SSDG World News - 6 Dec 2023

From corrupt cops to volcanoes, news from China, Iceland, Germany, South Africa, Palestine, Venezuela, and many other countries.

Regular bad news creates Public complacency. Consequently, the many negative events in South Africa, my country, will be more shocking to my overseas subscribers.

Consequently, I begin in Africa and put the USA last. Maybe I should always post regions alphabetically, and thus encourage the USA to “make itself great” again :)

Russia and Ukraine will be summarised separately on Friday.

AFRICA

SOUTH AFRICA

An Open Secrets investigation allegedly exposes a grouping of South African special forces soldiers and army officials involved in kidnapping, torture, murder and politics. The Russian aspect seems to be propaganda thrown in for bad measure.

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In South Africa, of the 5,489 police members arrested since 2019, 3,981 remain employed. Their alleged crimes range from perjury and corruption to rape and murder.

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Crime is a sign of South Africa breaking so success is news like glue.

Government boasted of a major human trafficking victory when they stopped 443 children, under the age of 8, at the Beitbridge border post after they tried to enter in 42 buses without their parents.

However, it’s more likely that they were intending to spend the holidays with their Zimbabwean, Malawian and other nationality parents working in South Africa.

South Africa has millions of migrants, most illegal because a broken military means a broken border. Holidaying happens on a bigger scale every year because smugglers and fake papers are cheaper than South African visas.

The only reason why there’s now a “human trafficking” victory is because border control momentarily did their job. But they described it as a “sting”.

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In a separate and positive incident, a suspect in a Durban kidnapping led police to a house where they freed 33 men held in single room in Benoni (near Johannesburg).

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Next year’s elections may alter South Africa’s power dynamics but voter issues remain the same: Unemployment (30%), Corruption (24%), Load shedding (19%), Crime (10%), Other (17%). It shows disconnect because corruption is the source of all these problems.

The majority of election funding is going to the Democratic Alliance (DA), the pretend liberal party that’s the official opposition. They received R36.2-million in the second quarter. Michiel le Roux, the founder of Capitec Bank, donated R15-million, and Mary Slack, the daughter of Harry Oppenheimer, gave R10-million. Overseas money came from the Danish Liberal Democracy Programme and Germany’s Friedrich Naumann Foundation.

The African National Congress (ANC), which has ruled South Africa for 29 years, sits in the opposite position - its bankrupt. Many associates, including President Ramaphosa, became millionaires and billionaires through Black Economic Empowerment programmes which created an elite but kept the ‘liberated’ majority poor. Strangely, the ANC isn’t being lubricated with donations. If, today, it doesn’t pay a R102-million debt to an advertising company, it may face liquidation. The President could rescue them by selling some of his bull herd. he could also stop hesitating in announcing an election date which, by law, has to happen within the next 8 months.

Nhlalayenza Ndlovu, from the Democratic Alliance, has been killed.

It’s always assassination season in the province of KwaZulu-Natal (KZN), with there being approximately 2 dozen this year. The build-up to elections is especially scary for politicians, and they normally fear an opportunist in their party most.

The latest victim seems to be Nhlalayenza Ndlovu, the DA’s Chief Whip in uMngeni Municipality. Allegedly, 3 gunmen went to his home and killed him.

The municipal area begins half an hour’s ride from the city of Durban, and has been hot since the DA took it from the ANC.

Typically, the rich white suburbs of Hilton and Howick support the DA, and the black majority in the outlying areas support the ANC. Even with failed municipal service delivery, it was surprising when the DA won in 2022, installing Chris Pappas, a 30-year-old, gay, white Mayor. It was further odd because the KZN province is overwhelmingly black-controlled, and Zulu culture is mostly homophobic, thus showing the depths to which residents are upset with the ANC’s failed service delivery.

The West supports the DA, so it’s less surprising that a mayor of a municipality with only 105,069 people has been featured in Times Magazine and The Economist.

Pappas has also been threatened.

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South Africa’s Durban harbour, which is responsible for 60% of the national container traffic, reached crisis levels this past week when it was reported that there was a 60,000 container backlog. Other reports had slightly larger figures but when I spoke to a company working with the port, they said the situation had been worse, with 70 ships stuck offshore with 96,000 containers. Some rerouted to Port Elizabeth, 900km away.

The port’s dysfunction is the result of internal corruption and external organised crime. That includes the crumbling railway system run by Transnet, a majority-owned State company that’s R130-billion ($7bn) in debt. Government has announced a R47bn bailout which will take form as a credit guarantee facility. Transnet wants Government to also take over R61bn of its debt.

The harbour is also hampered by power outages locally known as loadshedding. That’s the result of corruption and much greater debt at Eskom, the State-owned energy company.

GUINEA-BISSAU

A scare in Guinea-Bissau on Thursday. There was fighting between National Guard and The Presidential Guard forces after the former stormed a police station to extract two ministers being questioned for theft of state funds. Reports vary but state that 2 people were killed and 6 soldiers were injured.

Calm returned after the commander of the National Guard was captured. Some of his supporters escaped.

On Monday, President Umaro Sissoco Embalo declared it an attempted coup and shut down “the opposition-dominated Parliament”. Political opportunism or a safety measure?

NIGER

Niger, as an African state, remarkably blipped in the news earlier this year. Reflect back to my post ‘Is the Cold War heating up Africa?’.

The coup wasn’t the news to the West, but rather that it threatened French uranium and USA military interests in the region.

Less likely to make a splash in the mainstream is that a Niger delegation recently met with Russia’s Deputy Defense Minister, and then pulled out of “two major security pacts with the European Union”.

WANT MORE OF AFRICA?

Yaw often offers useful summaries of African economies as he did last week for Sierra Leone (part 1 and part 2). This week’s he’s asking how reliable are IMF forecasts for developing countries. he includes interesting comparisons such as:

“The average South African makes almost $7000 a year when you convert Rand to US dollars. That sounds poor, but due to lower living costs in South Africa, their income adjusted for PPP is closer to $16,000 per year.

$13K to a Russian feels more like $36K since goods are cheaper there.”

[I add that the average USA income is $67,521]

I’m a subscriber to This Week in Africa, a reliable substack offering interesting links to successes, development, security, instability, political and social issues on the continent.

ASIA

CHINA

China is testing visa-free travel for citizens from France, Germany, Italy, the Netherlands, Spain, and Malaysia from December 1 in 2023 to November 30, 2024.

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Bigger than tourism is gold. China continues to be the biggest purchaser and now holds 2,215 tonnes. It’s expected that this figure is far higher, as China mines itself, and bans export. The logical motivation is that China is diversifying its holdings whilst simultaneously buying less U.S. bonds. Essentially, China would back up the yuan with physical gold and use it to compete with the dollar which is backed by R33tn debt. China even encourages its citizens to buy gold and silver as part of their savings plan.

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In contrast, China’s property bubble remains a global threat. Most representative of that is Evergrande which has $300bn in liabilities. A court case aimed at liquidating its assets in Hong Kong has been postponed to next month. Evergrande will use the grace to propose a better restructuring deal.

PAKISTAN

Women in many Islamic countries and expat communities suffer from the terribly labelled ‘honour killings’. The most famous case involved Banaz in the UK but elsewhere the perpetrators are likely to kill with impunity.

Pakistan had 5,000 the past decade. In the latest publicised case, a father allegedly shot his teenage daughter because of a photo of her hugging a boy. Ironically, the image may have been digitally altered.

In the same region of Kohistan, in 2012, “a video showed five women clapping as two men danced during a wedding ceremony. A local tribal council was called and ordered the killing of the clappers. At least three were killed.” 5 of the 6 killers were acquitted on appeal.

SOUTH KOREA & JAPAN

It’s interesting when U.S. allies are at odds. South Korea’s appellate court has ordered Japan to compensate 16 plaintiffs, composed of WWII sex slavery victims and their families, with $154,000 each. It appears intentionally diluted, allowing Japan to save face by paying little without accepting responsibility. Nevertheless, Japanese Foreign Minister Yoko Kamikawa labelled it as "extremely regrettable and absolutely unacceptable."

TAIWAN

An article at AntiWar.com is titled ‘Taiwan 2024 Election: Militarization or Development’, and describes it as a "crossroads” moment. The whole article is worth reading.

EUROPE

It’s being a month since residents of Grindavik in Iceland were evacuated under the threat of volcanic eruption. The town may have cracked roads but still stands, with magma having flowed under it towards the sea. The danger isn’t over, with the power plant and Blue Lagoon being most threatened. [For those who get upset with the occasional cockroach underfoot, just say “magma” for perspective]

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Elena Lange reports that Germany went bankrupt last week and that “in a functioning democracy in line with the Constitution, this would have triggered new elections. But not only did no one even mention elections, German finance minister Christian Lindner (Liberal Party, FDF) suggested to proclaim a retroactive State of Emergency for the current fiscal year.”

LATIN AMERICA

Ioan Grillo’s title and sub-title is guaranteed to make you read ‘Fentanyl Crossing in "Vaginal Cavities and Rectums" - Cartels use Instagram to recruit young U.S. "body carriers" near the border’.

Karen Gordo summarises the week down south: An armed confrontation between Haiti and the Dominican Republic (most people don’t know they share an island), Panama protests being met by the heavy hand of corrupt Government, military cooperation between Belarus and Cuba, Putin will sign strategic partnership agreement with Venezuela, and more Javier Milei like hair avoiding a brush.

Boz, at the Latin America Risk Report, expresses his confusion with “Many analysts, myself included, think Javier Milei is going to be terrible for Argentina. But....”

“Rising authoritarianism, difficulties in peace-building and chaos in Peru were just a few of the trends we got right,” says Joshua Collins at Pirate Wire Services. He recaps Peru, El Salvador, Brazil and Colombia.

Latin America was mostly a neglected region for priority world news. It’s terrific that the above writers are all substackers.

MIDDLE EAST

Senator Rand Paul intends forcing a vote for the USA’s withdrawal from Syria. Congress never declared war, so their presence is illegal. Legality has never been a priority for the American hegemony so Paul must be fit to win that uphill battle. A deadly attack by Shia militia, in response to the USA’s support for Israel against Palestine, could lubricate the vote.

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MSNBC cancelled Mehdi Hasan’s show, an action interpreted by most critics as a reaction to his questioning of Israel’s violence against Palestine.

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Obviously there’s more horror news in Gaza, the Israeli’s very good at the sport of crushing Palestinian kids between concrete slabs. There are thousands of articles that you can read about that elsewhere (now that Ukrainians don’t matter). Consequently, I’m only sharing Anthony Fish Hodgson’s article, ‘Weeping for Palestine’.

He relates how two Jewish brothers led the South African band Bright Blue, and that one of them wrote the lyrics to the song “Weeping’ whilst conscripted during an Apartheid state of emergency. It went to #1 without the authorities realising it was a protest. Hodgson says that the song translates to today’s weeping Palestine and the demon of Netanhayu.

“He built a wall of steel and flame,
and men with guns to keep it tame
Then standing back he made it plain
that the nightmare would never ever rise again
But the fear and the fire and the guns remain…

And then one day the neighbors came,
they were curious to know about the smoke and flame
They stood around outside the wall,
but of course there was nothing to be heard at all…”

USA

“It’s easy to imagine that there are two Bill Gates. There’s the corporate titan, the bully who ran Microsoft. And then there’s the kind-hearted, soft-spoken philanthropist today at the head of the Gates Foundation…. He clearly is the exact same person who led Microsoft, and his philanthropic career makes a lot more sense if you understand him in that way.” Read Tim Schwab’s ‘Busting the Bill Gates Myth’.

“Does the Constitution’s 14th amendment bar Donald Trump from the presidency… does India have a targeted killing program, as the U.S. indictment implies… and is the U.S. fit to lead the world’s green transition?  Explore that and more in Good Authority’s weekly newsletter.

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