Only in Effrika

Nice place if it wasn't for some of the locals
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Re: Only in Effrika

#241 Post by Ex-Ascot » Mon May 01, 2023 11:40 am

News headlines here: PRESIDENT MASISI VISITS SWITZERLAND UK.

Just an 'and' missing out. He is going for the big bash.
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Re: Only in Effrika

#242 Post by Boac » Mon May 01, 2023 12:07 pm

.....or the Tobleroners have been buying up bankrupt stock.................. :))

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Re: Only in Effrika

#243 Post by OneHungLow » Tue May 02, 2023 10:30 am

Finally the SA authorities have started to wake up to what a pariah Putin is.
Vladimir Putin could face arrest if he attends a meeting of leading economies in South Africa in August.

The country’s authorities reportedly say they would be compelled to detain the Russian leader if he took part in the BRICS (Brazil, Russia, India, China, and South Africa) summit after a warrant for his arrest was issued in March by the International Criminal Court (ICC).

South Africa’s Sunday Times newspaper, citing sources in the nation’s government, said that a special commission had been established by president Cyril Ramaphosa to look into the arrest warrant.

It concluded that South Africa would have “no option” but to arrest Mr Putin if he set foot in the country, a source said.

In other news, the Russian military has suffered 100,000 casualties, comprising deaths and injuries, in the last five months in its continuing invasion of Ukraine, the White House said, concluding Vladimir Putin’s “winter offensive” in the Donbas as a failure.

The figure, based on US intelligence estimates, includes more than 20,000 deaths.
https://www.independent.co.uk/news/worl ... 30624.html
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Re: Only in Effrika

#244 Post by OFSO » Wed May 03, 2023 8:22 pm

Divorce court papers seen by the BBC allege that the daughter of Zimbabwe's ex-President Robert Mugabe owned 25 residential properties, including a Dubai mansion, worth a total of around $80m (£64m).

Bona Mugabe filed for divorce from former pilot Simba Mutsahuni Chikore in March.

Mr Chikore wants to split their assets, which also include 21 farms, he says.

Ms Mugabe has not yet commented on the claims but will be able to do so.

A source close to the Mugabe family told the BBC that the former president had nothing in his name when he died, although he received £10m from the state as part of his pension. The source also questioned whether Bona Mugabe owned all the assets listed by her former partner.

However, Zimbabweans have reacted badly to the news...

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Re: Only in Effrika

#245 Post by G-CPTN » Thu May 04, 2023 4:53 am

OFSO wrote:
Wed May 03, 2023 8:22 pm

However, Zimbabweans have reacted badly to the news...
!

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Re: Only in Effrika

#246 Post by OneHungLow » Wed May 10, 2023 9:32 am

OFSO wrote:
Wed May 03, 2023 8:22 pm
Divorce court papers seen by the BBC allege that the daughter of Zimbabwe's ex-President Robert Mugabe owned 25 residential properties, including a Dubai mansion, worth a total of around $80m (£64m).

Bona Mugabe filed for divorce from former pilot Simba Mutsahuni Chikore in March.

Mr Chikore wants to split their assets, which also include 21 farms, he says.

Ms Mugabe has not yet commented on the claims but will be able to do so.

A source close to the Mugabe family told the BBC that the former president had nothing in his name when he died, although he received £10m from the state as part of his pension. The source also questioned whether Bona Mugabe owned all the assets listed by her former partner.

However, Zimbabweans have reacted badly to the news...
I am guessing that the long suffering Zimbabwean people would have been outraged at the extent of the Mugabe family assets, although they shouldn't have been surprised. The Mugabe family are infamous for their kleptocracy.
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The lion sleeps tonight.... more Mbube than Mugabe Part 1

#247 Post by OneHungLow » Wed May 10, 2023 9:42 am

On another money subject altogether more musical than Mugabe and his perfidious family. Here we are talking about Mbube – the vocal harmony song that ended up on The Lion King soundtrack – made its writer $2. But beyond the exploitation and legal battles lies a more inspiring story...
South African music is a confluence of paths; a plethora of hands, feet and voices crossing and moving ever forward, yet still interconnected. For that reason, attempting to unravel those strands and arrive at some singular core is a dizzying prospect, but the word “mbube” was at the heart of that inextricable weave during the earliest days of the country’s popular recorded music.

Today, mbube describes a specific variety of South African choral music composed of multipart a cappella harmonies, usually sung by men, and usually in Zulu. The genre’s name is taken from the most famous song of the style.

Sung by Solomon Linda and the Evening Birds, Mbube was released in 1939 by South Africa’s oldest independent label, Gallo Record Company, for whom Linda worked as a packer in the pressing plant. As the story goes, Gallo’s talent scout, Griffith Motsieloa, discovered Linda’s vocal prowess on the job and invited his group into the studio, where the Evening Birds delivered what would become one of the most important records in South African history. In the recording, the group intricately balances the three-part bass harmonies of Gideon Mkhize, Samuel Mlangeni, and Owen Sikhakhane, as Boy Sibiya and Gilbert Madondo deliver honeyed middle tones and Linda himself soars over the top with an unmatched soprano. Their voices work together to call out to an mbube, the Zulu word for lion.

In 40s South Africa, Linda became a star. But the song’s long, complicated history was just beginning. In 1951, US folk singer Pete Seeger was handed a copy and decided to record a version with his band, the Weavers. In the hands of four white voices from New York City, the looped chorus of “uyimbube” (“You are a lion” in Zulu) became “wimoweh”, and the title of their cover. After spreading deeper into the US , another set of musicians, doo wop group the Tokens, added English lyrics, creating the 1961 US No 1 hit The Lion Sleeps Tonight, although Linda’s name was absent from the credits. Three decades later the song would become a centrepiece of Disney’s animated classic The Lion King.

Before being known as mbube, the genre was known to some as ingoma mbusuke, or “night music”, a domestic musical style that was heavily affected by colonial influences: missionaries and white singing troupes are credited as the first to introduce four-part vocal harmony on the continent. Religious schools that conscripted Black South Africans frequently trained students to sing American spirituals in English. Touring acts from the US “minstrel show” movement would occasionally include South Africa in their itinerary, performing to largely segregated white and Black audiences.

Gramophones, records, and radio also began shrinking the world by the 1920s; naturally, Black artists in the US were also often taking influence from African traditions, and in turn influencing African artists. With a variety of international styles available, mbube was primed to further spread African music around the world.

After a brief, swooning introduction, Linda and his bandmates lock into the main groove of Mbube. Though some say the song was improvised, there’s an intricate precision to the harmonies. Mbube is sung in Zulu and full of vocal lines meant to evoke the penny whistles rooted deeply in South African street music, yet its compositional structure bears a strong western influence. It’s that combination that gave Mbube a shot globally.

South Africa’s burgeoning recording scene facilitated that rapid connection. Gallo Record Company first churned out recordings from the Afrikaans community, but Mbube became proof that there was a large audience for music rooted in African traditions – both within South Africa and beyond. And if the Evening Birds could release a massive hit, Gallo bet that getting more groups into the studio could recreate at least a portion of that success.
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Re: The lion sleeps tonight.... more Mbube than Mugabe Part 2

#248 Post by OneHungLow » Wed May 10, 2023 9:44 am

OneHungLow wrote:
Wed May 10, 2023 9:42 am
talking about Mbube – the vocal harmony song that ended up on The Lion King soundtrack
US music historian and archivist Rob Allingham frequently works with Gallo Records. “The amount of material that was recorded was not only incredibly diverse, but it was vast in quantity,” he says. Gallo and his subsequent contemporaries recorded huge volumes of singles, but released each in a print run of just a few hundred copies – a number small enough that if the record were to only sell to Xhosa speakers and not Zulu, for example, or just the Afrikaans audience and not English speakers, the label might still break even. “The basis was built around these very small numbers because of how diverse the South African market was,” Allingham says. “You’ve got urban, rural and township, with all of these specialised, so-called neo-traditional styles.”

But Mbube crossed those borders, in part due to the singers’ undeniable charisma. Linda approached his band with a modern marketer’s eye. “The Evening Birds sported pinstripe three-piece suits, Florsheim shoes, and hats and indulged in a fast-paced, energetic choreography called istep that made performers look like resolute men defiantly walking the streets of the white man’s city,” Simon Frith wrote in his history of the band. While countless singles from mbube groups were produced, Linda’s intention to appeal across cultural boundaries – and to look cool doing it – propelled Mbube to hit status.

Reckoning with the interplay between that broad appeal and colonial influence can pose a bit of a headache decades later. Ethnomusicologist Sarah Weiss has described sharing mbube recordings with her students at Yale. The students blanched, asking for “real” South African music that wasn’t tainted by the influence of Christian missionaries, deeming it “a negative form of hybridisation, which, they argued, had tainted South African musics”, Weiss writes. “Some of my students drew a line between music that was ‘pure’ and music that ‘engaged the west.’”

As Weiss suggests, Mbube and the genre it gave a name to shouldn’t be considered evidence of South Africa’s corruption, but rather of domestic artists’ (and citizens generally) impressive ability to incorporate countless different threads into a unique, modern experience. Rejecting the authenticity of Mbube as South African art rejects Linda’s agency, not to mention the fact that no art or culture can exist in a vacuum without influence from others. While racist oppression was the norm long before apartheid officially encoded it, the very act of Mbube drawing from a variety of cultures is prime evidence of music holding a special place in South Africa’s history of overcoming that same oppression.

But the success of Mbube would become a pyrrhic victory for Linda – an early example of the endemic and ongoing exploitation of Black musicians by the industry. The deal appears to have been crooked from the outset. Gallo paid Linda the equivalent of just $2 for the initial run of a few hundred records.

Compare that with the $200 a week that the Weavers were earning at the Village Vanguard when Wimoweh entered their repertoire. When the group finally put the song out on record, it would earn much, much more. Other artists, from Jimmy Dorsey to the Kingston Trio, were cashing in on the Evening Birds’ release; the Tokens recorded The Lion Sleeps Tonight after receiving a $10,000 advance from RCA Victor. Decades later, The Lion King earned nearly $1bn at the box office – and then spawned the Lion King musical, the highest-grossing show in Broadway history. And the covers never stopped coming: the song would hit No 1 in the UK multiple times via multiple artists. Miriam Makeba sang it to John F Kennedy just before Marilyn Monroe’s infamous rendition of Happy Birthday; even REM and Brian Eno took their turn at the song.

In an investigation for Rolling Stone, journalist Rian Malan estimates the royalties and credit that Linda lost out on by polling copyright lawyers: “It was impossible to accurately calculate, to be sure, but no one blanched at $15m,” he wrote. “Some said 10, some said 20, but most felt that $15m was in the ballpark.”

In the decades that followed the song’s release – and Linda’s death in 1962 – his family received astonishingly little. The copyright and writing credits of the various covers and reimaginings were a tangled mess that inevitably centred on the white publishers and adapters. “It looked as if Linda’s family was receiving 12.5% t of Wimoweh royalties, and around 1% of the much larger revenues generated by The Lion Sleeps Tonight,” Malan wrote. In 2004, Linda’s daughters sued Disney and were given an undisclosed settlement.

That changed in 2019 with the live-action remake of The Lion King: in the Beyoncé-curated musical, Black Is King, it was the original Mbube that was included, not the Tokens’ version. Beyoncé’s mother, Tina Knowles-Lawson, told the Washington Post that the project was inspired in part by Beyoncé learning Linda’s story while she was working on The Lion King.

hat high-stakes battle and redemption may be the most indicative example of the tension between tradition and modernity in mbube, but it’s certainly not the only one. Despite being in its infancy, the South African recording industry gathered a vast spectrum of vocal groups in the 1930s and 1940s. And while reports of mistreatment or nonpayment at Linda’s scale aren’t readily available, it’s safe to assume that similar stories exist.

As the years passed, the grasp of missionaries and gospel movements on mbube loosened and the genre evolved under its own terms. Some mbube vocalists began working with jazz musicians, some took influence from the evolving US pop music scene and others instead preserved the influence of more traditional Zulu vocal traditions. But across all fronts, the constantly intersecting borders of Afrikaans and a variety of African tribal cultures would continue to generate a unique music in response to an equally roiling political structure.
https://www.theguardian.com/music/2023/ ... -lion-king
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Re: Only in Effrika

#249 Post by OneHungLow » Wed May 10, 2023 11:55 am

OneHungLow wrote:
Wed May 10, 2023 9:32 am
OFSO wrote:
Wed May 03, 2023 8:22 pm
Mr Chikore wants to split their assets, which also include 21 farms, he says.
I am guessing that the long suffering Zimbabwean people would have been outraged at the extent of the Mugabe family assets, although they shouldn't have been surprised. The Mugabe family are infamous for their kleptocracy.
Simba Chikore used his time with Air Zim to substantially enrich himself as well.

Note the outrage in the press in Zimbabwe here...

https://www.herald.co.zw/zim-airways-the-untold-story/

For some light relief I post this old classic... I much prefer Captain Phineas Letitbe Takavarasha to FO Chikore! :))

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Re: Only in Effrika

#250 Post by tango15 » Wed May 10, 2023 2:03 pm

OneHungLow wrote:
Wed May 10, 2023 9:32 am
OFSO wrote:
Wed May 03, 2023 8:22 pm
Divorce court papers seen by the BBC allege that the daughter of Zimbabwe's ex-President Robert Mugabe owned 25 residential properties, including a Dubai mansion, worth a total of around $80m (£64m).

Bona Mugabe filed for divorce from former pilot Simba Mutsahuni Chikore in March.

Mr Chikore wants to split their assets, which also include 21 farms, he says.

Ms Mugabe has not yet commented on the claims but will be able to do so.

A source close to the Mugabe family told the BBC that the former president had nothing in his name when he died, although he received £10m from the state as part of his pension. The source also questioned whether Bona Mugabe owned all the assets listed by her former partner.

However, Zimbabweans have reacted badly to the news...
I am guessing that the long suffering Zimbabwean people would have been outraged at the extent of the Mugabe family assets, although they shouldn't have been surprised. The Mugabe family are infamous for their kleptocracy.
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Re: Only in Effrika

#251 Post by OneHungLow » Wed May 10, 2023 3:10 pm

tango15 wrote:
Wed May 10, 2023 2:03 pm
OneHungLow wrote:
Wed May 10, 2023 9:32 am
OFSO wrote:
Wed May 03, 2023 8:22 pm
Divorce court papers seen by the BBC allege that the daughter of Zimbabwe's ex-President Robert Mugabe owned 25 residential properties, including a Dubai mansion, worth a total of around $80m (£64m).

Bona Mugabe filed for divorce from former pilot Simba Mutsahuni Chikore in March.

Mr Chikore wants to split their assets, which also include 21 farms, he says.

Ms Mugabe has not yet commented on the claims but will be able to do so.

A source close to the Mugabe family told the BBC that the former president had nothing in his name when he died, although he received £10m from the state as part of his pension. The source also questioned whether Bona Mugabe owned all the assets listed by her former partner.

However, Zimbabweans have reacted badly to the news...
I am guessing that the long suffering Zimbabwean people would have been outraged at the extent of the Mugabe family assets, although they shouldn't have been surprised. The Mugabe family are infamous for their kleptocracy.
My colleagues told me that the 146 we sold to him in 1987 was the most expensive 146 ever sold...

Full maintenance package etc? ;)))
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Re: Only in Effrika

#252 Post by Boac » Thu May 11, 2023 7:34 pm

This is friendly! From the Telegraph:

South Africa provided Russia with weapons and ammunition as Vladimir Putin waged his invasion of Ukraine, the US has said.

The American ambassador said the country had loaded arms and ammunition onto a Russian vessel in December, despite Pretoria claiming it wished to remain neutral in the conflict.

Reuben E. Brigety II said Washington was convinced its intelligence was correct and considered the arming of Russian forces to be “extremely serious”.

His direct accusation follows months of frustration from Western diplomats that Cyril Ramaphosa’s government has been cosying up to Russia despite its invasion of Ukraine.

A sanctioned Russian cargo ship called the Lady R was seen docking at a naval base outside Cape Town in December. The arrival of the 7,260-ton ship operated by a Russian company registered in Dagestan prompted widespread suspicion at the time, but its cargo was never confirmed.

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Re: Only in Effrika

#253 Post by OneHungLow » Thu May 11, 2023 11:31 pm

South African, or rather the ANC's, collusion with the Russians is having immediate financial consequences.
It means that our main investment and trading partners cannot trust us,” the shadow defence minister, Kobus Marais, told AFP. “This is … treasonous in terms of how they<<i.e. the ANC>> have compromised South Africa and our interests.

The rand, which had been softening against the dollar in recent days, dropped sharply, reaching its lowest point in three years, after news of the ambassador’s remarks spread.

South Africa, which has strong economic and trade relations with the US and Europe, has been walking a diplomatic tightrope over the Ukraine conflict. Trade with Russia is much smaller, but Pretoria has ties with Moscow dating back decades, to when the Kremlin supported the African National Congress in its struggle against apartheid.

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2023/ ... ia-reports

1.00 British Pound =

24.001737 South African Rand


It is an ill wind that blows nobody any good and I am sure Woody will be pleased! ;)))
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Re: Only in Effrika

#254 Post by OneHungLow » Fri May 12, 2023 8:30 am

In essence the ANC, are the enemy within.
The ANC is expected to take a hardline stance against the US ambassador to South Africa, Reuben Brigety’s claim that SA supplied arms to Russia in a clandestine operation at Simon’s Town last December.

The President will appoint a judicial commission of inquiry into the allegations — first raised by the US last year.

A South African team went to plead the country’s case in Washington last week, and US intelligence promised to relay evidence of the arms sales to South Africa. Still, according to officials who cannot be quoted, it had yet to do so by the time of Brigety’s bombshell.

Headed by security adviser Sydney Mufamadi, the team thought they had restored the “special relationship” South Africa enjoys with the US. They agreed that the naval drills South Africa held in February with Russia on the first anniversary of the start of the Russian war on Ukraine had been ill-timed.

South Africa’s team raised the Lady R allegations at meetings at the Pentagon, the White House and the National Security Council to clear the air. US intelligence agencies said they would provide evidence, and the South African team promised an inquiry into the allegations.

They thought they had it in hand.

But Brigety’s revelations have set the cat among the pigeons, with Ramaphosa on the backfoot with his party, the ANC.

The ANC has advocated for a much tougher stance against the US and for the country to be more forthright in its support of Russia. Now the ANC is likely to come out swinging, with the pro-Russian faction using Brigety’s outburst as leverage against détente with the US. The ANC wants closer relations with Russia and is expected to push the line that South Africa has not imposed sanctions on Russia so it can trade arms with the country.

Peter Fabricius reported that a US-sanctioned Russian jet also landed at Waterkloof in April. The US ambassador may have been pushed to make a public revelation by this.

A senior ANC official told Daily Maverick there is a “distinctive difference” between the party and the state about the war in Ukraine. The party’s resolutions from its December 2022 conference display a much more hawkish stance against the US than Ramaphosa has taken.

The Wolfowitz Doctrine
A resolution on Russia’s invasion of Ukraine says: “This can no longer be described simply as a Russia-Ukraine War — it is primarily a conflict between the US and US-led Nato and Russia,” quoting what it calls the “Wolfowitz Doctrine”.

“According to this doctrine, the US should not allow any country in the world to have the possibility, in the post-Cold War period, to challenge US interests, especially its hegemony. In this regard, US geopolitical strategy has identified Russia and China as the two powers that must be contained…

“This is why the US provoked the war with Russia over Ukraine…”. The ANC resolution goes on in this vein. The ANC’s deputy secretary-general, Nomvula Mokonyane, said the party would put out a statement on Friday, 12 May.

South Africa has a long-standing political relationship with the US. The Africa Growth and Opportunities Act (Agoa) provides duty-free access for 1,800 products from certain African countries to the vast US market. Republican Party representatives want Washington to use Agoa benefits as leverage against South Africa’s stance on the Ukraine war

Also importantly, the US funds the Aids antiretroviral drug programme through its Pepfar programme. It is the US’s most extensive communicable disease-fighting programme yet and is essential to hundreds of thousands of South Africans living with HIV and Aids.

Queenin Masuabi reports that EFF leader Julius Malema, with whom the ANC is likely to enter a formal alliance in 2024, criticised the US stance.

“I think America’s concerns are misplaced. The current government has no capacity to empower Russia with weapons. We have a long-standing relationship with Russia. We will not be dictated to by the US in terms of who becomes our friend. There is no such capacity to supply Russia with weapons; if anything, it is the other way around.”
DM

https://www.dailymaverick.co.za/article ... s-outburst

Maybe the time has come to wage war in some way once more against the ANC boneheads.
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Re: Only in Effrika

#255 Post by OneHungLow » Fri May 12, 2023 8:50 am

South Africa is finally also going this way sadly...

https://wheniwasawhenwe.wordpress.com/2 ... ther-lies/
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Re: Only in Effrika

#256 Post by tango15 » Fri May 12, 2023 9:47 am

Back in the heady days of the 1980s, at one Farnborough Show, a delegation from Pretoria turned up. I didn't deal with them, it wasn't my market, but a few days later I was asked to take a look at the Nimrod and see what could be done with it, in terms of selling it to SA. (Until then it had only been considered for the UK market). Long story short, we decided to test the waters by submitting an export licence request to the MoD. We all know how 'quickly' the MoD responds to requests, so I was somewhat surprised when, within days, we were summoned to MoD main building. The meeting was pleasant enough, (in fact we went for lunch together afterwards), but we were told in no uncertain terms that any attempt to obtain an export licence for the sale of Nimrods to SA would be blocked at source.
Over a rather more convivial lunch, they explained that they saw the sale of any defence-related goods as extremely risky, because of the certainty that the ANC would get their hands on the information and they would be used as a conduit for any intelligence to be passed to Moscow. I confess that until then, I wasn't aware of Moscow's involvement with the ANC. As previously mentioned, it wasn't a part of the world I was familiar with.

Fast forward 20 years, and I am one of the team responsible for selling Challenger 2. At one of the DSEI exhibitions at Excel in London, another delegation from Pretoria turned up. Again, not my market as such, but I became involved. Vickers had bought OMC, a South African defence manufacturer, and it was thought that the vehicles could be part-built in Benoni, since we were a bit busy at the time. Remembering the Nimrod episode, I suggested to my boss, a rather blunt Yorkshireman, that this would be difficult, but he gave me a history lesson that I didn't really need and asked me to submit a licence application. Once again, we were rapidly summoned to MoD main building, and given the same story, but without lunch this time. My boss saw this as a lack of competence by yours truly, and went back to the MoD wearing his size 12s, and was unceremoniously shown the door. The designers then set about reducing or removing some of the more sophisticated kit on board the Chally 2, but the MoD was having none of it.

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Re: Only in Effrika

#257 Post by Woody » Fri May 12, 2023 2:20 pm

Whenever I go out to ZA , it’s guaranteed that at least once I’ll be in a conversation about which is the most incompetent government ZA or UK, the ANC have obviously gone ahead with this, maybe the UK will have to bring back Liz Truss :-o
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Re: Only in Effrika

#258 Post by OneHungLow » Fri May 12, 2023 2:31 pm

Where is barkingmad's guillotine when you need it?

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Re: Only in Effrika

#259 Post by OneHungLow » Fri May 12, 2023 4:10 pm

As usual, the ANC boneheads have pulled the tired old, "oh well we will have a judicial enquiry", let's kick this into the long grass, ploy.

All very well, but clandestine they were not! On the night that the Russian ship docked in Simons Town, the yard was locked down and a police escort was provided. Pretty much all of the residents near the harbour were aware of the presence of the ship. All that was missing was a 21 gun salute for the Orcs! Whether or not ammunition, or any other cargo, was moved one way or the other is ultimately just one facet of this case. The ANC should not be dealing with the Russians!
The apparent clandestine visit of a Russian cargo vessel to Naval Base (NB) Simon’s Town in December will be addressed by an independent enquiry headed by a retired judge, a statement attributed to South African President Cyril Ramaphosa said amid a growing diplomatic row with the United States over South Africa allegedly supplying Russia with weaponry.

The Presidency statement, issued yesterday (Thursday 11 May), follows a media briefing by Reuben E Brigety, the United States (US) ambassador to South Africa.

South African media reports have it Brigety said Washington had established the vessel was loaded with weapons while alongside in Simon’s Town.

The statement was issued less than 24 hours after defence Web made known the lodging of a PAIA (Promotion of Access to Information Act) as regards cargo allegedly brought to South Africa by the Lady R and cargo seemingly taken on by the same vessel before she exited SA Navy (SAN) fleet headquarters. The PAIA request by Democratic Alliance (DA) shadow defence and military veterans minister Kobus Marais, also asked Minister Thandi Modise’s Department of Defence (DoD) to provide information as to what was on the cargo manifest of a Russian Il-76 transport when it landed at Air Force Base (AFB) Waterkloof last week. He further asked for clarification as to cargo loaded before the aircraft took off from the Centurion base. It was reported to be carrying unspecified goods destined for the Russian Federation Embassy in Pretoria.

The South African Presidency statement reads, in part: “Ambassador Brigety’s remarks undermine the spirit of co-operation and partnership that characterised recent engagements between US government officials and a South African official delegation led by National Security Special Advisor to the President, Dr Sydney Mufumadi”.

“It is public knowledge a Russian vessel known as Lady R docked in South Africa. Allegations have since been made about the purpose of the voyage. While no evidence has been provided to date to support these allegations, the Government has undertaken to institute an independent enquiry to be led by a retired judge.

“In recent engagements between the South African delegation and US officials, the Lady R matter was discussed and there was agreement that an investigation will be allowed to run its course and that the US intelligence services will provide whatever evidence in their possession”.

It ends noting “disappointment” in the top US diplomat in South Africa for “adopting a counter-productive public posture that undermines the understanding reached on the matter and the very positive and constructive engagements between the two delegations”.

Experts, including Helmoed Romer Heitman, expressed doubt as to whether South Africa would supply to Russia as there is little Putin’s country needs from South Africa or can use – Russian industry is generally quite self-reliant, although it is struggling with a shortage of artillery ammunition. South Africa manufactures NATO calibre ammunition and does not supply Russia. Additionally the Russian military generally uses different calibre weaponry to the SA National Defence Force (SANDF).

It appears cargo was only unloaded off the Lady R. Defence Minister Thandi Modise in December said the vessel unloaded ammunition for the SA Special Forces ordered around 2019/2020. South Africa’s Special Forces operate some Russian-origin weaponry.

That US claims coincide with meetings around the African Growth and Opportunity Act (Agoa) could be a US tactic for applying pressure on South Africa, analysts speculate. Going public with these allegations is a big step and probably indicative of the US frustration with South Africa seemingly picking Russia’s side in the Ukraine conflict even though South Africa affirms a neutral position.
https://www.defenceweb.co.za/featured/r ... newsletter

What that article doesn't mention is that the Wagner thug and criminal, Yevgeny Prigozhin owns a mine in South Africa and that the labyrinthine web of connections between Putin's gangster regime and the ANC kleptocrats runs deep.

This photo was taken on the night the Russian ship docked in Simon's Town. A good friend of mine sent me video footage of the ship taken from his house on the mountain above the dockyard that evening. Note the heavy goods vehicle!

RusiianST.JPG
https://www.ops-normal.org/viewtopic.ph ... 14#p354514

https://edition.cnn.com/interactive/201 ... -car-intl/
The observer of fools in military south and north...

OneHungLow
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Re: Only in Effrika

#260 Post by OneHungLow » Fri May 12, 2023 5:05 pm

The observer of fools in military south and north...

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