🇿🇦🪖🇨🇩 SANDF confirms that the death toll has reached 13

📝 Ryan Cummings: For context, more South African soldiers have been killed in the past week in the DRC than throughout the 36 months they were deployed as part of the SAMIM mission in Mozambique

📎 Ryan Cummings

🇺🇸🇿🇦 Trump's 'America First' foreign policy aid freeze threatens SA's health programmes

Just a week after newly inaugurated US President Donald Trump suspended all foreign development assistance, South African NGOs are feeling the squeeze with hundreds of millions of dollars in aid in jeopardy.

The loss of US funding could have devastating consequences for South Africa's health programmes, especially those supporting the country's fight against AIDS.

While many local NGOs were grappling with what Trump's vision of an "America First" foreign policy would mean for them, Wits University confirmed a "stop order communication" had been issued.

"There has been stop order communication issued regarding some of the USAID-funded programmes being run by staff at Wits Health Consortium, primarily by the Wits Reproductive Health and HIV Institute (RHI)," Professor Shabir Madhi, the dean of the Faculty of Health Sciences, said in a statement to News24.

https://www.news24.com/news24/southafrica/news/trumps-america-first-foreign-policy-aid-freeze-threatens-sas-health-programmes-20250128

📝 South Africa has received more than R8 billion to fight HIV/AIDS through Pepfar since its inception in 2003.

🇿🇦🪖🇨🇩 M23 Rebels have taken over Goma Airport where the South African base is. SANDF soldiers are safe and there's an agreement in place for extraction according to reports

📎 Dean Wingrin

🛰🇿🇦 Musk's SpaceX says SA's BEE rules are a big barrier

SpaceX has said that current Black Economic Empowerment (BEE) ownership rules are "a significant barrier" to international satellite operators, such as Starlink, who want to operate in South Africa. It voiced support for an equity equivalence programme as an alternative.

SpaceX filed a 16-page written submission, dated 12 November 2024, to the Independent Communications Authority of South Africa (Icasa) to comment on the regulator's proposed new licensing framework for satellite services.

The SpaceX submission all but confirmed that the Electronic Communications Act's requirement for licence holders offering communications services in South Africa to be 30% owned by historically disadvantaged groups has blocked the company from operating locally.

SpaceX voiced support for introducing an equity equivalence programme for communications providers. This programme would allow operators to make financial commitments in the interest of transformation instead of enforcing an ownership rule as a licensing requirement.

https://www.news24.com/fin24/companies/musks-spacex-says-sas-bee-rules-are-a-big-barrier-20250130

⚡️ Eskom issues first loadshedding warning in 10 months

State-owned power producer Eskom warns that Stage 4 loadshedding may have to be implemented this weekend on short notice.

📎 Eskom

⚡️"Currently loadshedding in Orania, however our battery is carrying the entire town's load. No citizen would even notice!"

📎 Joost Strydom

🇺🇸/🇿🇦 Trump announces he’s cutting all aid for South Africa.

"Terrible things are happening in South Africa. The leadership are doing some terrible, horrible things. They're taking away land, they're confiscating land. They're doing things that are perhaps far worse than that."

📎 Visegrad24

🇿🇦🇺🇸 South African President Cyril Ramaphosa responded to US President Donald Trump on the stopping of aid to the country

@SouthAfricaReports

🇺🇸🇿🇦 Elon Musk in reply to President Ramaphosa:

"Why do you have openly racist ownership laws?"

📝 Musk may be referring to the SA government stopping Musk's Starlink from operating in the country as it is not a black-owned business

@SouthAfricaReports

🇿🇦🇹🇼🇨🇳 Taiwan says South Africa gives March deadline to move office from Pretoria

The South African government has given Taiwan a deadline of the end of March to relocate the island's de facto embassy outside of the capital city Pretoria, the Taiwanese Foreign Ministry said, blaming Chinese pressure for the move.

South Africa severed official diplomatic ties with Taiwan in 1997 and only maintains formal - and very close - relations with China, which views the democratically governed island as Chinese territory with no right to the trappings of a state.

In a statement late on Sunday, Taiwan's Foreign Ministry said South Africa's government had sent a letter in late January demanding the de facto Taiwanese embassy leave Pretoria before the end of March and "even be renamed as a trade office".

https://www.reuters.com/world/taiwan-says-safrica-gives-march-deadline-move-office-pretoria-2025-02-03/

🇿🇦🇺🇸 Minister of Mineral Resources, Gwede Mantashe, responds to Trump:

"Let's withhold minerals to the US. If they don't give us money, let's not give them minerals."

📎 Newzroom405

🇿🇦🇺🇸 Julius Malema, leader of the Communist Economic Freedom Fighters, warns Trump:

"We want to make it categorically clear to the President of the USA that we are going to expropriate land without compensation and pursue legislative measures to do so, and no threat will stop us. "

📎 EFF

🇿🇦🇺🇸 The African National Congress blames Afrikaner civil rights group AfriForum for causing Trump to cut aid to South Africa.

The ANC claims that AfriForum "misrepresented" the "fair" Land Expropriation Act, and "weaponized misinformation" to spread "racist narratives."

📎 ANC

🇿🇦 Map showing the Independent Boer Republics and general Voortrekker movements.

🖼 Teutonic Aesthetics - [High res]

🇿🇦🇿🇼 "Why do you guys keep making comparisons between South Africa and Zimbabwe?"

Because the ANC keeps copying Mugabe's homework.

📎 ConCaracal

🇿🇦🇺🇸 Jonatan Pallesen: "White South Africans are being persecuted for their race in their home country.

Also White South Africans are one of the few population groups that are fiscally positive when immigrating to Europe.

We should allow more immigration of White South Africans."

📎 Elon Musk responds: "Yes"

🇿🇦🇺🇸 "The Trump administration's efforts to pressure the SA government to close the door that the Expropriation Act is trying to open, represents the first time in living memory that the leader of a Western democracy has sought to check the ANC's kleptocracism – as it enters its final and most ruinous phase - rather than excuse, enable or profit from it."

📎 Politicsweb

🇺🇸🇿🇦 U.S. Senator Ted Cruz:

"The South African government seems to be going out of their way to alienate the United States and our allies.

Their timeline to expel our Taiwanese allies from Pretoria is deeply troubling, undermines the national security interests of America and our allies, and will deepen tensions between the U.S. and South Africa.

I intend to use my position as the chairman of the Africa subcommittee on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee to investigate these and other concerning decisions by South Africa."

https://x.com/SenTedCruz/status/1886827976760725990