the contested annual Zulu reed dance at eNyokeni palace in Nongoma.

The assassinated council member, Dr Dumisani Khumalo, was a confidant of the late King Goodwill Zwelithini and he helped the current king, Misuzulu KaZwelithini, to take the throne from his rival, Prince Simakade.

During the mourning for the passing of the late king at KwaKhethomthandayo palace in March last year, Khumalo was the one who welcomed male mourners at the big marquee which was pitched outside the gates of the palace.

Among the people he welcomed was the leadership of the EFF which was led by party leader Julius Malema.

King Misuzulu had continued to use Khumalo for royal duties and relied on him for wise counsel and direction on how some duties and rituals should be performed – including the ritual of entering the sacred royal kraal which was performed last month.

The motive for the killing is unknown at present.

However, it is public knowledge that KwaZulu-Natal Premier Nomusa Dube-Ncube was warned of the possibility of “bloodshed” if the reed dance was allowed to go ahead at the palace. Some in the royal court deem it as the seat of power for Prince Simakade, who is still fighting for the throne.

In the traditional Zulu royal organogram, Khumalo is known as Iso leSilo (a headman who is assigned by the king to oversee certain affairs) and he was one of the first few people who stood behind King Misuzulu when the fight for the Zulu throne erupted in late April last year.

Khumalo, who of late spent most of his time at KwaKhangelamankengane palace, was the chairperson of the council that recommended to the king that the late Mgiliji Nhleko, the famed leader of Zulu regiments, be fired for his wayward conduct.

Preliminary information obtained by IOL shows that Khumalo, a retired school inspector, was shot at his home in Bethany, a village just outside the town of Nongoma in northern KwaZulu-Natal.

It is said that he was shot by unknown men around 11pm on Saturday. The suspects later fled the scene.

IOL understand that King Misuzulu has yet to be formally notified about the assassination. Once he has been informed, a press statement from the royal office will be issued.

https://www.thesouthafrican.com/news/king-misuzulus-aide-killed-during-reed-dance-ritual-south-africa-zulu-nation-breaking-18-september-2022/

During the centuries-old ritual, the girls present themselves to the king of the country’s largest ethnic group, which numbers 11 million Zulus, almost one in five South Africans.

Khumalo, the king’s chief advisor, was responsible for settling disputes within the Zulu community.

In South Africa, some communal disputes are settled in traditional courts rather than in a state judicial setting.

“IFP gives cops 72 hours to find killers of Induna Dr Khumalo”

https://www.thesouthafrican.com/news/ifp-gives-72-hours-find-killers-induna-dr-khumalo/

18-09-2022 23:36

The IFP in KZN has called for the arrest of the killers of Induna Dr Khumalo who was assassinated after attending the Reed Dance

The IFP in KwaZulu-Natal has given the police 72 hours to find the killers of Induna Dr Khumalo.

IFP CALLS FOR THE ARREST OF THE INDUNA KILLERS

This call by the opposition party follows the assassination of Induna Khumalo after returning from the Royal Reed Dance ceremony at eNyokeni Palace.

“We call on SAPS to act swiftly to bring the perpetrators to justice,” said the IFP Provincial chairperson Thamsanqa Ntuli.

“The IFP is extremely concerned about the brutal killings of izinduna, amakhosi and councillors in the province of KwaZulu-Natal.”

Ntuli

He added that Police Minister Bheki Cele, together with the National Police Commissioner, must now establish an effective task team that will specialise in investigating all political killings and high-profile cases in KwaZulu-Natal.

“The state of lawlessness that exists in our province – and country at large – can no longer be tolerated,” Ntuli lamented.

THE PARTY DEEPLY SADDENED BY THE TRAGEDY

“The IFP conveys its deepest condolences to the King of the Zulu Nation, the Prime Minister of the Zulu Nation, the Royal Family, as well as the Khumalo family, on the tragic passing of Dr Khumalo. He served the Royal Household and the Zulu Nation with respect and loyalty. He also served the late King with distinction.

Dr Khumalo was also a confidante of the current AmaZulu Monarch, King Misuzulu kaZwelithini,” Ntuli remarked.

“The IFP in KwaZulu-Natal also wishes to convey its condolences to Indonsa yesizwe and the entire community of KwaNongoma for the loss of their beloved Induna, Dr Khumalo,” he expressed.

ANOTHER INDUNA MURDERED IN KZN

This isn’t the first time a traditional leader is killed in this fashion. On Wednesday, 6 July, the province woke up to the disturbing murder of Iso lesilo in the Jama Traditional Community in Nquthu, Samson Dlani Buthelezi.

Buthelezi was gunned down at his home by unknown gunmen. He passed away on the scene.

“IFP gives cops 72 hours to find killers of Induna Dr Khumalo”

https://www.thesouthafrican.com/news/ifp-gives-72-hours-find-killers-induna-dr-khumalo/

18-09-2022 23:36

The IFP in KZN has called for the arrest of the killers of Induna Dr Khumalo who was assassinated after attending the Reed Dance

The IFP in KwaZulu-Natal has given the police 72 hours to find the killers of Induna Dr Khumalo.

IFP CALLS FOR THE ARREST OF THE INDUNA KILLERS

This call by the opposition party follows the assassination of Induna Khumalo after returning from the Royal Reed Dance ceremony at eNyokeni Palace.

“We call on SAPS to act swiftly to bring the perpetrators to justice,” said the IFP Provincial chairperson Thamsanqa Ntuli.

“The IFP is extremely concerned about the brutal killings of izinduna, amakhosi and councillors in the province of KwaZulu-Natal.”

Ntuli

He added that Police Minister Bheki Cele, together with the National Police Commissioner, must now establish an effective task team that will specialise in investigating all political killings and high-profile cases in KwaZulu-Natal.

“The state of lawlessness that exists in our province – and country at large – can no longer be tolerated,” Ntuli lamented.

THE PARTY DEEPLY SADDENED BY THE TRAGEDY

“The IFP conveys its deepest condolences to the King of the Zulu Nation, the Prime Minister of the Zulu Nation, the Royal Family, as well as the Khumalo family, on the tragic passing of Dr Khumalo. He served the Royal Household and the Zulu Nation with respect and loyalty. He also served the late King with distinction.

Dr Khumalo was also a confidante of the current AmaZulu Monarch, King Misuzulu kaZwelithini,” Ntuli remarked.

“The IFP in KwaZulu-Natal also wishes to convey its condolences to Indonsa yesizwe and the entire community of KwaNongoma for the loss of their beloved Induna, Dr Khumalo,” he expressed.

ANOTHER INDUNA MURDERED IN KZN

This isn’t the first time a traditional leader is killed in this fashion. On Wednesday, 6 July, the province woke up to the disturbing murder of Iso lesilo in the Jama Traditional Community in Nquthu, Samson Dlani Buthelezi.

Buthelezi was gunned down at his home by unknown gunmen. He passed away on the scene.

>>17519883

“Residents blame billionaire for Jagersfontein disaster” – Johann Rupert - Part 1

https://www.iol.co.za/sundayindependent/news/residents-blame-billionaire-for-jagersfontein-disaster-2ce9d802-1de5-4f7d-a065-2a9187069c46

Sep 18, 2022

Johannesburg - Billionaire Johann Rupert has been accused of intimidating and bribing residents and employees after they raised concerns regarding the dam wall which collapsed at Jagersfontein Development.

At least four people were killed and more than 70 others injured following the collapse of the dam last Sunday, leaving scores of people homeless.

Jagersfontein Development employees and residents said Rupert could have stabilised the dam long before it collapsed, but opted to do nothing. Instead, he allegedly bribed community leaders who raised concerns regarding the potential danger to the community. They said the dam had been leaking for years.

In April 2022, Rupert’s Reinet Investments sold Jagersfontein assets to Stargems Holdings, a global diamond cutting, and polishing company. Community leader Lefa Shale said they had been warning the company since 2019, but instead of the mine stabilising the dam, the then owner (Rupert) allegedly offered bribes to some of the community leaders.

“The bribery is not an allegation, it is a fact. I am a community leader and I know about some of the leaders who were bribed. The community would raise these concerns and ask leaders to organise a meeting with Rupert.

“But these leaders would go on their own and tell Rupert what the community is planning. I know that he has been giving these leaders envelopes,” said Shale.

Resident Thandi Molefe indicated they had been fighting against the mine to fix the dam and improve their living conditions, but the fights yielded no results because some leaders were offered bribery.

“We have been protesting and fighting but some leaders were bribed. Today my furniture has been destroyed, while some people lost their homes and cars. Some family members lost their loved ones, all because of bribery.”

The 50-year-old said there were no developments in the area despite the existence of the mine. She said the community was also still experiencing water shortages.

“In this area, we can go for a week or two without water. But the mine has never experienced a shortage of water,” Molefe said. “They prefer to employ people from outside than prioritising the community.”

Attempts to reach Rupert for comments drew a blank after he was contacted. The response was: “This is not Mr Rupert’s phone anymore… so, stop involving him please.”

The responder then referred Sunday Independent to an article by miningmx which stated: “Jagersfontein mine owner Stargems says tailings facility was ‘safe and secure’.

“According to a report by Bloomberg News, Johann Rupert’s Reinet Investments sold its stake in the Jagersfontein diamond mine and tailings facilities to Stargems Group, a Dubai-based diamond trading company.”

Reinet did not respond to questions when reached.

>>17543754

“Residents blame billionaire for Jagersfontein disaster” – Johann Rupert - Part 2

https://www.iol.co.za/sundayindependent/news/residents-blame-billionaire-for-jagersfontein-disaster-2ce9d802-1de5-4f7d-a065-2a9187069c46

Sep 18, 2022

The allegations were echoed by two Jagersfontein Development employees who worked as security officers at the mine. Both employees spoke on condition of anonymity for fear of victimisation.

“I know that some community leaders were bribed, and others are his (Rupert) informants. I am one of the employees who reported the issue to the community. Because we were not safe,” said the first employee.

“We are even forced to work under extreme conditions. We are expected to work like slaves, and they give us peanuts. You will be shocked if I show you how much I earn. I earn R6 000 after the overtime.”

The other employee said: “We have been complaining about the dam. And Johann knew about this, because at some point the operations were stopped. When the community raised concerns regarding their safety he bribe some people to calm them down. He always gives them a brown envelope, and that’s how he operates.”

When Sunday Independent arrived at the area this week, several houses close to the mining dam were damaged, and more than 10 houses and cars had been swept away. This resulted in scores of people being displaced, and hundreds of animals left for dead.

The now-dormant mine was once owned by diamond giant De Beers. De Beers bought the mine in 1947 and operations continued until 1971 when the decision was taken to cease operations.

Reinet Investment acquired Jagersfontein from De Beers in late 2010 for an undisclosed amount. The consortium included BEE mining company Superkolong, Sonop Diamond Mining, a private company, and Reinet Investment.

The latter is a Luxembourg-based investment vehicle formed following the restructuring of the Rupert family’s stakes in Remgro, British American Tobacco, and Richemont in 2008.

De Beers spokesperson Jackie Mapiloko said the company sold the mine in 2010, because it was no longer deemed to be the right fit for the De Beers mining portfolio.

“The decision was taken to sell the mine, with a focus on delivering sustainable benefit to the Jagersfontein community. As such, the proposed transaction required participation by the community, not only with employment opportunities and community initiatives, but also through equity ownership,” Mapiloko said.

Department of Mineral Resources and Energy (DMRE) spokesperson Nathi Shabangu said the company that currently owned the mine should take full responsibility for the damages caused.

“All we can say is that whoever currently is a holder of that property should (take) bigger responsibility for what happened. As to who, you will find out and speak to the three companies,” he said.

Shabangu said it was difficult to find out who exactly owned the mine because in 2007 the Free State High Court ruled that the provisions of the DMRE did not apply at that mine. He said, as a result, the department did not have jurisdiction.

Stargems said it had forwarded our query to the PR company, Meropa Communications, to assist with the questions. The company confirmed that it would offer R20 million to assist the community.

>>17543754

>>17543755

“Residents blame billionaire for Jagersfontein disaster” – Johann Rupert - Part 3

https://www.iol.co.za/sundayindependent/news/residents-blame-billionaire-for-jagersfontein-disaster-2ce9d802-1de5-4f7d-a065-2a9187069c46

Sep 18, 2022

Meanwhile, the National Union of Mineworkers (NUM) has called for a judicial commission of inquiry to probe the cause of the incident, and to determine whether there was any compliance with the DMRE for guidelines for the compilation of a mandatory code of practice on mine residue deposit.

The union said those found to have been responsible should be prosecuted.

“NUM’s national executive committee discussed and analysed the Jagersfontein tailing dam disaster and characterised it as a crisis of capitalist accumulation, the logic of putting profits before the people,” general secretary William Mabapa said.

“NUM, therefore, condemns such logic as inhuman, unjust, and barbaric. Thus we argued that the mine bosses were negligent and reckless and thus they must take full responsibility for the total damage caused by the tailing dam disaster. Importantly, mine bosses were made aware of the threat the tailing dam posed on the workers, the community, and the environment,” he said.

The sludge left residents such as Patricia Mothei stranded and confused. Her house was destroyed and all her contents were swept away. “Everything has gone. Right now I don’t know what to do. And we have been protesting that the owner should fix the dam.

“It is painful that I have lost everything due to something that we have been warning the mine about,” said the 36-year-old.

Another resident, John Phathakalle, lamented about his furniture being destroyed. “We have been complaining about this dam and they refused to listen to us. Today I lost my furniture that was still new. I don’t how I am going to buy these things again because I am unemployed.

“I am not even sure if this mine will be able to help us get our homes and furniture back, because it has been doing nothing to help this community. There are lots of people who are not working while we have a mine in this area,” he said.

“Zama zamas from Maputo claim they too are victims of their Lesotho counterparts”

https://www.msn.com/en-za/news/other/zama-zamas-from-maputo-claim-they-too-are-victims-of-their-lesotho-counterparts/ar-AA10xwMn

11 August 2022

Informal mineworkers from Maputo have told TimesLIVE Premium they are pained by the recent rape of eight women, allegedly by a group of other informal miners, who at the time of the attack were clad in Basotho blankets.

The eight women were part of a group of models who were shooting a music video when they were attacked. Some of the models were raped by as many as 10 men. The attackers also robbed the models and filming crew of their possessions.

“We are saddened by the rapes that have been happening. It makes us look worse because we are already doing informal work. We are ashamed that this was done by some of us (zama zamas). People are different and even among us, not all of us are monsters,” said Donald Langa, an informal miner from Maputo.

“I started this work because my brothers from Maputo told me to join them so that I also make a living. That’s under threat because there are those who are making us look bad,” said Langa.

The rapes sparked outrage which led community members to go on the rampage. They have caught, stripped naked and beaten scores of the informal miners before handing them over to the police. They have also damaged their equipment and burnt their shacks. At least one person has died.

Langa works at the Zamimpilo informal settlement along Randfontein Road. On Tuesday, he and his two friends were shovelling and toiling in search of gold. Unlike other zama zamas working in Kagiso and Mohlakeng — areas regarded as informal-mining hotspots, operations continue in this area.

Langa said as informal miners in this area, they too now fear for their lives and worry about their futures.

“Police raid us a lot, but we’re used to it,” he said, suggesting they feared the wrath of the community more than the police.

“We are also afraid of Lesotho nationals. They terrorise us too. They come here every Friday and rob us of our money. We have to give them R50 or more, and if we don’t give them the money, they beat one of us to prove a point.

“They once killed one of our guys because he wouldn’t give them money. It was broad daylight. We have no chance against them because they are heavily armed. They have multiple guns under those blankets. Most of them are youngsters, but no-one here stands up to them.

“We buy the soil from the guys who process it with the phendukas (cylindrical makeshift hand-operated tool that is used to crush ore). They get it from the guys who go underground. We’re scared of going down there. They move like snakes in the shafts. It’s scary and dehumanising,” Khoza said.

“We now live in fear, and if it was up to us we would leave and go back to Maputo,” Khoza said.

“Days before Soweto Tavern shooting, Look what a Lesotho Gang member told his Mother, before being killed”

https://www.ghanamma.com/za/2022/08/22/days-before-soweto-tavern-shooting-look-what-a-lesotho-gang-member-told-his-mother-before-being-killed/

August 22, 2022

The date is currently Sunday, July 10, and it is just after midnight.

Five individuals openly carrying firearms may be seen strolling down a dark lane in the Nomzamo informal settlement in the Orlando East neighborhood of Soweto. Four of them are armed with handguns, and one of them has an AK-47 assault weapon in their hands.

Oblivious to the fact that a CCTV camera was capturing the moment, their faces can be clearly identified, and in a matter of seconds, they vanish down the dark street despite the fact that the region is having power interruptions as a result of cable theft.

A horrible incident that shook the nation took place at Mdlalose’s Tavern just a few minutes later, resulting in the deaths of 14 individuals. Nine additional people were hurt, and the battle for their lives was lost by two of them in the hospital days later.

The CCTV film that was captured minutes before the incident will serve as crucial evidence against the offenders, and Sowetan has been granted exclusive access to it. The footage, which is one of two CCTV recordings that detectives have as part of their evidence, does not show the minibus taxi the gunmen supposedly arrived in.

The Sowetan is aware that there will likely be arrests carried out soon.

According to sources with direct knowledge of the situation, the suspects are citizens of Lesotho.

Bheki Cele, the minister of police, made the announcement one day after the shooting that they had identified five suspects. The police commissioner of Gauteng, Lieutenant General Elias Mawela, stated that the suspects had departed the province, although sources say that some of the wanted individuals are in Johannesburg.

At the scene of the crime, investigators discovered over 130 used AK-47 cartridges. Before the shooting at the tavern, it is believed that the same group was responsible for the shooting death of Lerotha Hlabanyane in the nearby community of Klipspruit.

His mother, Mariam, told the Sowetan on Thursday that her son Hlabanyane was a member of the Lesotho gang. In the days leading up to his death in front of the rented house he called his family and friends to let them know that he had quit the gang. The choice of Mariam Hlabanyane’s son, who is now 44 years old, to leave the Lesotho gang was not well accepted by his fellow members, according to Mariam.

“Both his wife and I have been given the assurance that our son has completely turned his life around. According to the boy’s mother, “the majority of his pals from Lesotho did not want him to leave the group.”

There has been no one taken into custody in connection with the murder of Hlabanyane. The residents of Umzimkhulu, located in KwaZulu-Natal, made up the vast bulk of people who were slaughtered at Mdlalose’s Tavern.

During the massacre, Thabo Koepe, who was 34 years old, was the only Lesotho national to lose his life. According to reputable sources, Koepe was a member of a gang that operated in Lesotho, and he was the guy whom those who opened fire at Mdlalose’s Tavern were aiming for.

The other victims are: Daliwonga Mluma, 54; Simthembile Gamede, 19; Sithembiso Mjoli, 34; Luyanda Mjoli, 19; Philani Mngonyama, 22; Siphethuxolo Chiliza, 26; Njabulo Ndlangisa, 29; Mlondi Ndlangisa, 27; Thamsanqa Malunga, 24; Nkosiyezwe Malunga, 27; Sifiso Sosiba, 44; Siboniso Ngubane, 22; Menzi Nzimande, 26; and Nhlonipho Mbanjwa, 31.

CCTV footage reveals faces of Soweto tavern shooters (msn.com)

>>17406568

>After a feasibility study was conducted between August 1983 and August 1986 by the German-British Lahmeyer MacDonald Consortium, the project eventually began to be realized.

>>17531665

>ANC’s military wing, Umkhonto we Sizwe (MK), operated out of Lesotho during Apartheid

“Lesotho: between dependence and destabilization” – “The 1986 coup” – Part 1

https://www.jstor.org/stable/40395898

The World Today

Vol. 43, No. 3 (Mar., 1987), pp. 52-54 (3 pages)

Published By: Royal Institute of International Affairs

The 1986 coup

Unlike the rest of the African continent, the states of Southern Africa have been remarkably free from the armed intervention of their khaki-clad officers. Until quite recently that is; for just over a year ago in Lesotho on 20 January 1986, troops under the command of Major-General Justin Metsing Lekhanya seized power in a bloodless coup d'état and ousted the Prime Minister, Chief Leabua Jonathan, from office. The coup pushed the number of mainland African countries that have had military rulers at some stage in the post-colonial era to 26. General Lekhanya, commander of Lesotho’s small Paramilitary Force, heads the Military Council which runs the country – with the Oxford-educated King Moshoeshoe II as Head of State.

Lekhanya, who is also Minister of Defence and Internal Security, was bor at Ha Koptjoane in the Thaba-Tseka District in April 1938. After secondary education at Roma College, he worked in the South African mines as a shaft clerk (1958-9), before joining the then Basutoland Mounted Police – the Police Mobile Unit (PMU) from June 1965 – on 1 June 1960. Between 1972-3, he received further training in Scotland and at the United States Police Academy in Washington. In September 1977, he was promoted Major-General, taking direct command of the PMU. After that, Lekhanya’s name was to become synonymous with the development of the Lesotho Paramilitary Force (LPF), which was created out of the PMU in 1980. Since 11 March 1986, the LPF has been styled the Royal Lesotho Defense Force. Made of six rifle companies with basic infantry support weapons and a few armoured cars, it is assisted by a small British training team of about a dozen officers and warrant officers.

Five days before the insurrection, elements of the 1,650-strong LFP surrounded Chief Jonathan’s office block in an apparent bid, inter alia, to air their grievances over the activities of the Basotho National Party’s (BNP) Youth League. Known as Lesotho Khatso, the Party functionaries were being cultivated as a polictical instrument to intimidate the government’s opponents. The troop movements and the coup followed an intensified blockade of the country by South Africa. Although Pretoria denied that it was pressurizing Lesotho (despite previous partial blockades on border crossings into the country in March and July 1983), it admitted imposing stringent regulations as frontier posts in order ‘to control increased activity by guerillas of the African National Congress’ (to use Pretoria’s own words).

There can be no doubt about the importance of the part played by Pretoria in the coup, both indirectly, through the intensification of economic pressure (against which Lesotho is wholly defenceless) in the period proceeding the revolt, and directly, through the South African Defence Force’s top-level contacts with senior Lesotho officers. In fact, just three days before the coup, General Lekhanya was in Pretoria as part of a larger delegation for discussions on mutual border security. Despite this, there is not hard evidence that the South Africans used the meeting with lekhanya to engineer a coup d'état.

>>17543845

“Lesotho: between dependence and destabilization” – “The 1986 coup” – Part 2

https://www.jstor.org/stable/40395898

The World Today

Vol. 43, No. 3 (Mar., 1987), pp. 52-54 (3 pages)

Published By: Royal Institute of International Affairs

Under its new government, Lesotho’s military rulers have adopted a pragmatic stance vis-à-vis Pretoria. On 24 January 1986, Radio Maseru broadcast a statement by General Lekhanya setting out his government’s policy. He said:

“For a long time the Lesotho nation has been living in a constantly unstable political climate because of the action of politicians whose interests were not on a par with the desires of the rest of the nation… Relations with our neighbours were also soured in an alarming manner and the state of our economy was adversely affected…”

He went on to state:

“I would also like to assure the countries with which Lesotho has unilateral relations, regardless of whether they have resident diplomatic missions in Maseru or not, that we should continue to strengthen unilateral relations for the benefit of all concerned… It is our intention and bounded duty to put right relations with South Africa and we will do all in our power to achieve this.”

__Within hours of the coup, a train was allowed over the border carrying faule and necessary supplies for the first time since the new year. Negotiations – intended to mend relations – began Cape Town and Maseru the same week. Agreement was reached between the delegates; and on 25 January, Pretoria decided to lift the border restrictions. On the same day, Radio Maseru announced that the first group of 60 African National Congress (ANC) refugees to be airlifted out of Lesotho by the new military rulers, had left that morning. A main feature of these talks concerned the Higlands Water Project, an ambitious and elaborate scheme that involves the diversion of the head waters of the Orange River (which rises in Lesotho) and the contructions of a vast complex of dams, tunnels and pumps that will cost at least £1,300m and take two decades to complete. The project is designed to feed the water-short Transvaal industrial area inside South Africa. At the same time it will earn much-needed foreign exchange (and generate hydro-electricity) for Lesotho. The signing of the project – previously delayed by ‘technical problems’ – took place in October last year. But what is the wider picture accounting for South Africa’s phenomenal influence over its diminutive neighbor?

General Justin Metsing Lekhanya (7 April 1938 – 20 January 2021) was the Minister of Defence and Chairman of the Military Council of Lesotho from 24 January 1986 to 2 May 1991. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Justin_Lekhanya

>>17543848

>General Justin Metsing Lekhanya (7 April 1938 – 20 January 2021) was the Minister of Defence and Chairman of the Military Council of Lesotho from 24 January 1986 to 2 May 1991. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Justin_Lekhanya

“Committee of Privileges Reports to Parliament; Opposition MP Bereng Sekhonyana Murdered” - Justin Metsing Lekhanya - Part 1

http://www.trc.org.ls/events/events20.062.htm

https://web.archive.org/web/20100407235309/http://www.trc.org.ls/events/events20.062.htm#Committee%20of%20Privileges%20Reports%20to%20Parliament;%20Opposition%20MP%20Bereng%20Sekhonyana%20Murdered

An unfortunate sequence of events began somewhat innocently in the year 2005. The Speaker of the National Assembly had been asked to nominate a delegation of two persons to attend a SADC Parliamentary Reform Conference in Botswana on 22-23 September 2005. The Speaker duly appointed two persons, one of whom was the then Secretary-General of the ruling Lesotho Congress for Democracy, Sephiri Motanyane; while the other was Bereng Sekhonyana, a proportional representation member representing the Basotho National Party.

It is appropriate here to provide some background detail. Bereng Sekhonyana, a former diplomat and principal secretary, had in 1998 been Acting Leader of the BNP during the illness, followed by the death of his brother, the then BNP Party Leader, E. R. Sekhonyana. At the March 1999 BNP Party Conference, Justin Metsing Lekhanya (who as Major-General J. M. Lekhanya had led the 1986 Military Coup against the then BNP government) became the Party Leader and Bereng Sekhonyana, the Deputy Leader. Bereng Sekhonyana subsequently played an important role, representing the party in the Interim Political Authority in 1999. He became co-chairman of the IPA, and on 3 December 1999 was one of the three co-signatories (the others were Lekhetho Rakuoane of the Patriotic Front for Democracy (PFD), the second co-chairman; and the Prime Minister, Pakalitha Mosisili) of the Memorandum of Agreement between the IPA and the Lesotho Government. In the 2002 General Election Bereng Sekhonyana stood for the Maseru Central constituency and came second, receiving 30.6% of the votes. However in 2003, friction developed between himself and party leader Lekhanya, and at the Party Conference in March 2003, he was replaced as Deputy Leader by Joseph Mollo. He nevertheless remained a BNP MP.

The nomination of Bereng Sekhonyana to go to the Botswana conference resulted in a letter dated 16 September 2005 from Lekhanya to the Speaker asking her to reconsider the nomination and in the event that this was not done threatening the mounting of a protest. The protest duly occurred after the conference in the form of demonstrations at Parliament by the BNP Youth League and Women’s League on 10 October 2005. Those picketing Parliament demanded an immediate reply (which they did not get) to a letter by Tšepo Monethi, Secretary of the BNP Youth League. The letter objected to the Speaker’s nomination without consulting the BNP Chief Whip, and also demanded that all BNP Members of Parliament attend a debriefing meeting at Party Headquarters, failing which they would be considered as having forfeited seats in Parliament.

The response of Parliament to these events was Motion No. 92 of the National Assembly on 14 October 2005 which read:

‘That this Honourable House, following the Hon. Speaker’s statement to the House on Wednesday 12th October condemns unreservedly and in the strongest possible terms the actions of the BNP elements responsible for bringing this Honourable House into disrepute by, inter alia, seeking to (i) intimidate the Hon. Speaker; (ii) interfere with the smooth running of the business of the House and the office of the Hon. Speaker; and requests and requires them to desist forthwith from such further actions. Furthermore, this Honourable House takes a very dim view of the leadership of the BNP for condoning and abetting such actions and in consequence thereof resolves to refer: (a) the matter; (b) the ‘reliable reports’ mentioned in one of the letters addressed to the Honourable Speaker as per attachments to the petition; to the Committee of Privileges for further investigations, and duly report back its findings to this House to take such further action as may be necessary.’

>>17543866

“Committee of Privileges Reports to Parliament; Opposition MP Bereng Sekhonyana Murdered” - Justin Metsing Lekhanya - Part 2

http://www.trc.org.ls/events/events20.062.htm

https://web.archive.org/web/20100407235309/http://www.trc.org.ls/events/events20.062.htm#Committee%20of%20Privileges%20Reports%20to%20Parliament;%20Opposition%20MP%20Bereng%20Sekhonyana%20Murdered

When the 8-member Committee of Privileges under the Chairmanship of M. M. Moeno MP, duly met, it decided at the beginning that one of its members, Mooki V. Molapo MP, should stand down from the Committee because he had already made clear his stance on the matter in a letter to Moeletsi oa Basotho, dated 30 October 2005.

The Committee of Privileges finally tabled its report to the National Assembly on 17 May 2006, and its findings included that there had indeed been threats and intimidation against the Speaker and ‘the Committee took a very dim view of the BNP leadership for effectively masterminding the whole spurious campaign and smear propaganda against the Honourable Speaker’.

The Committee recommended that the House should take remedial measures and these were specifically that Hon. J. M. Lekhanya, Leader of the BNP, should be suspended from the proceedings of the House for ten months without pay, five months of which would be suspended provided he does not breach any of the privileges of the House and its committees for those ten months. Four other BNP MPs, Chief Ranthomeng P. Matete (the BNP Secretary-General), A. M. Hanyane, Lekhooana Jonathan and S. J. Thabisi should be similarly suspended from Parliament for six months, but with three months of the suspension suspended under the same terms as for J. M. Lekhanya.

An at times heated and wide ranging debate on the Committee of Privileges Report began in the National Assembly on Wednesday 24 May 2006 and continued on Monday 29 May, Tuesday 30 May and Wednesday 31 May 2006. On the first day of the debate, the BNP Leader, J. M. Lekhanya, stated that the Report of the Committee of Privileges was incomplete. It had not taken account of the fact that the persons invited to the seminar in Botswana were to have been Secretaries-General and Chief Whips of political parties. While the then LCD Secretary-General, Sephiri Motanyane [now the Deputy Speaker] was nominated by the Speaker to attend, the other person nominated was not an office-holder in any political party. [The previous BNP Chief Whip, Morapeli Motaung, had at the time recently died.] Lekhanya went on to say that the Report of the Committee of Privileges was incomplete, null and void, and must be withdrawn forthwith.

Bereng Sekhonyana, MP, spoke at length on the last day of the debate, but his views were clear right at the beginning of his speech when he said about the Report ‘I accept it in its totality, all of it without reservation, because, Sir [addressing the Deputy Speaker], it is a Report deriving from a Motion which was made by this House long ago’. The National Assembly at the end of the debate adopted the Committee of Privileges Report and the five BNP members mentioned therein were duly suspended from Parliament.

Only two days later on 2 June 2006, Bereng Sekhonyana was dead. He was gunned down in his car late in the evening as he waited for his daughters to open the gate of his house, in Lethole Road in the Maseru suburb of Ha Hoohlo. Eighteen bullets had been fired from three different guns, but there were no immediate arrests.

>>17543845

>>>17406568

>After a feasibility study was conducted between August 1983 and August 1986 by the German-British Lahmeyer MacDonald Consortium, the project eventually began to be realized.

“Nepad man implicated in bribe scandal” – Lesotho Highlands Water Project; Reatile Mochebelele, Masupha Ephraim Sole, Lahmeyer International GmbH, Canadian firm Acres International and French engineers Spie Batignolles mentioned

https://journal.probeinternational.org/2004/12/13/nepad-man-implicated-bribe-scandal/

December 13, 2004

Johannesburg: A top adviser for the New Partnership for Africa’s Development has been implicated in a multimillion-rand bribery scandal.

It is alleged that Reatile Mochebelele, the Midrand-based adviser to Nepad on water affairs and sanitation, was paid to secure contracts for the Lesotho Highlands Water Project.

He has been named by the government of Lesotho as the recipient of more than R3,9-million in bribes during his tenure as the chief delegate of the government of Lesotho on the Highlands Water Commission from 1996 to 1999.

Mochebelele, the former principal secretary in the Ministry of Water, Energy and Mining in Lesotho, was seconded to supervise feasibility studies for the Lesotho Highlands Water Project – the largest infrastructure investment on the continent, which by its scheduled completion in 2020 would have cost more than R46-billion.

In 1998 the project accounted for 13,6 percent of Lesotho’s GDP. Royalties from the sale of water and project-related customs dues make up 27,8 percent of all government revenue.

Mochebelele, in his current role at Nepad represents the continent at many international forums aimed at forging investment partnerships in sustainable energy and water projects with the West.

He has not yet been charged by the Lesotho authorities.

“All I know is what someone told me when they saw my name on the Internet over this,” said Mochebelele, responding to the allegations on Sunday. “I’m just surprised by this, because no one has contacted me.”

Raymond Stock, representing Lahmeyer International GmbH, the company alleged to have made the payments to Mochebelele, appeared briefly in a Lesotho court last Thursday – which is, ironically, world anti-corruption day.

It is the second time the company has been in court over alleged bribery in relation to the Lesotho Water Highlands project.

In the early 1990s the project CEO, Masupha Ephraim Sole, was convicted of corruption and sentenced to 15 years’ imprisonment.

In that series of prosecutions, Lahmeyer was found guilty of bribery and fined R10-million.

Other firms convicted of bribing Sole were Canadian firm Acres International and French engineers Spie Batignolles.

The government of Lesotho has come down hard on multinational companies that paid bribes involving the Lesotho Highlands Water Project – one of the biggest dam projects in the world, with contracts estimated at $8-billion (R46,7-billion).

>>17543871

>>17543881

“Lesotho convict fights to stay in SA” – “South Africa has invested R9-billion in the project.” – Part 1

https://mg.co.za/article/2012-11-16-00-lesotho-convict-fights-to-stay-in-sa/

16 November 2012

A former senior Lesotho official convicted of receiving bribes in the construction of the Katse Dam, which supplies Gauteng with water, is challenging efforts to deport him to Lesotho to serve his sentence.

Reatile Mochebelele, who was Lesotho's chief delegate on the Lesotho Highlands Water Project, is fighting an extradition case in the Randburg Magistrate's Court in Johannesburg.

The court heard arguments from the Lesotho government and Mochebelele on Tuesday last week.

Mochebelele, who fled from Lesotho after the Lesotho Court of Appeal found him guilty of receiving bribes in December 2009, is claiming political persecution and has applied for asylum in South Africa.

The court sentenced him to a 10-year prison term and he forfeited R800 000 of the R1-million he had paid as a fine imposed on him by the high court.

Mochebelele and his co-accused, Letlafuoa Molapo, who is already serving his jail term at the Maseru Central Prison, were found guilty of accepting more than. R1.8-million in bribes from German engineering company Lahmeyer.

It was in the late 1980s and early 1990s during the construction of Katse and the building of the Muela hydroelectricity project, which supplies electricity in Lesotho, that Lahmeyer scooped lucrative tenders after bribing the two top men of the Lesotho delegation in the joint water commission.

The court found that, in their positions as the Lesotho delegates in the commission, the men were influential in policy direction and decisions taken by the Lesotho Highlands Development Authority, the executive body of the water project.

Prosecution and sentencing

Despite the Lesotho Court of Appeal's finding, Mochebelele argues that he should not be sent to Lesotho to be jailed because his prosecution and sentencing, which he says is harsh, were based on political hatred.

He blames former natural resources minister Monyane Moleleki as a mastermind behind what he calls a "politically motivated persecution".

He told the South African asylum board that Moleleki was bitter that he was fired as the public relations manager of the Lesotho Highlands Development Authority, which fell under the commission then headed by Mochebelele.

Mochebelele said immediately after Moleleki became minister of natural resources the minister told him that he could not work with him because he was not attending Basutoland Congress Party meetings in the run-up to the 1993 elections.

Moleleki was then an executive committee member of the party, which won all constituencies and formed the first democratic government after 22 years of oppression.

He said hell broke loose when he – as the commission's boss – ordered an audit of the water project's management. Moleleki ordered him to stop the audit, but he persisted.

The audit led to the dismissal and eventual prosecution of the water project's chief executive, Masupha Sole, whom Mochebelele claimed was good friends with Moleleki.

>>17543895

“Lesotho convict fights to stay in SA” – “South Africa has invested R9-billion in the project.” - Part 2

https://mg.co.za/article/2012-11-16-00-lesotho-convict-fights-to-stay-in-sa/

16 November 2012

Objections

Sole was found guilty on 13 counts of bribery and sentenced to 15 years in jail, but was paroled in May last year after serving nine years.

Moleleki controversially appointed Sole as chief technical advisor to the commission within three months of his release from prison amid objections from the South African government, which is the partner in the water scheme. When Sole was prosecuted in 2002, Mochebelele was one of the state witnesses.

Mochebelele's asylum application failed and the Lesotho government pursued the extradition case against him in court last week.

Asylum is normally given to people who can justify their claim to be fleeing persecution in their countries.

Mochebelele failed to prove that his life was endangered because of his lawful political activities in Lesotho.

He made his application to South Africa's home affairs ministry in December 2009, a few days after he was sentenced. His initial application was rejected and he approached the Refugee Appeal Board, an independent tribunal that offers asylum seekers who have their applications rejected a second chance to prove their claims.

In its ruling, the appeal board said it found it improbable that Moleleki had set in motion the process to persecute Mochebelele.

Threats

It pointed out that, although Moleleki had become a minister in 1993, the investigation of Mochebelele's case had started only a decade later in 2003.

Even then, the board reasoned, the information that triggered the investigation had not come from Moleleki, but from a Lahmeyer official who was based in Lesotho.

"The board is of the opinion that if minister Moleleki wanted to prosecute the appellant [Mochebelele] maliciously because of their imputed political different opinions, he could have and probably would have done so long before the corruption and bribery charges were brought against the appellant and his co-accused [Molapo]," the board said.

"The evidence does not show that, apart from differences between them, minister Moleleki or any government official ever threatened the appellant with threats [that] may have shown malice," the board said.

Mochebelele's attempts to gain asylum came to light when Lesotho applied for his extradition in January 2010. The extradition application could not be processed because his political asylum case was still pending.

The extradition case against Mochebelele is being argued at a time when Lesotho and South Africa are at loggerheads over Lesotho's appointment of Sole to advise the same commission.

South Africa is objecting to the appointment of Sole to a position in which he will take part in overseeing the construction of Polihali Dam, another project aimed at quenching Gauteng's thirst. South Africa has invested R9-billion in the project.

>>17543881

>the Lesotho Highlands Water Project – one of the biggest dam projects in the world

>>17527730 - Protecting their investment, the Lesotho Highlands Water Project.

“Lesotho Highlands Water Project” – detailed background and its key players - Part 1

https://www.water-technology.net/projects/lesotho-highlands/

Background of the Lesotho project

In the 1950s British High Commissioner to Lesotho Sir Evelyn Baring identified the LHWP as the most economical way of supplying water to South Africa. A feasibility study for the project was undertaken by the countries in 1978. A more detailed feasibility study was conducted by the Lahmeyer MacDonald Consortium between 1983 and 1986. The study found the project was economically viable and would allow hydroelectric power generation.

A treaty was signed by Lesotho and South Africa in October 1986 regarding the project design, construction, operation, maintenance and water transfer. South Africa agreed to pay the water transfer costs and Lesotho agreed to finance the hydroelectric power projects.

A detailed engineering and services analysis was undertaken for phase one, which involved phase 1A and phase 1B. Phase 1A required 2,800ha of rangeland and about 1,504ha of arable land and involved about 2,900 households being relocated. Phase 1B required 3,353ha of arable land and 3,434ha of rangeland and involved relocating 500 households.

Phase 1A

Phase 1A included construction of the 185m-high double curvature concrete arch Katse Dam in the central Maluti Mountains and the 72MW Muela hydropower station. The dam has a storage capacity of 1,950 million m³ and a spillway discharge of 6,252m³/s. Phase 1A also involved building a 45km transfer tunnel and a 37km delivery tunnel.

Phase 1B

Phase 1B involved construction of the 145m concrete-faced rock-fill Mohale Dam on the Senqunyane River.

Other phases

Phase II of the project includes construction of the 165m high Polihali Dam in the Mokhotlong district. It will be a concrete faced rock fill dam (CFRD) with a capacity to hold 2.2 billion m3 of water. A 38km water transfer tunnel running will be constructed to connect Polihali with Katse Reservoir. The second phase also includes a 1,000MW pump storage system.

During phase III the Tsoelike Dam will be constructed at the confluence of the Tsoelike and Senqu rivers, about 90km downstream from Mashai Dam. It will have a storage capacity of 2,223 million m³ and a pumping station. During phase IV the Ntoahae Dam and a pumping station will be built about 40km downstream from Tsoelike Dam on the Senqu River.

LHWP will have five dams and about 200km of tunnels and water transfer works constructed between the two countries. The project will transfer about 2,000 million m³ of water from Lesotho to South Africa every year.

>>17543917

“Lesotho Highlands Water Project” – detailed background and all its key players Part 2

https://www.water-technology.net/projects/lesotho-highlands/

Key players

The supervising engineer for construction of the Katse Dam and 45km transfer tunnel during phase 1A was Lesotho Highlands Consultants. The construction contractor was Highlands Water Ventures.

Construction of the Muela hydropower station and tunnelling was supervised by Lahmeyer MacDonald Consortium. Contractors for the tunnelling included Balfour Beatty, LTA, Spie Batignolle, Ed Züblin and Campenon Bernard. Electrical and mechanical work contractors included SDEM, Neyrpic and Deutsche Babcock. Equipment for Muela power station was provided by Kvaener Boving, Norelec and ABB Calor Emag Schaltanlagen.

The construction of Mohale Dam was supervised by Mohale Consultants Group. A joint venture of Concor Engineering, Hochtief and Impregilo (lead contractor) was formed for the project.

The mechanical and electrical works contract was awarded to an ATB joint venture. Lesotho Highlands Tunnel Partnership was the design and consultant supervisor for the transfer tunnel between Katse and Mohale. The contractors were Hochtief, Impregilo and Concor. The design and supervising consultant for Matsoku Weir and tunnel was Matsoku Diversion and Consult 4 partnership. The construction contractor was Matsoku Civil Contractors.

The phase two feasibility study contract was awarded to the C4-SEED joint venture. The venture consisted of companies from both countries: Consult4 of South Africa and Senqu Engineering Environment and Development Consultants of Lesotho.

Finance

The total cost of the four-phase project is expected to be $8bn. Phase 1A was expected to cost $2.5bn and phase 1B was expected to cost $1.5bn. The funds were issued by the World Bank, which also coordinates fund mobilisation from other financiers including the African Development Bank, the European Development Fund, Development Bank of South Africa, European commercial banks and several export credit agencies.

“Three Zimbabweans burnt to death in Elim”

https://www.thesouthafrican.com/news/zimbabweans-burnt-to-death-elim-limpopo-chavani-village-22-september-breaking/

22-09-2022 18:04

More than 200 immigrants are living in the bush in fear in Elim. Many fled their homes, others were forced out by vigilantes.

Three Zimbabweans were burnt to death in Chavani village outside Elim on Saturday. They had been accused of stealing cables and solar panels.

Originally published by GroundUp/Bernard Chiguvare

About 200 immigrants then fled their homes. Some were forced out of their houses by vigilante groups. They have fled to other villages or are hiding in the bush.

Makhado police spokesperson Sergeant Tshifhiwa Irene Radzilani said the three Zimbabweans “were burnt beyond recognition”. Police have opened murder cases. No arrests have been made.

Malume Chinabwa, from the Kagisano (seTswana for living together harmoniously) programme, run by the Lawyers for Human Rights (LHR) in Elim and Musina said, “Since Saturday more than 200 foreigners – Zimbabweans, Mozambicans and Malawians – have been calling me for assistance. During the day, they try to visit townships where they are not known, in search of food, but spend the night in bushes.”

Elim resident Francis Thiba said at about 18:00 on Saturday a group of youths, including women, came to his residence. His wife and three children were ordered to leave. They fled to the bush. Police later rescued them the same day.

Thiba was beaten on the head and in the face. Waterval police rescued him about 19:00 and took him to Elim hospital. He was discharged on Tuesday. He joined his family at Waterval police station, where they had sheltered for three days.

Thiba has been living in Shirley village, Elim, for over ten years. He has been in South Africa since 2000. He does not know if the family will recover their belongings. He said they are prepared to leave for Zimbabwe, but he has no money for transport.

The Kagisano project found temporary accommodation for Thiba and his family.

On Tuesday and Wednesday, Kagisano members had meetings with local chiefs and police to try and establish working committees that would deal with the conflict. It has also approached NGOs, including Red Cross, for food and humanitarian aid.

Vicky Muvhali, chairperson of the Njhakanjhaka traditional council, said a meeting with immigrant leaders and the LHR will be held on Thursday.

Police have called on the community not to take the law into their hands.

>>17584670

“JUST IN 3 Zimbabwean nationals killed and burnt in South Africa (SEE NAMES)” – Posted June 17, 2022

https://youtu.be/Ef9i9Pu3Crs

>>17584670

>>17584679

>>17515851

“A Zimbabwean stoned and burnt to death by South Africans. Scary video be warned.” – Posted April 8, 2022

https://youtu.be/b74gvaODQk0

How a Zimbabwean been stoned and burnt to death by wicked nationals in the Republic of South Africa. God serve our Africa..

>>17544800

“Journalist forced to leave Plett home after locals threaten her over coverage”

https://www.thesouthafrican.com/news/journalist-herald-kwanokuthula-forced-leave-home-safe-house-migrant-clashes-plettenberg-bay-22-september-breaking/

22-09-2022 16:06

Locals in Kwanokuthula, Plettenberg Bay reportedly expressed their displeasure at journalists’ coverage of clashes between South Africans and migrants. They allegedly encouraged each other to ‘deal’ with reporters from the Herald and GroundUp.

A journalist from The Herald was forced to leave her home in Plettenberg Bay after threatening messages were allegedly directed at her in a community WhatsApp group. The SA National Editors’ Forum (SANEF) said it was appalled by the claims of harassment and intimidation.

HERALD JOURNALIST TAKING REFUGE IN SAFE HOUSE

The Eastern Cape-based publication, which also covers the Garden Route in the Western Cape, said the journalist in question was targeted over her coverage of the ongoing clashes between migrants and locals in Kwanokuthula, Plettenberg Bay.

Earlier this month, GroundUp reported that dozens of immigrants were forced out of their homes in Kwanokuthula by local residents. Unhappiness and conflict between South Africans and migrants in the area has been building since August.

SANEF said The Herald’s editor, Rochelle de Kock, told the Forum that her journalist was now living in a safe house.

“So bad has the situation become that the reporter and the publication decided that her news reports will no longer carry her name in order to mitigate the intimidation and make her feel more at ease in a community in which she too is a member,” said SANEF.

The reporter covered a protest by the group of locals who clashed with migrants on 1 September when she was accosted. “They pushed her around and demanded she delete the footage she had taken. They threatened to break her phone. She was shaken by the incident and we told her to leave the scene,” said De Kock.

This week, on Tuesday, 20 September, the publication received screenshots of a conversation in a local WhatsApp group. The locals allegedly expressed their displeasure at the work done in Kwanokuthula by journalists and encouraged each other to “deal” with the Herald reporter and a journalist linked to GroundUp.

SANEF said the intimidation was anathema to democracy and it was indicative of the chilling effect such actions have on journalism when reporters do not feel comfortable using their names on their stories.

“SANEF finds the intimidation and threats against journalists unacceptable. We will always condemn this. We will support the Herald as a case has been opened, and we hope law enforcement agencies take appropriate action,” said the Forum.

The Herald reported that a case of intimidation was opened at Kwanokuthula police station.

MORE ON THIS:

https://www.thesouthafrican.com/news/plettenberg-bay-immigrants-houses-burnt-in-act-of-xenophobia-breaking-south-africa-21-september-2022/

https://www.thesouthafrican.com/news/immigrants-in-plettenberg-bay-extorted-for-protection-money-breaking-south-africa-19-september-2022/

“Conversations with former President Thabo Mbeki” – Unisa 2022 - https://youtu.be/2iHZeJzIN3Y

1:32:05 – “Things started going wrong. What was going wrong was not universities, was the politics in our countries… So there’s quite a period when a lot of our political leadership turned against universities. At about the same time some of the Brettenwoods institutions like the World Bank started teaching us the Africans the wrong things… We need this honest intellectual input into the same question as 60 years ago, 50 years ago.”

“Mbeki says it is incorrect to blame foreigners for ‘bulk of crime’ in SA”

https://www.thesouthafrican.com/news/thabo-mbeki-foreigners-crime-south-africa-incorrect-blame-bulk-22-september-2022-breaking/

22-09-2022 16:52

‘The bulk of crime in this country is caused is committed by South Africans. There are foreigners who commit crimes. You should arrest them and charge them this is what we should do and avoid labelling other people,’ said Mbeki.

Former President Thabo Mbeki cautioned South Africans against buying into the false notion that blames foreigners for the majority of crimes in South Africa. He was addressing students and diplomats at the University of South Africa (UNISA) in Tshwane on Wednesday, 22 September.

MBEKI SAYS FOREIGNERS AREN’T TO BLAME FOR BULK OF CRIME

According to SABC News, Mbeki said many South Africans commit crimes. Nevertheless, suspects should be arrested regardless of their nationality.

“We need to walk away from the false notion that the bulk of crime in this country is caused by foreigners. It is not correct.

“The bulk of crime in this country is caused is committed by South Africans. There are foreigners who commit crimes. You should arrest them and charge them this is what we should do and avoid labelling other people,” said the former president.

Earlier this month, the Minister of Police, Bheki Cele, made similar comments at the South African Local Government Association’s (SALGA) Council of Mayors’ conference in East London on Thursday, 8 September.

Cele said 18 000 out of 544 000 inmates in South African prisons are immigrants. “Foreign nationals are not a problem. It’s South Africans. They are in prison in large numbers, which means they do things they are not supposed to do,” said the police minister.

The SABC reported that the Minister of Defence, Thandi Modise, said foreigners run most of the criminal syndicates in the country. This happened in February 2022 and the Minister was speaking during a Justice, Crime and Security Cluster (JCPS) briefing after the State of the Nation Address (SONA).

Modise’s comments came in response to the deadly Rossettenville shooting incident in south Johannesburg where a 25-man gang, which included suspects from Zimbabwe and Botswana, got into a massive shootout with police.

Eight suspects were killed in the shootout and a dozen were arrested. The gang was allegedly planning to pull off a cash-in-transit heist.

Modise said the government does not have the courage to call out foreign criminals out of fear of being labelled xenophobic.

South Africa is becoming an increasingly hostile place for foreigners with groups like Operation Dudula and certain political parties tapping into and stoking anti-migrant sentiment across the country.

“SA ranked 19th in the WORLD for criminality – report”

https://www.thesouthafrican.com/news/south-africa-sa-ranked-19-world-criminality-report-23-september-2022/

23-09-2022 07:30

A new report has ranked South Africa in the 19th position in the world for criminality – here’s what the report said…

South Africa was ranked 19 out of 193 countries for criminality in a report by the Global Organised Crime Index, https://ocindex.net/country/south_africa.

HUMAN TRAFFICKING IN SA

The 188-page report says that SA is a destination country for human trafficking.

“Traffickers are known to recruit people from the poorer, rural areas to urban centres, where they are then forced into domestic servitude, sex trafficking and other forms of forced labour,” the report read.

The report revealed that a major corruption market in the country is associated with the movement of foreign nationals. This is predominately related to paperwork and the process of crossing borders with a bribe – instead of a passport.

FLOW OF ARMS WITHIN SA

The report states that SA has a significant flow of arms and that these firearms are overwhelmingly used by criminals to intimidate, injure and kill. While there are a number of ways these criminals get their hands on firearms, more recent local sources include weapons stolen or lost by legitimate firearms owners and weapons siphoned from the State.

DRUGS

The report describes Mzansi as both a destination and trans-shipment point for Afghan heroin that arrives via sea routes, air routes or overland routes. The heroin trade is controlled by organised criminal groups.

“Border, customs, and police officials are reportedly involved in facilitating the distribution of the drug, and transit through the country,” the report read.

In terms of cocaine, the amounts consumed and trafficked have grown significantly.

HIGH CRIMINALITY – HIGH RESILIENCE

South Africa is one of nine countries in the world that has high criminality but also a high resilience. The report describes these as countries with high levels of criminality that have also developed ‘robust frameworks and mechanisms’ to counter organised crime.

“What is immediately striking about these countries is that the majority are among the economic powerhouses in their respective regions,” it read.

ALSO READ: Police crime stats: 227 people killed in taverns, pubs or bars in Q1, https://www.thesouthafrican.com/news/police-crime-stats-227-killed-bars-pubs-taverns-19-august-2022/

“AfriForum patrol catches FIVE farm attackers near Zim border”

https://www.thesouthafrican.com/news/breaking-afriforum-patrol-stops-farm-attackers-zimbabwe-border-friday-23-september/

23-09-2022 14:00

Armed members of AfriForum have stepped in to bust a gang of alleged farm attackers this week – here’s how it all went down…

A specialised Neighbourhood Watch team operating in Musina, Limpopo has snared five suspected farm attackers this week, in a location near the border with Zimbabwe. The AfriForum patrol also managed to confiscate multiple firearms from the group.

FARM ATTACKERS STOPPED IN THEIR TRACKS BY AFRIFORUM MEMBERS

AfriForum has around 160 security structures nationwide with almost 10,000 trained volunteers. Some of these response teams receive specialized training, which includes disciplines such as hand-to-hand martial arts, medical training and tactical weapon handling.

They were ‘on hand’ to foil a set of thugs who stand accused of robbing a farm property, and attacking those inside. The Neighbourhood Watch members were quick to apprehend this armed gang, managing to outnumber and outwit them.

NEIGHBOURHOOD WATCH PATROL NABS FARM ATTACKERS IN LIMPOPO

Jacques Broodryk, a spokesperson for AfriForum’s Community Safety unit, has praised the members involved in this successful operation, and also noted that SAPS’ intervention was ‘decisive and dedicated’.

“Yesterday the Afriforum Neighbourhood Watch in Musina, with other role players, assisted in arresting five farm attackers. Three firearms were recovered including an R5 rifle. Well done to everyone involved, including the dedicated SAPS members who acted decisively.”

AFRIFORUM ‘WANT MORE SOUTH AFRICANS’ TO JOIN THEIR RANKS

A number of these Neighbourhood Watch patrols are being created by AfriForum, who now boast thousands of volunteers across Mzansi. Those wanting to take an active role in protecting their communities have also been invited to ‘get involved’ with the lobby group

“We are proud of our neighborhood watch members who serve their communities in such a selfless way. SAPS have themselves admitted that they cannot fulfill their mandate. We therefore strongly encourage members of the public to get involved.” | AfriForum Community Safety

“SIU report implicates SANDF officials in PPE fraud”

https://www.thesouthafrican.com/news/siu-report-implicates-sandf-officials-ppe-fraud-24-september-2022/

24-09-2022 20:54

15 SANDF officials were named in an SIU report as they are allegedly linked to the irregular procurement of PPE.

Four South African National Defence Force (SANDF) members are facing fraud and corruption charges that relate to an alleged corrupt acquisition of personal protection equipment (PPE).

WHO ARE THE SANDF MEMBERS FACING THE CHARGES?

Lt Col VS Peu, Capt D Modise, Capt Tshikosi and Leading Seaman SS Jiane have already appeared in court. They all, according to SANDF, worked at DOD’s Central Procurement Service Centre.

On Saturday, 24 September, SANDF released a statement regarding the officers who were arrested. This followed an investigation conducted by the Special Investigating Unit (SIU) which also released a report.

15 OFFICIALS WERE REPORTEDLY NAMED IN THE SIU REPORT

The SIU report named 15 officials from the defence department who are allegedly involved in the irregular procurement of PPE.

“Based on the SIU forensic report, military police opened up a criminal docket and conducted a prosecution-guided investigation. As a result of this investigation, on September 23, four of the 15 members of the SANDF were charged and appeared before the court of a senior military judge in Thaba Tshwane for arraignment,” the statement by the SANDF read.

According to TimesLIVE, the case has been postponed to 6 October and other officials are expected in court next week.

GENERAL MAPHWANYA HAS CONDEMNED THE ALLEGED BEHAVIOUR

Chief of the SANDF, General Rudzani Maphwanya condemned the alleged behaviour of the officials implicated in the matter.

“The behaviour of these and other members will not be tolerated in the ranks of the defence force. We will make sure that we root out such elements so that the people we serve continue to have confidence in the SANDF,” said General Maphwanya.

PPE SWINDLER SOUGHT BY HAWKS OVER R18M FRAUD

In an unrelated incident, it was previously reported that the Directorate for Priority Crimes Investigation (Hawks) is asking for the public’s help with finding Shareen Govender who allegedly swindled victims out of an estimated R18 million by pretending to be the director of personal protective equipment (PPE) company in 2021.

Hawks spokesperson Captain Lloyd Ramovha said Govender allegedly paraded as the director of Aurum Line Pty (Ltd) – an existing PPE company which she had no ties with.

“It is reported that through the use of this company, she lured and misled potential investors to invest into her venture then promised high monthly returns on investments made, which never materialised,” said the Hawks spokesperson. Read the full story here, https://www.thesouthafrican.com/news/ppe-swindler-shareen-govender-hawks-johannesburg-fraud-25-august-2022/.

“Johann Rupert’s Remgro to sell stake in TotalEnergies SA”

https://www.thesouthafrican.com/news/johann-rupert-remgro-sell-stake-totalenergies-sa-breaking-latest-24-september-2022/

24-09-2022 09:58

South African billionaire Johann Rupert’s investment vehicle, Remgro, is planning to sell its stake in energy giant TotalEnergies.

South African billionaire Johann Rupert’s investment vehicle, Remgro, is planning to sell its stake in the local unit of energy giant TotalEnergies SE, according to people familiar with the matter.

Remgro’s 25% holding in the arm of the Paris-based company, which owns refining operations and gasoline stations in South Africa, has a book value of R2.5 billion, according to a 2021 results statement.

Remgro declined to comment, Total did not respond to e-mailed questions from Bloomberg.

Remgro is reshuffling its portfolio, most recently buying out the part of hospital operator Mediclinic International it didn’t already own, as reported by The South African website.

REMGRO SALE PROCESS UNDERWAY

The shake-up also included the sale of Grindrod’s banking unit and the disposal of about a 30% stake in wine and spirits maker Distell Group Holdings to Heineken.

TotalEnergies owns a 36% stake in the Natref crude-oil refinery in South Africa, with the majority held by Sasol.

The companies plan to upgrade the plant to produce low-sulfur diesel.

The sale process is underway with bids expected to be submitted within the coming weeks.

>>17596192

“Neo black Movement of Africa, an organization in South Africa that fought the apartheid war”

“Africa: Top 7 Confraternities in Nigeria and their history as Italy jails 3 Black Axe cultists”

https://atqnews.com/africa-top-7-confraternities-in-nigeria-and-their-history-as-italy-jails-3-black-axe-cultists/

August 31, 2016

Below are excerpts

For those of you who don’t know how the various cult groups came into being in tetiary institutions in Nigeria, here’s a brief to further broaden your spectrum.

Most of the publications I have read on the subject of cultism seem to agree that what is known as “secret cults” in tertiary institutions in Nigeria started when the Pyrates Confraternity was formed at the University college Ibadan (UCI) in 1953.

At the count it was estimated that there are 44 cult groups operating in various campuses in Nigeria. This is probably an underestimate.

National Association Of Seadogs (NAS) Pyrate Confraternity (AHOI-SEADOG)

The aims was basically to combat the then increasing occurrence of violence caused by tribal groups during students’ activities, western influences and other secular gatherings, in ways suitable to the cult group but with the advent of time deviation of purpose manifested.

THE NEO BLACK MOVEMENT OF AFRICA

BLACK AXE CONFRATERNITY (AYE-AXEMEN)

This cult was formed at the University of Benin in Benin City in 1976 by some young men with the motive of building a body to fight against the oppression against Blackman (Students) in the university. –Those who initiated this association are rumoured to be runaways from Neo black Movement of Africa, an organization in South Africa that fought the apartheid war and escape into Nigeria for safety.—

Investigation has shown that it was the borrowed notion that was imported to Nigeria.

Some of their beliefs and saying includes:

The Blackman will be freed with an axe

No f*ck ups

Forgiveness is a sin

Don’t betray your brother in the hood

Obey before complain or Abeyance

He who price must pay

Members are referred to as: ”Aye” ”Axe-men”, ”Seven (7)” or ”Amigos”

“Level of subsidising of government aid for people in need is unsustainable”

https://southafricatoday.net/south-africa-news/level-of-subsidising-of-government-aid-for-people-in-need-is-unsustainable/

September 25, 2022

The level of subsidising of basic services for those in need along with all the other welfare grants and free services is unsustainable with the country’s economy in its current state.

Between 2000 and 2011, those receiving child support grants alone had increased from 150 000 to 10 million and the numbers are still on the rise.

It is no achievement, instead, it proves that failed ANC policy has destroyed the economy to such an extent that the number of unemployed South Africans multiply every year.

After nearly three decades under ANC rule, the unemployment rate currently stands at a conservative 33,9%; a significant increase from 20,5% in 1994.

Another factor that drives up the number of state-dependants and depletes the state coffers is the culture of non-payment for services, which the ANC has allowed to take root among South Africans.

It has resulted in, among other things, many people, who do not qualify, registering as needy at municipalities and state institutions to obtain free services.

It is, furthermore, interesting to note that ANC-controlled municipalities frequently, and especially during election years, launch campaigns to register those supposedly in need for social benefits.

Even the Deputy President, David Mabuza, himself pointed out in 2019 that these practices erode municipal tax bases resulting in job losses and poor service delivery.

Academics have also pointed out in several articles that it appears as if the ANC is using social grants and government aid to ensure support among the poor at the polls.

These practices create dependence on the state, and undermine the dignity and morale of the recipients.

The FF Plus supports an accountable, sustainable social safety net for those in need with its main focus on retaining the dignity of recipients while ensuring proper care, development and social progress.

Not a system where vulnerable people are ensnared by the ANC government in a tyrannical trap net of dependence and poverty.

It is imperative for the ANC government to abandon its socialist policies, which promote only its own party-political interests, and implement an economic policy that attracts investments, stimulates economic growth and ensures dignified job opportunities for the people of this country.

In this way, the country will be enabled to affordably and sustainably care for those who are truly in need.

“300 Councillors in KZN are completely illiterate, utterly unable to read or write”

https://southafricatoday.net/south-africa-news/kwazulu-natal/300-councillors-in-kzn-are-completely-illiterate-utterly-unable-to-read-or-write/

September 27, 2022

The FF Plus views the high level of illiteracy among KwaZulu Natal (KZN) councillors as shocking. It inadvertently raises the question of whether these councillors are truly able to make a positive contribution to service delivery in the province.

KZN’s Department of Cooperative Governance and Traditional Affairs (COGTA) conducted an expertise audit of 54 municipal councils and found that 300 councillors in KwaZulu Natal are completely illiterate, utterly unable to read or write.

In addition, only 34% of councillors have just one year of working experience.

The FF Plus is convinced that these councillors are not up to the complex task of comprehending the municipal context and all the relevant legislation and regulations, and are, thus, not able to ensure proper service delivery or hold the ruling party accountable in city councils.

Clearly, minimum requirements are needed for councillors to ensure that elected councillors are able to do their job so that service delivery can take place and taxpayers’ money is not wasted.

“‘Planned racial discrimination in the legal sector is unconstitutional’”

https://southafricatoday.net/south-africa-news/planned-racial-discrimination-in-the-legal-sector-is-unconstitutional/

September 26, 2022

The civil rights organisation AfriForum on 22 September 2022, submitted their comments against the government’s planned racial criteria in the legal sector to the Minister of Trade, Industry and Competition, Ebrahim Patel. AfriForum argues that this Draft Legal Sector Code goes against the Constitutional principles of non-racialism and that its implementation must be opposed strongly.

This code, which advocates Black Economic Empowerment (BEE), seeks to introduce discriminatory racial targets for the legal sector.

Among other things, it requires the state to allocate legal work and public funds to lawyers, law firms and advocates based on their gender and race.

“The government’s racial discrimination must come to an end.

We at AfriForum will do everything in our power to oppose the ANC’s discriminatory laws, which are fueled by their racial agenda,” says Ernst van Zyl, Campaign Officer for Strategy and Content at AfriForum.

“The ANC government is the main divider, stealer and discriminator in the country. Opposition and firm criticism against their destructive laws and policies is a moral responsibility,” concludes Van Zyl.

“WATCH: Shock as gunman opens fire at KZN primary school”

https://www.thesouthafrican.com/news/watch-shock-gunman-opens-fire-kzn-primary-school-breaking-news-28-september-2022/

28-09-2022 23:13

Primary school learners have been left shocked and traumatised after a gunman opened fire on Wednesday. WATCH the TERRIFYING video here.

This is SHOCKING! KZN primary school learners have been traumatised after a gunman randomly opened fire in broad daylight on Wednesday.

WATCH AS TERRIFIED LEARNERS SCREAM AS SHOTS ARE HEARD

The shooting happened at the Alston Primary School.

In a TERRIFYING video shared on social media the learners can be seen and heard screaming and running for cover.

According to KwaZulu Natal Education Department spokesperson Kwazi Mthethwa, the armed gunman gained entry into the school premises through the pedestrian gate.

He attacked the security guard and two other people before opening fire randomly.

THE GUNMAN GAINED ENTRY THROUGH A PEDESTRIAN GATE

“The violent incident took place in full view of learners who were visibly shocked and traumatised by the chaotic scenes that happened.”

Mthethwa said the gunman was subsequently overpowered and disarmed by ground staff, who responded swiftly to arrest the escalating situation.

Despite reports on social media that a security guard was shot and injured, neither the Department nor the police could confirm this.

THE MAN RANDOMLY OPENED FIRE ONCE HE WAS ON SCHOOL GROUNDS

“The man was handed over to the police. The Department has already dispatched a team of psycho-social workers to provide support to all affected.”

Kwazi Mthethwa

He furthermore said the Department would investigate the matter and also assist the police in their investigation.

Education MEC Mbali Frazer condemned the violence and called upon all stakeholders to work together to make schools gun-free zones. [How will the schools themselves?]

THE GUNMAN WAS OVERPOWERED AND ARRESTED

“It’s troubling that our learners should be subjected to this kind of violence. Our teachers and staff are also worried that their lives are at risk. I trust the police to do their work to ensure that a conviction is secured and that jail becomes the final destination for the perpetrator”.

MEC Mbali Frazer

Police could not yet confirm or provide more information on the shooting.

“Phala Phala: MP’s vote against DA’s motion for an ad hoc committee”

https://www.thesouthafrican.com/news/phala-phala-latest-national-assembly-ad-hoc-committee-29-september-2022/

29-09-2022 07:27

The DA says history will judge every MP who voted against the formation of an ad hoc committee to investigate Phala Phala farm scandal.

The Democratic Alliance (DA) has accused the African National Congress (ANC) in Parliament of failing in its Constitutional obligations by protecting President Cyril Ramaphosa and his cabinet from accountability and scrutiny about alleged abuse of public resources and institutions on his Phala Phala game farm.

This after the ruling party voted against the DA’s motion to establish an ad hoc committee that would have investigated matters surrounding the alleged theft at President Cyril Ramaphosa’s farm.

DA SLAMS ANC OVER PHALA PHALA VOTE

As previously reported, when burglars targeted the Phala Phala game farm they allegedly found $4 million in cash that was concealed at the property. Ramaphosa then failed to report the incident to the police, raising suspicions that the dollars were ill-gotten.

Opposition parties have been calling for Ramaphosa and other role players to be held accountable over the Phala Phala scandal, however, the president has managed to ‘dodge’ questions surrounding the incident and investigations are reportedly ongoing.

On Wednesday, 28 September, all opposition parties voted in favour of the motion, the ANC and the Good Party voted against it. DA Chief Whip, Siviwe Gwarube said the ANC is beyond the point of self-correction.

Gwarube said it is truly a sad day in the country’s democracy when a logical motion meant to enable members of parliament to do their work is shot down due to narrow political interests.

“This is the same as the ANC in the 5th Parliament who protected former President Jacob Zuma and his ministers from being held responsible for Nkandla and State Capture.”

Furthermore, the DA said Parliament must be a bipartisan platform where decisions are based on principle and the rule of law and not dictated to by ANC factional battles.

“As Members of Parliament, we had a unique opportunity to fulfil our constitutional obligations of holding the executive to account, but the ruling party has shown its disdain for the institution once again.

“History will judge every MP who voted against accountability harshly. In effect, a vote against this motion was a clear message to the people of South Africa that there are a set of rules for the ANC and the politically connected; while there is a different set of rules for ordinary people.”

Siviwe Gwarube

“SAPS arrest ex-Mines Minister Mosebenzi Zwane over Estina dairy scandal”

https://www.thesouthafrican.com/news/saps-arrest-ex-mines-minister-mosebenzi-zwane-over-estina-dairy-scandal-breaking-28-september-2022/

28-09-2022 15:35

South African authorities have arrested former Mines Minister Mosebenzi Zwane on fraud and corruption charges.

South African authorities have arrested former Mines Minister Mosebenzi Zwane on fraud and corruption charges, the third high-profile politician to face prosecution for the plunder of state funds during former President Jacob Zuma’s rule.

According to Bloomberg, Zwane appeared in the magistrate’s court in Bloemfontein on Wednesday, the Investigating Directorate said in a statement.

He was granted bail of R10 000 and is scheduled to appear in court again on 2 November 2022.

Zwane’s arrest is among a string of high-profile cases linked to the so-called state capture era – the nine years when Zuma led the country and corruption became endemic in Mzansi.

The government estimates more than R500 billion was stolen from its coffers, but no officials have successfully been prosecuted so far.

Mosebenzi Zwane has been linked to members of the Gupta family, who were friends with Zuma and the alleged masterminds of the looting spree.

Zuma, the Guptas and Zwane have all denied wrongdoing.

His prosecution follows that of other political heavyweights Bongani Bongo, a former state security minister, and Ace Magashule, the ANC’s suspended secretary-general, who are also facing graft charges.

Bongo’s trial has been set down for 8 November 2022, while Magashule will reappear in court on 20 January 2023.

MONEY ENDED UP IN GUPTA HANDS SAY PROSECUTORS

The NPA have also brought former executives from state-owned companies – including Siyabonga Gama, Anoj Singh and Brian Molefe – before the courts for their alleged role in state capture.

Former police boss Kgomotso Phahlane was arrested for fraud last week.

The dairy scandal involved the leasing of a state-owned farm near the Free State town of Vrede to Estina Pty Ltd. under a free 99-year contract.

The provincial government agreed to help develop it, ostensibly to set up a dairy project that would create 200 jobs.

Prosecutors say most of the R220 million in public funds transferred to the company ended up in the hands of the Guptas.

>>17602409

>The dairy scandal involved the leasing of a state-owned farm near the Free State town of Vrede to Estina Pty Ltd. under a free 99-year contract.

>The provincial government agreed to help develop it, ostensibly to set up a dairy project that would create 200 jobs.

>Prosecutors say most of the R220 million in public funds transferred to the company ended up in the hands of the Guptas.

“Land Expropriation Bill approved by the National Assembly”

https://www.thesouthafrican.com/news/land-expropriation-bill-passed-national-assembly-breaking-29-september-latest/

29-09-2022 12:45

‘It’s a big victory for land justice in our country. We can now return the land to our people,’ said an ANC MP after the motion passed. Several opposition parties, including the DA and EFF, objected.

The Land Expropriation Bill was adopted after it received a majority vote in the National Assembly late on Wednesday, 28 September. Opposition parties, including the DA, EFF, IFP and more objected to the move.

LAND EXPROPRIATION BILL ONE STEP CLOSER TO ENACTMENT

The National Assembly said the purpose of the Land Expropriation Bill was to repeal the existing apartheid-era Expropriation Act of 1975, which was not in line with the Constitution.

“It further seeks to provide for certain instances where expropriation with nil compensation may be appropriate in the public interest,” read a statement.

In December 2021, the government moved to amend Section 25 of the Constitution to allow for land expropriation without compensation. However, the bill failed to secure a two-thirds majority and it was put off the table.

As previously reported, the ANC and Al-Jamah voted in favour of the Bill and the EFF, IFP, FF PLUS, ACDP, GOOD, NFP and COPE voted against it.

Wednesday’s Bill was passed through a simple majority vote in the National Assembly. “It is our contention that this [is] a brazen attempt by the governing party to amend the Constitution through the back door using ordinary legislation,” said DA MP, Samantha Graham Mare.

Public Works Minister Patricia De Lille said the Land Expropriation Bill makes explicit what is implicit in the Constitution and stressed that expropriation is one of many land acquisition methods, the Bill also does not prescribe that nil compensation will be paid in all cases.

The Minister said compensation for land would be determined by an agreement between the state and owners. If an agreement could not be reached the matter would be decided in court.

ANC MP Faiez Jacobs was in a buoyant mood after the motion passed and said the Bill would allow the State to “take back land from those who have previously benefitted.”

“It’s a big victory for land justice in our country. We can now return the land to our people,” he said.

“This bill brings certainty to South Africans and investors because it clearly outlines how expropriation can be done and on what basis. So, it is extremely dangerous to suggest that government will arbitrarily take people’s property, such as their homes,” said De Lille, according to News24.

De Lille furthered that it is wrong to fearmonger and distort the facts around the land debate. She said, in many cases, those who object to the Bill “are people who have never been subjected to laws that have stripped people of their property, their dignity and their rights to own property.”

The EFF is not a fan of the ANC’s approach to land expropriation. The party feels that the Bill is too limited and will not contribute to land ownership reform in South Africa.

“Do natives want land that is not used for productive purposes? Do they want state-owned land? Why is the ANC playing with people’s emotions?

“We reject this bill and call on our supporters to see the ANC for what it is, a staunch defender of white landowners,” said EFF MP, Mathapelo Siwisa, according to Daily Maverick.

The Land Expropriation Bill will be sent to the National Council of Provinces for concurrence.

“Stage 8 vs Stage 10 vs Stage 15: Eskom ‘doomsdays’ explained”

https://www.thesouthafrican.com/news/breaking-eskom-what-is-stage-15-load-shedding-comparison-stage-8-stage-10-thursday-29-september/

29-09-2022 13:13

Have a day off, Eskom. After threatening us with Stage 8 and Stage 10 load shedding earlier this year, Stage 15 has now entered the chat.

Following a brutal round of Stage 6 blackouts, South Africans will be pressed to imagine how our power situation could get any worse. Well, as it turns out, there are a number of ‘doomsday scenarios’ that could play out – through either Stage 8, Stage 10, or Stage 15 load shedding.

Top Eskom officials have openly pondered the possibility of going beyond the worst-scheduled version of load shedding. Recently, an updated ‘worst possible outcome’ was tabled. Here’s what you need to know about the final frontiers of Eskom’s frustrating failures. Brace yourselves.

STAGE 8 VS STAGE 10 VS STAGE 15 – AND EVEN A TOTAL BLACKOUT: YOUR GUIDE TO THE DARKEST DEPTHS OF LOAD SHEDDING…

WHAT IS STAGE 8?

This is the only one of Eskom’s various ‘worst-case scenarios’ that actually has a clear and concise definition, as per the utility’s own load shedding guidance. At Stage 8, citizens could be subjected to multiple power cuts. These would total anywhere between 12 to 16 hours a day.

Eish. Stage 8 load shedding would remove an eye-watering 8 000 MW from the grid. This would cripple businesses and bring the country to a halt. The fact that Eskom have even entertained more drastic outcomes than this is utterly terrifying. But here we are…

WHAT IS STAGE 10?

Earlier this year, Jan Oberholzer – Eskom’s Chief Operating Officer – entertained the notion of Stage 10 power cuts. The utterance left many observers dumbfounded, given that there’s no official guidance for anything that goes beyond the parameters of Stage 8.

When at Stage 4 in March 2022, Oberholzer suggested that a lack of diesel could force South Africa into an unprecedented round of Stage 7 outages. He then added that depleted dam levels ‘could add another three stages on top of that’ – taking SA to STAGE 10. Yikes!

We never reached that point. But for the first time, a senior Eskom official admitted that load shedding could go further than anything the firm has prepared for. Which, essentially, paved the way for Andre de Ruyter’s comments on Wednesday evening. Strap in, everbody.

WHAT IS STAGE 15?

Eskom’s CEO stated that, if SA does not aggressively invest in renewable energy and relaxes its air quality standards, we may actually see Stage 15 load shedding. Although he admitted to ‘not knowing’ what that would look like, he did muse that a failure to evolve could cost 100 000 jobs. [Using the crisis to push an agenda.]

Existing coal power stations ‘do not meet minimum emission standards’. Due to this, the embattled power utility is left with two options. Either it spends about R300 billion to retrofit the power stations with equipment to clean their emissions, or the units must be decommissioned.

WORSE THAN LOAD SHEDDING? ESKOM DESCRIBE ‘TOTAL BLACKOUT’…

For those of you who think Stage 15 load shedding is the bottom of the barrel, you’d be sadly mistaken. Only a few weeks ago, Eskom identified their worst-case scenario. In theory, the country could go BEYOND load shedding. But this would mean entering into a ‘three-week long blackout’.

“If preventative measures like load shedding prove to be insufficient, the national grid will collapse. A blackout is unforeseen. Therefore, the system operator would not be able to make any announcements in advance.”

“A national blackout will have massive implications. For the whole country. Every effort is made to stop this from happening. Depending on the nature of the emergency, it could take a few weeks for the grid to completely recover from a blackout.” | Eskom statement

“Farm attacks escalate”

https://www.tlu.co.za/en/farm-attacks-escalate/

28 September | 2022

Farm attacks are on the rise again and the brutality of the attacks is disturbing.

The brutality of recent murders of a farmer from Waterval-Boven (just to steal his bakkie) and a farmer from Delmas is extremely worrying.

“One farm attack or murder is one too many. On behalf of TLU SA, we express our condolences to Gideon Swart’s family and friends. His brother Ruben farms on a neighbouring farm and is a TLU SA member. The family of the Delmas farmer is also in our prayers,” says Dr Gawie Lötter, TLU SA Manager: Safety.

“We are not only seeing an increase in farm attacks and murders, but also an escalation in the brutality of the incidents. With the attacks, there are cases of livestock theft, the theft of farm equipment and the theft of weapons that end up in the wrong hands. The latter is especially dangerous.”

Since 1990, 2203 farm murders have been reported. By September 27, there are already 33 murders for 2022 on the record book.

There is a clear increase in farm attacks. In June there were two farm murders, but since then the numbers have been increasing. There were seven in July and already six in September.

For TLU SA, this points to the opportunistic actions of criminals. The political climate with discussions focusing on expropriation without compensation, infighting in the ruling party and ineffectiveness of the SAPS are some of the factors that create a climate for criminals to take extra chances.

According to Lötter, the resounding silence of the government is disturbing.

“We are already aware that the application of law and order by the SAPS is not to our liking, and with weapons still in the hands of criminals, it is a time bomb waiting to explode,” adds Lötter.

TLU SA strongly condemns these farm attacks and expects the government and Minister of Police to do the same and use all means at their disposal to bring the criminals to account.