Nelson mandela

Thursday

Freddy Gray

Donald Trump – the Orange Mandela?

Diplomatic heads are still spinning following Donald Trump’s extraordinary Oval Office press conference with South African President Cyril Ramaphosa yesterday. The media has taken to using the word “ambush” to describe the way Trump sprung his evidence on Ramaphosa to make the point that white South Africans are being violently persecuted. The scene turned into gemors, as they say in Afrikaans, or chaos, and reminded many observers of the wild meeting between Trump and Volodymyr Zelensky in the same room back in February. Ramaphosa had wanted to perform the usual niceties, flanked by a delegation including three white South African golfers, Elon Musk, some of his officials, his minister for agriculture John Henry Steenhuisen and the luxury goods billionaire Johann Rupert.

Sunday

Amy Rose Everett

Tears, tangles and tremendous views in Cape Town

Thirty feet underwater, somewhere on the False Bay coast near Simon’s Town in the Western Cape, South Africa. I’m getting battered by a strong current, deep in a kelp forest. I squint upwards and spot a pair of flippers. Kicking... upwards. My friend Abie is in a pickle. First of all, she’s vertical — not desirable in diving gear — and I can see now, she’s tangled. Brown kelp fronds the girth of beer cans shoot up all around us, forming a confused mass. I panic but try not to show it. Being buddied up with an old mate for a genuinely dangerous sport — you’re expected to know what you’re doing — has its downsides. I realize we are the responsible adults I’m looking around for.

Cape Town

Wednesday

John Pietro

Why South Africa is cozying up to Russia and China

Vladimir Putin’s invasion of Ukraine opened the most dramatic divide between East and West since the Cold War. Most of these divisions were clear beforehand — Hungary and Turkey were longtime thorns in the side of NATO, for example. Yet South Africa’s warming ties with Russia and China seemed to come out of nowhere. South Africa's initial reaction to the invasion was the same as much of the Western world, demanding that Russia leave Ukraine. That did not last, however. South African President Cyril Ramaphosa said on March 17 that “The war could have been avoided if NATO had heeded the warnings from amongst its own leaders and officials over the years that its eastward expansion would lead to greater, not less, instability in the region.