— 🇮🇱/🇺🇸/🇿🇦 NEW: Axios reports that Israel is lobbying U.S. Congress members to pressure South Africa to drop its legal proceedings against Israel in the International Court of Justice, and to communicate that there will be 'consequences' for continuing the case.

@Middle_East_Spectator

🇪🇺💶🇿🇦 EU Provides Grant Funding for Green Hydrogen in South Africa

The European Union will provide two grants totaling €32 million ($35 million) to help South Africa kick-start its green hydrogen industry, Kadri Simson, Europe’s energy commissioner, said.

The grants will help South Africa to take advantage of its abundant wind and solar resources to produce green hydrogen, which is seen as a potential clean alternative to the fossil fuels used to power ships and heavy industry. Green hydrogen is produced by using renewable energy to split water and release hydrogen, which can be burned without producing climate warming gases.

The money is from the European Union budget and is separate to the $9.3 billion Just Energy Transition Partnership, a climate finance pact between South Africa and some of the world’s richest countries. The EU has provided similar support to Namibia.

The first of the two grants, worth €25 million, is expected to act as a catalyst to attract 10 billion rand ($558 million) in public and private money to invest in hydrogen production, storage and transportation, the EU and South Africa said in a statement. It will be “channeled through an EU member state financial institution.”

🇿🇦📡 AfriForum challenges ICASA’s race criteria blocking Starlink in South Africa

The civil rights organisation AfriForum today submitted written comments to the Independent Communications Authority of South Africa (ICASA) in which the organisation calls on ICASA to drop its strict race criteria that currently encumber the granting of a South African license to the satellite internet service Starlink.

Starlink has already been launched in four of South Africa’s six neighbouring countries, namely Eswatini, Botswana, Zimbabwe and Mozambique. The Starlink service is expected to be launched in Namibia and Zimbabwe later this year.

South Africa has serious problems with rural safety. A significant contributing factor to this crisis is the unreliable or absent cellphone signal. For example, a stable internet connection for emergency communication and the efficient functioning of security cameras are crucial for security in rural areas. Cellphone towers are also prone to weaker or non-existent signal during power outages.

https://afriforum.co.za/en/afriforum-challenges-icasas-race-criteria-blocking-starlink-in-south-africa/

Earlier this week it was announced that Starlink is now available in Zimbabwe.

Starlink is still unavailable in South Africa due to government regulations requiring the company to be at least 30% black-owned.

This disproportionately impacts white farmers who rely on expensive satellite or mobile network services for their safety and communication.

🖼 Paul Kruger Statue

📍Church Square, Pretoria

🎓🇿🇦 Ramaphosa delays full implementation of BELA Bill to allow for consultations on two clauses

President Cyril Ramaphosa has postponed the full implementation of the BELA Bill to allow for further engagements on two clauses over three months.

Speaking at the signing of the bill at the Union Buildings, Ramaphosa said he had agreed to pause the implementation of two clauses which deal with school admissions and language.

"I am willing to allow those who believe a solution will be found to the two clauses that they believe they have solutions for, to give them the opportunity and delay the implementation of clauses 4 and 5 for a period of three months. The rest of the act is implemented immediately. This will give the parties time to deliberate," he said.

However, Ramaphosa added that if no solution was found within three months, the bill would be implemented fully.

https://www.news24.com/news24/politics/ramaphosa-delays-full-implementation-of-bela-bill-to-allow-for-consultations-on-two-clauses-20240913

📚 What is the BELA Bill?

Two of the most contentious clauses in the BELA Bill seeks to 1) limit the rights granted to the governing bodies of public schools and 2) to apply stricter regulations on homeschooling

The Bill takes away the ability for a school's governing body to decide on and implement their own policies on language and admission. [Clause temporarily suspended]

This Bill also gives the government the power to stop you from homeschooling your own child unless the Dept. of Education's terms.

📝 Successful pressure from Afrikaner trade union Solidariteit forced Ramaphosa to delay certain clauses regarding the language policy change for 3 months for further deliberation.

There is no doubt that the language policy clause in this Bill was included specifically to continue the government's attack on white, and in particular, Afrikaans schools.

The Bill would've allowed the government to decide on which languages to implement as teaching medium by a school.

Afrikaans schools were at risk to be forced to implement other languages which would open the floodgates to accepting students outside of a school's scope and target.

Before the Bill, the state has repeatedly targeted single-medium Afrikaans schools to change their language policy. Each time lengthy, expensive legal processes were necessary to prove that the Department is wrong and Afrikaans children have a right to single-medium mother-language education institutions.

🎖🇿🇦 Private-sector company has kept South Africa in global UAV race

South African private-sector defence group Milkor has kept South Africa in the global top ten of larger uncrewed aerial vehicle- (UAV-) producing countries through its development of the Milkor 380 medium altitude, long-endurance (MALE) UAV. Milkor entirely financed the development of the Milkor 380 itself, and is currently producing the first batch of these aircraft, which are the largest UAVs (popularly called drones) ever developed in South Africa.

This team has developed the Milkor 380’s airframe, avionics, communications systems, wiring looms – basically every piece of hardware needed to make the UAV – in-house. They also wrote all the requisite software. Only the payloads (sensors and, if required, weapons) and, as previously mentioned, the engine, are sourced from outside the company.

“Because we developed our own software, we can integrate sensors from any third-party supplier,” he points out. “We also developed our own ground control station and line-of-sight communications system, with a range of 250 km, for the UAV. But a satellite communications module is built into the UAV, allowing communications and control over much longer ranges.”

The Milkor 380 is primarily intended for intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance, maritime surveillance, and border surveillance, missions. In such roles, it has a maximum range of more than 2 000 km and a maximum endurance of 35 hours. It can carry 515 kg of fuel and a payload of up to 220 kg. The payload weight can be increased by reducing the fuel load. Maximum speed is 250 km/h, while cruise speed is from 110 km/h to 150 km/h. Maximum altitude is 30 000 ft (9 144 m), while maximum operating altitude (determined by sensor performance) is 23 000 ft (7 010 m). Normal operating altitude is from 15 000 ft (4 572 m) to 18 000 ft (5 486 m).

But the Milkor 380 can also be fitted with weapons and operated in the strike role. As weapons payloads are generally heavier than sensor payloads, operating it in this manner reduces its range and endurance. Further, Du Plessis cautions, it, like all other MALE UAVs, is vulnerable to modern shoulder-fired surface to air missiles, and so is not meant to be exposed directly to hostile forces in high-intensity conflict. In such conflicts, it should be used only in support roles. However, in low-intensity conflicts, such as currently are the pattern in Africa, the UAV, in the armed role, can provide invaluable cover for troops on the ground.

https://www.engineeringnews.co.za/article/private-sector-company-has-kept-south-africa-in-global-uav-race-2024-09-13

📡🛰 Musk’s Starlink in Talks With South Africa to Start Service

Elon Musk’s Starlink is holding talks with the South African government to introduce the satellite service in Africa’s biggest and most developed economy, President Cyril Ramaphosa said.

Musk and Ramaphosa held talks over potential investments, the president told reporters on Friday.

Musk, who was born in South Africa, is the world’s richest person. Last week, Zimbabwe became the 16th nation in Africa to get access to the high-speed Internet service, according to a map published on Starlink’s website.

“I have had discussions with him and have said, Elon, you become so successful and you’re investing in a variety of countries, I want you to come home and invest here,” Ramaphosa told reporters in Pretoria. “He and I are going to have a further discussion.”

https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2024-09-13/musk-s-starlink-in-talks-with-south-africa-to-introduce-service

https://archive.ph/sTu6d

📝 It was reported by Rapport on Sunday that John Steenhuisen asked Cyril Ramaphosa to contact Solidariteit/AfriForum.

Just to rephrase: The leader of the second biggest party in South Africa asked the South African President to contact the leaders of an Afrikaner trade union and an Afrikaner civil rights group to avoid the coming backlash after the signing of Friday's Bill.

While this is by no means an outright victory, it's important to note these two organisations had more of an impact on the Bill than anyone else, including the political parties who claim to care about Afrikaners.

Working outside of mainstream politics has shown again and again to be a far more effective tool for Afrikaners in the post-apartheid South African society: their own parallel institutions, Orania, lawfare, anchor towns ("ankerdorpe"), and privatisation just to name a few.

“It was thanks to a plea from DA leader John Steenhuisen that President Cyril Ramaphosa should talk to the leaders of AfriForum and trade union Solidarity before ratifying the controversial BELA Bill, that two of the most controversial articles in the law were put on hold at the eleventh hour.

City Press sister publication, Rapport, can exclusively reveal how Dirk Hermann, the CEO of Solidarity, and Kallie Kriel, CEO of AfriForum, convinced Ramaphosa in late-night calls and early-morning WhatsApps to request further consultation on articles 4 and 5 of the BELA Bill before ratifying it.”

🪖 SANDF national data systems ‘compromised’ by installer's SIM cards and open access Wi-Fi

The computer management system that backs up all the South African military’s internal databases has reportedly been compromised after a contractor installed SIM cards and open access via Wi-Fi on the nationwide relay systems.

https://mybroadband.co.za/news/security/560509-south-african-military-data-potentially-exposed-by-security-flaw.html

Long-form | The Afrikaner veto and the Fourth Dispensation

With the fall of Afrikaner nationalism, Afrikaner political power rapidly began to evaporate. the NP disappeared and was replaced by an Anglo-led liberal opposition as the representatives for racial minorities. The general population became, on the political level, gripped by bitter defeatism.

But this opened the way for AfriForum and Solidariteit, who in 2006 and 1997 respectively, began the journey toward a more radical notion of political power - non-democratic but voluntary, non-statist but security-oriented, private but non-profit.

This has grown into an enormous movement of hundreds of thousands of members, representing the majority of Afrikaner households through one subsidiary organisation or other.

They are an inherently cautious, piecemeal movement, which seeks to solve specific material issues, and have had impressive success in curtailing farm murders, improving neighbourhood security, defending language rights, and providing poverty relief and shielding against infrastructure decay.

By building new universities and schools, maintaining a powerful labour union and internal jobs market, and having a close interaction with the Orania movement, they have established the groundwork for a new parallel state, all on the basis of voluntary membership and donations.

[The Solidariteit] Movement’s unstated veto power can not only be wielded against parliamentary and executive power, but even juristic power, which means that all three branches of the government must deal with Afrikaner objections in good faith, or risk the collapse of the entire state.‍

This is the difference between the empty promises of the DA and the real and unspoken power of the Afrikaner nation - by refusing the mudslinging nightmare of party politics in a hostile environment for practical, almost engineer-minded institutional construction, the Afrikaners have achieved the reforms that were only tentatively attempted by their predecessors.

https://www.capeindependent.com/article/long-form-the-afrikaner-veto-and-the-fourth-dispensation

CEO of Visegrad 24 Stefan Tompson, all the way from Poland, and Willem Petzer attended the Whitecross monument memorial Ceremony to honour our fallen farmers, and of course to support the hard work of our brother in Christ, Francois van der Merwe

🔗 Link to post


@DIE VROU AS PATRIOT

Reports: UNC student found dead in South Africa

The body of a University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill student was found Sunday after she went missing the day before in South Africa.

According to Brook Cheuvront's Instagram page, she was in South Africa on a internship with Justice Desk Africa, an organization that work along side several groups, governments and businesses around the world to "challenge and eliminate the root causes of injustice."

https://www.wral.com/news/state/unc-student-dead-south-africa/