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The governing party in South Africa, the ANC, has condemned as "racist" a decision by Canada to grant a white South African man refugee status. Brandon Huntley, 31, had told officials in Canada he could not return to South Africa after seven different attacks.

Two big questions hang over President Obama's radical "Green Jobs Czar" Van Jones. Is he still a communist? Is he a security threat? Many have assumed that Van Jones' committment to communism ended when the organization he helped to lead STORM (Standing Together to Organize a Revolutionary Movement) dissolved in 2002. Yet a 2004 treatise Reclaiming Revolution: History, Summation, and Lessons from the Work of Standing Together to Organize a Revolutionary Movement written and endorsed by a majority of former STORM members makes it clear that most ex STORMers are still committed to the revolutionary movement; From page 49. When...

NOTE: This article was written in January, 2005. But it is actually more applicable and prophetic today than it was then. It is a little long but well worth your time. By Gemma Meyer (Gemma Meyer is the pseudonym of a South African journalist. She and her husband, a former conservative member of parliament, still reside in South Africa.) People used to say that South Africa was 20 years behind the rest of the Western world. Television, for example, came late to South Africa (but so did pornography and the gay rights movement). Today, however, South Africa may be the...

Washington - US President Barack Obama telephoned Jacob Zuma on Friday to congratulate him on becoming South African president and urged Zuma to take a leadership role on the African continent, the White House said. Obama praised South Africans for their "commitment to democracy" after more than three-quarters of the voting population took part in last month's elections, White House spokesperson Robert Gibbs said. The ANC won 65.9% of the vote, and Zuma was elected president on Wednesday by the National Assembly. He will be inaugurated on Saturday. Obama "encouraged president-elect Zuma to show strong regional leadership" and to help...

South Africa's next president chose to celebrate his sweeping election victory in familiar fashion. Jacob Zuma, the leader of the African National Congress (ANC), delighted thousands of revellers gathered outside the party's headquarters at Luthuli House in Johannesburg by dancing and singing with an energy that belied his 67 years. Not for him the cerebral aloofness of Thabo Mbeki, whom he ousted as ANC leader, or the innate reserve of Nelson Mandela. Instead, Mr Zuma belted out his signature anthem, Bring Me My Machine Gun, for the umpteenth time. This song of his own composition, first performed during the anti-apartheid...

ASPIRANT African National Congress (ANC) MP and struggle stalwart Winnie Madikizela-Mandela said yesterday she would work tirelessly to serve the interests of the people. Speaking after casting her vote at Soweto’s Orlando West High School, she said the elections were special because people were starting to claim back the “lost vibrancy” within the ANC. “Today South Africans are claiming back the vibrancy of the organisation. So far, we have received countless wake-up calls from the people in areas such as Khutsong and Matatiele. We are ready to serve their interests.” Early yesterday more than 300 Alexandra residents boycotted the elections...

JOHANNESBURG, South Africa (AFP) – Former South African president Nelson Mandela Sunday reminded the ANC of its duty to eradicate poverty and urged unity in a surprise appearance at its final election rally. He set the tone for the theme of racial accord at the African National Congress gathering where chants of "Mandela! Mandela!" rang out from the crowd of more than 100,000 supporters at Ellis Park stadium in Johannesburg. "As we strive to secure a decisive victory for our organisation in the upcoming elections, we must remember our primary task. It is to eradicate poverty and ensure a better...

Imagine how you would react if Gordon Brown opened and closed his election rallies by bursting into a song called Bring Me My Machine Gun, swaying and jigging to the hypnotic chorus of this menacing ditty. And how would you feel if the Prime Minister were alleged to be taking campaign money from Colonel Gaddafi; faced 783 counts of fraud, racketeering, tax evasion and corruption which somehow never came to court; and had been acquitted of rape while his fearsome supporters mobbed the courthouse? Then ponder how you would despair if, despite all these things, Mr Brown's party was certain...

A ROW between South Africa’s press and politicians over President Kgalema Motlanthe’s love life has brought into the open a subject that many of the ruling elite would rather keep hidden: are their sometimes polygamous sex lives a matter of public interest? Motlanthe, 59, who is estranged from his wife, has a mistress, aged 45, and is also the lover of a 24-year-old, now heavily pregnant. The newspaper that broke the story asked: “Who is our first lady?” Carl Niehaus, a spokesman for the ruling African National Congress (ANC), insisted last week that the question was an invasion of privacy....

By Gemma Meyer (Gemma Meyer is the pseudonym of a South African journalist. She and her husband, a former conservative member of parliament, still reside in South Africa.) People used to say that South Africa was 20 years behind the rest of the Western world. Television, for example, came late to South Africa (but so did pornography and the gay rights movement). Today, however, South Africa may be the grim model of the future Western world, for events in America reveal trends chillingly similar to those that destroyed our country. America's structures are Western. Your Congress, your lobbying groups, your...

The African National Congress's decision to sack President Thabo Mbeki has been described by some South African commentators as "regicide". Certainly it is unprecedented in South African history that a head of state is dismissed in this way. Nor is the ANC the kind of organisation that goes in for this humiliation of its leaders. So why did it happen? The immediate cause was Mr Mbeki's ongoing feud with his former deputy, the ANC party leader Jacob Zuma. But this was not just a personal vendetta between two men. Behind these events lie two major factors: one political, one personal....

PIETERMARITZBURG, South Africa (AFP) - South Africa's ruling party head Jacob Zuma entered the dock Monday for a long-awaited graft trial which could make or break his chances to become the country's president next year. Thousands of supporters of the 66-year-old African National Congress leader gathered outside the courthouse, dancing before a stage equipped with a giant screen while denouncing the case against him as a political vendetta. Protesters had vowed to shut down the sleepy city of Pietermaritzburg, where the trial of the immensely popular politician -- a native of the region -- is being held. But despite the...

PRETORIA (Reuters) - South African ruling party leader Jacob Zuma pledged on Thursday to address growing poverty among whites, trying to broaden his support ahead of next year's election. After winning leadership of the African National Congress last year, Zuma is the clear front-runner to succeed President Thabo Mbeki when he steps down in 2009 but faces a tougher battle to keep the ANC's sweeping parliamentary majority. Zuma, who already wields tremendous influence as the head of the ruling party, has lobbied the government to do more to fight poverty and unemployment. While blacks are the biggest beneficiaries of anti-poverty...

The secretary general of South Africa's governing ANC has called on party members to form local committees to combat violence against foreigners. Gwede Mantashe says that they should work to "take the streets back from criminals", whilst giving support to the police and help to the victims. The unrest has now spread to Cape Town, with people assaulted and shops looted. More than 40 people have died and some 15,000 people have sought shelter since the violence began two weeks ago. On Thursday, troops were deployed to quell attacks - the first time soldiers have been used to stamp out...

JOHANNESBURG — Violence against immigrants, like some windswept fire, spread across one neighborhood after another here in one of South Africa’s main cities this weekend, and the police said the mayhem left at least 12 people dead — beaten by mobs, shot, stabbed or burned alive. Thousands of panicked foreigners — many of them Zimbabweans who have fled their own country’s economic collapse — have now deserted their ramshackle dwellings and tin-walled squatter hovels to take refuge in churches and police stations. This latest outbreak of xenophobia began a week ago in the historic township of Alexandra and has since...

...Whether Mr. Odinga has ordered his men to commit murder and arson is unclear. But his own background does not exactly suggest enthusiasm for democracy and the rule of law. Mr. Odinga's father, Oginga Odinga, led the Communist opposition during the Cold War and Raila Odinga was educated in Communist East Germany. In 1982 he was implicated in a failed coup against the then president Daniel Arap Moi. His eldest son is named after Fidel Castro and his daughter after Winnie Mandela. Even more sinister has been Mr. Odinga's electoral pact with the National Muslim Leaders' Forum — a hardline...

JOHANNESBURG (Reuters) - Jacob Zuma, leader of the ruling ANC who could become president in 2009, told South Africa's Solidarity trade union on Thursday that the white minority should not feel threatened. Solidarity, traditionally a white-dominated union, has pushed for minority rights to be respected and is critical of the government's affirmative action policy. "Some perceive the efforts to remove white or male privilege as an assault on the rights of white South Africans or on the rights of male South Africans," Zuma said in a copy of a speech at the union's national congress released before delivery. "We need...

JOHANNESBURG (Reuters) - South African President Thabo Mbeki can no longer govern effectively after losing the leadership of the country's ruling party, ANC leader Jacob Zuma was quoted as saying on Friday. Zuma defeated Mbeki at a party election in December and is likely to become state president when Mbeki must step down in 2009 if he defeats corruption charges in court. In an unusually strong and direct attack on Mbeki, Zuma said power was firmly concentrated in the hands of the African National Congress (ANC), suggesting the president's authority had slipped away. "... if he's not part of the...

JOHANNESBURG, Jan. 4 -- Within the Zulu culture of Jacob Zuma, the newly elected president of the African National Congress, few moments in a man's life are more celebrated than taking a wife -- even if he already has others. But news of Zuma's plans to marry a longtime girlfriend this weekend -- marking, by most counts, his sixth wedding -- sent waves of unease Friday through this polyglot nation where progressive notions of women's rights clash with deeply held convictions about respecting South Africa's varied cultural traditions. The development appeared particularly awkward for the ANC, which over nearly a...

POLOKWANE, South Africa - The newly elected leader of South Africa's ruling party rose to power on the backs of trade unionists, communists and the poor. The challenge now is to satisfy his supporters without sacrificing the nation's economy. Cynthia Tokwe, a maid in Cape Town, was typical of supporters of Jacob Zuma, the son of a maid. "He understands poverty," she said. "He understands us." Zuma, whose political career has survived sex and corruption scandals, routed President Thabo Mbeki to win the presidency of the African National Congress at a divisive party convention Tuesday. Zuma loyalists also won all...

POLOKWANE, South Africa - Jacob Zuma, a populist whose career survived rape and corruption charges, was elected leader of the governing African National Congress on Tuesday, putting him into position to become South Africa's next president. Zuma received 2,329 votes, ahead of incumbent Thabo Mbeki's 1,505 votes, following one of the most divisive campaigns the party has seen. Chaos erupted in the hall as the results were announced, then Mbeki and Zuma mounted the stage together and embraced. Zuma had rallied ANC members who wanted a change from Mbeki, who guided post-apartheid South Africa to sustained economic growth in recent...

Power struggle pushes ANC factions to naked hostility Jonathan Clayton in Polokwane A second day of ill-tempered chaos marred attempts by the African National Congress to elect a new leader and sparked warnings of “anarchy” if the populist Jacob Zuma won later today. Voting by 4,000 delegates was delayed again by arguments over procedure as party elders lamented the unprecedented mob-like scenes and bitterness that have dominated the party conference. Tensions between the factions of Mr Zuma and Thabo Mbeki, the South African President, burst to the surface as they were confirmed as the only two leadership candidates. With a...

Additional Titles CONTROL THE ENVIRONMENT TO CONTROL HUMANITY Erica CarleJanuary 12, 2002NewsWithViews.comThere is nothing new about the idea of controlling the environment to control behavior. Pavlov used it on dogs. B. F. Skinner used it on birds. We use it on pets. Parents use it on children. Law enforcers use it on criminals. And we all establish suitable environments to fit the needs of our various activities. But one of the most chilling uses of environmental control is its use by dictators to keep their subjects in line, and in recent years by world shapers and managers to force...

Marian L. Tupy is a policy analyst at the Cato Institute’s Center for Global Liberty and Prosperity. He specializes in the study of Europe and sub-Saharan Africa and is author of Trade Liberalization and Poverty Reduction in Sub-Saharan Africa, Cato Institute Policy Analysis no. 557, December 6, 2005. Executive Summary Thirteen years ago, South Africa underwent a peaceful transition from white minority rule to majority rule. Today, the country is a stable multiparty democracy. It has the largest and the most sophisticated economy in Africa, which generates almost 40 percent of all the wealth produced on the African continent south...

CAPE TOWN, South Africa -- Political rivals have hurled chairs at her, called her a racist, even accused her of undermining South Africa's plans to host the World Cup in 2010. But what really angers Cape Town Mayor Helen Zille is that after six bruising months in office, she may soon lose her job in what she calls, with characteristic bluntness, "a crude power grab" by the African National Congress. At stake, says Zille, 55, is not just Cape Town but the future of South Africa's 12-year-old democracy. For Zille is not just the mayor of one of the country's...

Corruption and neglect lead to township riots against ANC By David Blair in Khutsong (Filed: 02/03/2006) Riot police patrol the streets, mobs have burned down the homes of local councillors and government offices lie wrecked and abandoned. The streets of Khutsong township, strewn with broken glass and burnt tyres, bear vivid witness to the revolt against the African National Congress that is sweeping its former strongholds. Riot police were deployed in Knutsong township after a revolt against the African National Congress The movement that liberated South Africa from apartheid could once rely on the automatic support of places like Khutsong....

The U.S. is engaged in a bloody war in Iraq for the purpose of eliminating the remnants of a terrorist regime, foreign terrorists, and bringing democracy to Iraq and the region. It is a big gamble that has put radical Islam on the defensive around the world. But shocking evidence demonstrates that controversial former U.S. Marine and former U.N. weapons inspector Scott Ritter, who now writes for the anti-American Arab "news" organization Al Jazeera, was involved in a controversial effort to stop the war by enlisting prominent personalities in a "peace" campaign.

ANC leader tainted by trial By Christopher Munnion in Johannesburg (Filed: 03/06/2005) South Africa's establishment was thrown into disarray yesterday after Jacob Zuma, an ANC leader tipped to succeed President Thabo Mbeki, was implicated in the corruption trial of a flamboyant businessman. A close friend and financial adviser to Mr Zuma was found guilty in Durban High Court of soliciting bribes from a French company to pay the deputy president to help win a contract for business with the South African navy. Judge Hilary Squires said he found "convincing and overwhelming evidence of a corrupt relationship" between the convicted man,...

Are Zimbabwean thug Robert Mugabe's increasingly brutal crackdowns on virtually every segment of society leading the country toward inevitable civil war? In a race against North Korea to claim the world's biggest basketcase title, the government recently attacked poor citydwellers and announced plans to nationalize all farmland, abolishing private land ownership.

American Friends? HardlyBy Gordon LambFrontPageMagazine.com | June 5, 2003 When the first Quakers arrived in America in the late 17th century, they were thought of as heretics, sometimes witches and routinely bizarre. Theirs was a religion based on the ideas the individual is supreme, that the relationship between God and man is a very private affair not to be regulated by government or society, that temperance ("all things in moderation") is a noble way to live one's life. Above all, it prized peace and stated that violence should be avoided if at all possible.The American Friends Service Committee (AFSC) has mastered...

Mandela announces son died of AIDS 01-06-2005, 14h06 Nicolas Asfouri - (AFP/Pool/File) JOHANNESBURG (AFP) - Former South African president Nelson Mandela said Thursday that his son Makgatho had died of AIDS. "We have called you today to announce that my son has died of AIDS," Mandela told reporters gathered Thursday at his Johannesburg home just hours after his only surviving son passed away. Makgatho Mandela, 54, had been in intensive care for the past weeks, but no details were released about his condition.

NELSPRUIT, South Africa – Heidi Le Roux sat weeping in her spacious farmhouse on the South African veld as the leaves turned gold and saffron in the glorious autumn twilight. Blonde and pretty, boasting of three young, healthy children and a devoted, hard-working husband who runs a huge multi-million dollar sugar and macadamia farm, it would seem that Heidi's life is a page out of apartheid's "glorious" past. It is a not-too-distant past when farmers were the "lords of the manor" and the future seemed bountiful and perhaps even endless. In the "New South Africa," however, nothing is as is...

Mandela slams US, UK on Iraq PTI[ MONDAY, MAY 10, 2004 07:48:35 PM ] DURBAN: Former South African President Nelson Mandela on Monday slammed the United States and Britain for going to war in Iraq, saying "we watch with horror at the terrible abuses" of Iraqi prisoners by coalition troops. Addressing a joint sitting of the new South African Parliament 10 years to the day after he was sworn in as the country's first black President, Mandela said the "two leading democracies" went ahead with a war that had not been sanctioned by the United Nations. "We watch as two...

Top brass flew to Baghdad with publicity-shy empowerment businessman Mzilikazi Wa Afrika, Jessica Bezuidenhout and Andre Jurgens Two of the ANC's most powerful officials travelled to Iraq with a controversial Johannesburg businessman just weeks before he landed a R1.2-billion state oil deal. Sandi Majali is one of about 270 people around the world who have been named in an alleged sanctions-busting scam involving oil from former Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein's regime. The names appeared in Iraqi State Oil Marketing Organisation documents found after the fall of Saddam. Majali, 41, who heads the media-shy empowerment company Imvume Resources, has for the...

NELSON Mandela's 85th birthday party on Saturday is set to be the bash of the year. Former US President Bill Clinton, his wife, Hillary, and daughter Chelsea, Oprah Winfrey and Queen Beatrix of the Netherlands will attend the banquet at the Sandton Convention Centre, part of which will be broadcast live on television. Also rumoured to be attending are actor Robert De Niro, supermodel Naomi Campbell and singing superstars Barbra Streisand, Michael Jackson, Bono and Stevie Wonder. Irish pop band The Corrs head the entertainment line-up, which includes Yvonne Chaka Chaka, Sibongile Khumalo and P J Powers. Desmond Tutu, Basetsana...

The African National Congress pledged its "continued and unwavering" support for Winnie Madikizela-Mandela yesterday despite her conviction and five-year jail sentence for fraud and theft. Senior ANC officials were among the many callers at her lavish Soweto mansion at the weekend where she was, in characteristic fashion, defiantly holding court for influential supporters. The former wife of Nelson Mandela was released on bail pending an appeal against her conviction by a Pretoria magistrate last week. After sentencing she resigned as president of the ANC Women's League, as an ANC MP and from the ANC's executive committee. But Kgalema Motlanthe, the...

Parliament -- The African National Congress on Wednesday expressed its "shock and dismay at the deaths of scores of innocent civilians" in a Baghdad market place as a result of coalition bombardment. "This senseless act of cruel violence will only convince us, and all the people of South Africa, that the current aggression by the United States and Britain against the government and people of Iraq is both undesirable and counter to the goals of democracy and peace," the ANC said in a statement. Earlier on Wednesday, the ANC secretary general Kgalema Motlanthe sent a message to Iraqi Deputy Prime...

South Africa's ruling African National Congress yesterday effectively gave its backing to President Robert Mugabe's regime in Zimbabwe, cheering a speech by a Zanu-PF loyalist attacking "western imperialists". President Thabo Mbeki hugged Emmerson Mnangagwa after his speech even though the Zanu-PF administration secretary was once Mr Mugabe's state security chief and has been accused of gross human rights violations. Mr Mnangagwa described the crisis in Zimbabwe as stemming solely from Mr Mugabe's desire to right one of the wrongs of colonialism: white farmers owning a disproportionate amount of the country's farmland. "We cannot allow colour to be the basis for...

PRESIDENT Thabo Mbeki used his speech to the African National Congress’s convention yesterday to blame corruption in South African society on 300 years of white minority rule. The speech was seen as his response to a series of scandals, including the collapse of the ANC’s government in the Eastern Cape and charges that senior ANC members took bribes in a multimillion-pound arms deal. Those scandals have helped to undermine investor confidence in South Africa and in the New Partnership for Africa’s Development — Mr Mbeki’s own initiative to promote good governance throughout Africa. Speaking at Stellenbosch University, Mr Mbeki said...

Orania, an Afrikaner enclave on the edge of a desert, is being flooded with applications from whites disillusioned with South Africa's black government. Founded in the early 1990s as white rule ended, the enclave, named after the local river, was an attempt by Afrikaner purists to preserve their culture around an independent Boer republic. The founding fathers expected thousands to join them but only 600 moved to the dusty, windswept town on the edge of the Karoo desert. Now, with a widespread fear that South Africa will follow Zimbabwe into political and racial turmoil, Orania is beginning to fill up....

South African businessmen plan to build a statue of Nelson Mandela bigger than the Statue of Liberty as part of a scheme to rejuvenate the rundown city of Port Elizabeth. A waving figure of the country's first post-apartheid president will tower 65 metres (210 feet) above the city's harbour mouth, if the planners get the necessary funding. They are copying, blatantly, the Colossus of Rhodes. Except this is tacky, tasteless and politically illiterate. - Ivan Critics dismiss the idea as "blatant exploitation" of the Mandela legend but backers say the project would act as both a monument to freedom and...

WHEN the two top-performing policemen in the small conservative mining town of Klerksdorp became the first gay officers in South Africa to marry, some of their colleagues thought it was a joke. At Klerksdorp police station in North West Province this weekend, there was still an air of disbelief among the robustly heterosexual males at the front desk. The duty officer gave a wry look and a snort, while his colleague, all guns and beer belly, muttered in Afrikaans about “moffies”, a local pejorative term similar to “poofter”. Sias Strydom, 26, and Brent Browning, 27, wave this aside. “In the...

South Africa's once dominant white political parties were in chaos last night as hundreds of white politicians defected to set up a coalition with the ruling African National Congress. The defections delivered Cape Town and Durban councils to the ANC, the only major areas where it had not won control since coming to power in 1994 after the end of apartheid. The turmoil also led to the ANC seizing control for the first time of the university town of Stellenbosch, the cradle of Afrikaner intellectual thinking and alma mater of Hendrik Verwoerd, chief architect of apartheid. The winner is the...

DURBAN - In an extraordinary twist to the current tensions between the United States and Iraq, former South African president (and Nobel Peace Prize winner) Nelson Mandela has not only sided strongly against President George W. Bush, but appears on the point of being recruited to a stratagem by Saddam Hussein to block U.S. military intervention. Mandela has uttered stronger and stronger statements critical of Bush. Originally he attempted to telephone the U.S. President to communicate his views, but Bush did not take his calls, so Mandela phoned ex-president George Bush Sr. to complain about his son and ask for...

"The ANC supports Saddam Hussein in standing up against the United States," said Bonisile Nesi, secretary of the local ANC branch. Nesi was speaking at an Anti-war march attended by approximately 150 Rhodes students yesterday (subs: thurs). Nesi said: "Why is the USA fighting against Iraq? The ANC does not support any country that doesn't respect human rights. The campaign against Iraq is not about arms reduction it is about a forced regime change." Bearing banners and chanting slogans of "no more war" and "down with Bush" the marchers made their way from the St Machael and St George Cathedral...

DISPATCH FROM SOUTH AFRICA The sellout of a nation Elite soldiers, intelligence officers speak out on Marxism, globalism Editor's note: WorldNetDaily international correspondent Anthony C. LoBaido recently interviewed four top South African anti-communists who had high-ranking positions in South Africa's former anti-communist government, military, academia and intelligence branch. One of these men ran the war in Angola against the Soviet Union and Cuba in the 1970s and 1980s. Their answers have been pooled in the interest of clarity and space. The men are Pieter du Toit, a former South African air force pilot; Col. Wakefield Manner, the head of the...

WELKOM, South Africa – The chanting of "Kill the Boer, kill the farmer" at the funeral of the ANC member who coined the phrase is adding more fuel to the political fire here, as the attacks on white farmers continue unabated. The ethnic cleansing of Southern Africa's commercial farm communities has taken the lives of 1,334 farmers, farm workers and their kin since 1994, the year the ANC took power. The farmers were killed most often in violent, organized attacks, always by young African males. Add to the death toll 12 farmers killed in Zimbabwe and four in Namibia. In...

Despite the oft-expressed misconception that communism died with a wimper in the bloodless revolutions in Eastern Europe and the Soviet Union in 1989-1991, today communism is making somewhat of a comeback in much of the world to the point that approximately one and three-quarter billion people live under communism, renamed Communist Party or Marxist-Leninist control today. While the People’s Republic of China has taken up the USSR’s old role as the communist motherland, other notable still-formally-communist states include North Korea, Vietnam, Laos, and Cambodia, and Cuba. Myanmar is ruled by a military junta, which espouses Marxist-Leninism and has closely aligned...

The West would be well-advised to back off pressuring Mbeki to become involved in efforts to sanction Mugabe more harshly. It is too much to ask that the ANC provide aid and comfort to a movement in Zimbabwe that -- if assisted to power -- would then help the ANC's political foes in its own country. In fact, many South Africans believe conservatives in Washington are predisposed to eroding the influence of the ANC because of its closeness with the South African Communist Party.In the wake of the recent victory of President Robert Mugabe in Zimbabwe elections, African nations...