South Africa

Countrynation state

South Africa  link () Sourcewatch Wikiquote
Location	Southern Africa, Africa
Leaders	South Africa/Governor-General, President of South Africa
Type	nation state
Subgroups	National Intelligence Co-ordinating Committee, State Security Agency (South Africa), South African Secret Service, South African Police Service, South African Defence Force
A former British and Dutch colony

South Africa, a former British and Dutch colony, is rated by the World Bank as an “upper middle income” country. It has considerable resources of gold, diamonds and other minerals. It has arguably the world's greatest income inequality and the rate of unemployment at 26 percent. In 2020, it took steps to try to suppress the use of ivermectin for COVID-19.

History

Apartheid government

File:Apartheid alliances.png

File:Apartheid allies.png

The nation had a system of government supported racism which was the subject of international protest. Apartheid was formally ended in 1994. One means of protesting this was an embargo on diplomatic contacts, which may have been key in encouraging the government to seek out more clandestine milieu - such as Le Cercle.

South African deep state

Full article: South Africa/Deep state

The South African deep state is believed to have played an influential role in the development of the supranational deep state, for example by its support for Le Cercle.

Documented Cercle Meetings

Full article: Le Cercle

Adrian Hänni suggests that apartheid South Africa may have been only government that ever sent an official delegation to Cercle meetings. He wrote that "The official South African delegations, which have been arranged by the Department of Foreign Affairs (DFA) in Pretoria from at least the late 1970s onwards, were largely composed of Ambassadors to the major Cercle countries (Great Britain, the United States, France and Germany), accompanied by senior officials from the DFA, and Foreign Minister Pik Botha at times attended as a guest. The connection between the Cercle and the South African government had already been initiated in the first half of the 1970s, when Cercle leaders had cooperated with the South African Department of Information on a vast secret propaganda program to improve the image of South Africa and the apartheid regime." The South African government was a major funder of Le Cercle in the 1980s, up to 1992.

Assassination of Olof Palme

Full article: Olof Palme/Assassination

File:SA Mil Int.jpg

A document was published online in 2018 which supported the thesis that Olof Palme was assassinated by South African spooks, possibly contracted through Le Cercle.

The document, an alleged South Africa Military Intelligence report, dated 15 October 1985, concluded that Olof Palme "should be seen as an enemy of the State." He was assassinated in February 1986.

Nuclear Weapons

Full article: South Africa/Nuclear weapons

In 1975 Israel offered to sell nuclear weapons to South Africa. After decades of work, South Africa developed nuclear weapons in the 1980s, only for the apartheid government to ship them abroad to US and UK in a secret deal in 1989 to prevent their use by the incoming administration of Nelson Mandela. This deal, in which David Cameron and the government of Margaret Thatcher was highly secret at the time and little known until the last few years.Template:Cn

Home issues

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Rape remains a norm in South Africa

Student protests

Student protests in 2016 went on for weeks, focusing on increased prices for access to higher education. Numerous students were injured and at least one killed, but commercially-controlled media did not report them widely outside of the country.

Cannabis

Prohibitions against the private cultivation and use of cannabis were declared unconstitutional and invalid in 2017.

Rape statistics

South Africa has consistently ranked with the highest amount of rapes on women and children for the 2010s and 2020s in victims per 1000 people.

For the year 2010, South Africa had the highest rate of rape in the world at 132.4 incidents per 100,000 people. In a survey released by the South African Medical Research Council in 2009, approximately one in four men admitted to committing rape.

However, the government in South Africa is working to address this dysfunction, and proponents maintain that the rate has dropped to 72.1 in 2019-20 reporting.

Foreign affairs

South Africa is a member of the African Union and has played a key role as a mediator in African conflicts over the last decade, such as in Burundi, the Democratic Republic of the Congo, Comoros, and Zimbabwe.

In 2010, moving away from the West, it strengthened economic and political ties with China and in 2011 joined the Brazil-Russia-India-China (BRICS) grouping of countries, which total $27.65 trillion in GDP and account for 46 percent of the world’s population – over 3 billion people.

Alleging Israeli genocide

On 29 December 2023, South Africa instituted Genocide Convention proceedings at the International Court of Justice against Israel for its treatment of Palestinians in the Gaza Strip. SA’s legal team at the ICJ are:

• John Dugard SC, Max du Plessis SC, Tembeka Ngcukaitobi SC, Adila Hassim SC.
• Juniors: Sarah Pudifin-Jones, Lerato Zikalala, Tshidiso Ramogale.
• External: Vaughan Lowe KC and Blinne Ní Ghrálaigh KC.

On 9 January 2024, South Africa's Justice Ministry announced that former UK opposition leader Jeremy Corbyn will join a South African delegation for the ICJ hearings which begin on Thursday 11 January at The Hague. On Monday 8 January, Corbyn expressed support for South Africa’s case against Israel and criticised the UK government in a message posted on X:

“Every day, another unspeakable atrocity is committed in Gaza,” he wrote.

“Millions of people around the world support South Africa’s efforts to hold Israel to account. Why can’t our government?”