Vladimir Putin

Babbling while Ukraine burns

For the least populated area in America, the Mountain West state of Wyoming has received outsize attention across the world in recent days. That’s because it was the site of the landslide defeat in a primary election of US congresswoman Liz Cheney, a three-term US Representative. Cheney is the daughter of a Republican dynasty headed by [...]

If I were the ANC I’d be a little concerned about my ties to UMK

Dealing with individuals sanctioned by the US can be hazardous. This is the lesson Vladimir Putin and his oligarch friends are discovering anew since the Russian invasion of Ukraine and swift and crippling sanctions imposed against them by the US, UK and EU. During the recent Franschhoek Literary Festival I interviewed, via video link, the [...]

Putin’s war has sorted the wheat from the chaff — and there’s lots of chaff

Today, barring a huge upset, Emmanuel Macron will be re-elected president of France. However, if polling was always accurate President Hillary Clinton would be in her second term in the US and the UK would be still a leading member of the EU. The election in France revolves in part on how toxic the embrace [...]

Magnitsky Acts kick in as sanctions against Russia echo apartheid boycott

Just on six years ago, in the depths of the Jacob Zuma era and the ANC’s state capture project, I wrote a column highlighting two powerful phrases originating from South America that had been applied to the kleptocracy emerging in Vladimir Putin’s Russia. Both also applied, with interest, to the state of Zuma’s capture of [...]

By |2022-04-11T06:35:15+00:00April 11th, 2022|Jacob Zuma, Russian War, Vladimir Putin, World Politics|0 Comments

Like Putin, SA’s ANC leaders are steeped in nostalgia for the Cold War

On February 24, when Vladimir Putin rolled his tanks into Ukraine and violently breached the sovereign border and territorial integrity of an independent state, I received a message from a friend. “Mark this date,” it read. “Today, like 9/11, something profoundly shifted in the world and its consequences will be huge.” Writing in the Financial Times [...]

Cyril’s Ukraine cop-out betrays both SA and our struggle history

I rubbed my eyes when scanning Monday’s weekly newsletter by Cyril Ramaphosa -thinking perhaps I had mistakenly chanced upon the English version of Pravda or Izvestia. Ramaphosa and his “comrades” might lash out at DStv for cutting us off – one of the very small mercies from the merciless Ukraine war — from the beam of Kremlin propaganda [...]

By |2022-03-09T07:24:51+00:00March 9th, 2022|Cyril Ramaphosa, Russian War, Vladimir Putin|0 Comments
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