u/Top_Lime1820

This story comes from the AFP.

> The African Union called an emergency meeting on its military mission in Somalia on Friday after Washington announced it would end critical funding over the lack of progress against Islamist insurgents.

> Somalia has been battling the Al-Shabaab insurgency for around two decades but the Islamist group still controls vast swathes of the country.

> The African Union Support and Stabilization Mission in Somalia (AUSSOM) is the leading force supporting the Somali army, providing roughly 12,000 troops.

> But in a letter to the AU dated July 1, Washington said it was ending payments to the UN Support Office in Somalia (UNSOS), which provides the bulk of funding to AUSSOM, at the end of this year.

This seems like a big deal to me. Unless Washington is cooking up another plan to tackle Al-Shabaab, the funding will need to be replaced by someone else. If it is not replaced, then Al-Shabaab will conquer more and more of Somalia and destabilise the whole region and the Red Sea area further (with piracy). Hopefully there is either a plan being cooked up in Washington D.C. or supplementary funding that can come from elsewhere.

Summary:

A decade ago, the City of Cape Town sold land and the affluent suburb of Sea Point to a private school. Affordable housing activists took the city and province to court arguing that they were neglecting their responsibility to build affordable housing and actively undo the spatial legacy of Apartheid. It is worth remembering that Apartheid was, at its core, driven by racist urban planning - people were moved and infrastructure was designed to segregate by race and plunder people of colour. Today, Black, Coloured and Indian South Africans who still live in the areas the Apartheid government relocated them to face social and economic burdens as a result of that racist urban planning. This is what is meant by the spatial legacy of Apartheid - people having to live on the other side of the city from where they work, not because the city was rationally designed to work like that for good reasons, but because of racism.

The Constitution says the government has to actively undo the legacy of Apartheid, not recreate it decade after decade. The courts have now found that the DA led governments in Cape Town and Western Cape failed to do this when it came to the sale of this specific parcel of land in Sea Point. The sale will be overturned and the city must build affordable housing on that plot so that some of the people who work in Sea Point can live in Sea Point.

This is a defeat for the Democratic Alliance, which has now completely lost the narrative on housing and affordability in Cape Town. This is the core issue in Cape Town today, and even featured in a New York Times piece. Even affluent residents are increasingly balking at property prices. Ratepayers Associations recently won their own court case against the mayor, who wanted to raise their municipal charges. The Sea Point victory for working class residents of colour was facilitated by NGOs and well organised activist groups. What this means is that the DA is fighting and losing against organised groups at every level of the income distribution on housing.

2026 is a local government election year. There is now basically no part of its base that the DA has not fought against or upset in the last two years - left and right, rich and poor, Black and White; farmers, suburbanites, working class, anti-corruption, technocrats, farmers... If outcomes translated directly into votes, the DA should be worried about losing support this November.

Relevance: affordable housing; smart, walkable, mixed-use urbanism; liberal electoral politics; liberalism vs social democracy

This editorial by the Guardian comments on the recent nationwide anti-immigration protests, including some violent assaults by vigilante groups, in South Africa.

The article correctly condemns the xenophobic violence and highlights the inability of many anti-immigration voices to correctly diagnose the root causes of declining living standards: government corruption and mismanagement. A similar article was written in the FT: https://www.ft.com/content/a95dbb80-fb98-4c85-8b8b-cfc1f6e7d70c

I am posting this because the recent June 30 protests were the biggest issue in South Africa in the weeks leading up to the "deadline" protestors set for illegal immigrants to leave the country.

The President of Kenya has been told by a court that his cabinet does not comply with the law on gender representation and has ordered him to fix this. The law says elective and appointive bodies cannot be composed of more than two-thirds members of the same gender.

This is interesting because it is about women's rights and social progressivism in the developing world, but also because (I think) this sub has turned against (racial) affirmative action in the private sector in the last year or two. Do you think this law is okay? Is it great? If you oppose affirmative action, does it being about a political body make a difference for you?

This is an involved but important story. It is relevant because it involves South Africa's largest liberal party, which has a real shot at becoming the governing party at the country, but which is now beset by scandal and infighting at the most senior levels of the party - risking the success of the transition from ANC to DA government. To quote Prof. Somadoda Fikeni, a political analyst, the DA is now "mutilitating itself in a corner, entirely unprovoked".

Background: The former leader of the DA, John Steenhuisen, was removed from his position as Minister of Agriculture for what many saw as his mishandling of a foot-and-mouth outbreak. This came after he was promised that he would get to keep his portfolio as long as he stepped aside and didn't run for the leadership of the DA again. Steenhuisen feels that he was lied to and has been betrayed, but his critics point to recent scandals in his department and ongoing frustrations from farming groups as evidence that he simply had to go due to underperformance. He has not been fired. Instead, the new leader has asked the President to transfer him to the post of Deputy Minister of Trade and Industry. This on its own harms the DA brand: if he is underperforming, he should be fired, not given a soft landing.

What happened now: Yesterday, Steenhuisen gave an hour long interview to News24 where he criticised the new DA leader for abandoning him to the "hyenas" and for giving in to the right wing of the party, which Steenhuisen characterizes as illiberal, tribalist racists and which he calls AfriMAGA. This criticism on its own is scathing. It echoes past criticism of the DA by Black leaders who abandoned the party, but now it is coming from a White man who billed himself as a classical liberal in a post-woke era for the party. Crucially, he also spoke about his concern that lobbying efforts by another former DA leader, Tony Leon, may be "inappropriate". He did not at any point say outright that anything illegal or corrupt is going on. But he has lit a spark.

The lobbying: Tony Leon ran the DA in the late 90s and early 2000s. Since then, he has run a political communications firm that represents clients to government and shapes media narratives to advance their goals. Steenhuisen says that he and other DA ministers have been approached by this firm on behalf of its clients, one of which is Starlink. He especially highlights the ICT Minister, Solly Malatsi, who is under great pressure to find a way to grant Starlink an operating license. The state regulator, however, refuses because Starlink SA does not meet its 30% Black ownership criteria for telecoms licenses. Malatsi has been trying to find ways around the regulator, possibly at some political and legal risk to himself as Minister.

Is it a problem: Lobbying is not illegal, and Tony Leon's firm has released a statement emphasizing this, quite rightly. However, John essentially gave us 1 + 1 instead of 2 and asked us to sum them ourselves. If you read between the lines, what he is suggesting is obvious: lobbyists who are _not_ former leaders of the DA do not have influence within the party to get you booted out of your post if you fail to give in to their clients' demands. The problem comes in when you are the former leader of the party the minister belongs to, and when you still exert influence and control in that party, and can end someone's career if they don't give in to what your clients want. Very, very indirectly and cautiously, John is suggesting that this could possibly at risk of happening - if the DA is not careful.

Fallout: This story blew up on social media, expectedly, but is currently being drowned out by fears over the big anti-immigration demonstrations tomorrow. I wanted to wait for an international source to post this story, but I know that there is a good chance this story will be completely overshadowed if tomorrow's protests turn ugly. But if it weren't for tomorrow's protests, this story would be enormous: Steenhuisen essentially said that his successor is not a man of his word and is somewhat two-faced, and suggested that the DA is at risk of being corrupted by a former leader and showing the same patterns of improper relationships that corrupted the ANC. Predictably, calls to investigate Tony Leon have already emerged. In addition, a story from another former DA leader, who now leads his own party, have re-emerged with allegations against Tony Leon. The story is that this man waits for DA people to get into power, introduces them to his clients, and if they don't make things happen, he uses his influence in the DA to harm their careers in the party. Whether it is true or not - even if it were complete nonsense - this is a devastating story to launch in an election year. Remarkably, Steenhuisen has done all this while still serving in Cabinet under the DA. In other words, he has brought the party into disrepute and must surely face a disciplinary hearing and possible removal.

The head of Uganda's military has shut down the country's leading media outlets and declared that he can do whatever he wants to.

He said on X: "I DO NOT believe in a free press! The press should be guided by cadres of the revolution."

He is a nepo baby, being the son of the country's 81 year old dictator, and is a delusional maniac who has threatened to behead the country's opposition leader. He has previously demanded told Turkiye to give him their most beautiful woman as a wife as well as a billion US dollars.

Relevance: Press Freedom

Summary:

The piece criticises Botswana's government for maintaining the death penalty. Most other countries in Southern Africa have abolished it, but Botswana remains committed to it. The current President of Botswana is a human rights lawyer who has opposed the death penalty in the past. He has not authorised any executions so far but has not addressed the issue. The piece calls on him to have the political courage to call for abolition of the death penalty. The piece presents the main stumbling block: over 80% of Botswana's citizen favour maintaining the death penalty.

Relevance + Context:

This article deals with the death penalty, which touches on issues of human rights, rule of law and the limits of state power.

President Boko is one of the most interesting leaders on the continent. In his career, he was basically a proper woke left wing human rights activist: he fought for LGBT rights, indigenous rights and against the death penalty. He has had to be a bit more muted on all those issues since winning power. Botswana's economic crisis has no doubt consumed his time - every few weeks he is in a new country trying to raise funding for a diversification investment drive. But at some point he will have to address social, cultural and ethical issues too.

Kenya hosts about 1 million refugees from a volatile region.

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Historically, Kenya has kept these refugees in U.N. backed refugee camps. There are people who have lived in those camps for decades, and even some multi-generational families of people born in the camps.

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Now the government wants to close down those camps and let those people into the country.

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The government also wants to re-open the Somali border.

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In the past, Kenya has been victimised by terrorists from Somalia before. The northern region is still unstable, with conflicts and tensions in Ethiopia, Sudan and Somalia. So it is to the credit of the Kenyan government that they are moving away from the refugee camp model.

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The world must support Kenya to get this right.

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Relevance: Immigration rights, refugee policy, international solidarity, humanitarianism

Relevance: Botswana's diamond industry is/has collapsed, and the country's economy is contracting. The government, led by the first non-BDP President in the country's history, has been working around the clock to develop a new, diversified, economic plan and attract investment. If they succeed, it will be another example of the value of democracy to developing countries. This article presents a big new solar project they have been able to attract.

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The world, and many African authoritarians, want to argue that democracy doesn't work. We must concede that if we praise Botswana's democracy for decades in the good years, we have to own its failure now that diamonds are drying up - why didn't the democracy appropriately diversify early enough?

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But if Botswana succeeds in pivoting, then we get to double down on our position - especially because the current Botswana government is the first non-BDP government. It will mean that democracy does work - or at least it will lend strength to that argument.

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We have to own this, whichever way it goes, so that is why it is relevant for us to follow the story of Botswana's evolving economy.

This is a very comprehensive article that describes the climate of fear, intimidation and harassment that anti-immigration protests as well as xenophobic vigilantes have created in parts of South Africa following their declaration of 30 June as a deadline for all illegal immigrants to leave the country, with big marches planned.

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The article covers individual acts of intimidation, the marches, the government's response both to illegal immigration and to xenophobia and comments by protest leaders.

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Illegal immigration is a problem. South Africa is a poorer country and one can ask reasonable questions about its ability to accommodate undocumented migrants especially given the fact that public services must provide for any person who shows up, regardless of documentation.

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But I think this article makes clear that there is line where opposition to illegal immigration slips into lawless cruelty and xenophobia, and many people crossed that line a long time ago.

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If the government does not manage the situation properly and push back on vigilantism and xenophobia, 30 June could be a very dark day.

John Steenhuisen is the former leader of South Africa's Democratic Alliance party. When the DA entered national coalition government in 2024, Steenhuisen appointed himself as Agriculture Minister to service a very important constituency for the DA - farmers. The country was dealing with an outbreak of foot-and-mouth disease, and Steenhuisen stepped up to tackle it.

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Since then, he has made a mess of things and seriously upset many farmers and damaged the DA's reputation with that community. This was one of the reasons he was forced not to stand for re-election as leader of the party, and was replaced as leader by Geordin Hill-Lewis, mayor of Cape Town.

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In May, Steenhuisen lost a court case against farmer groups, discrediting his handling of the situation up to now.

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More recently, Steenhuisen's Chief of Staff was found to have sent messages to colleagues describing requests from a farmer associstion as "some amusement". At an agricultural convention a few months back, she also threatened a farming association leader that she would "F you up in court" over the FMD case.

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Now Hill-Lewis has asked President Ramaphosa to reshuffle the DA ministers in cabinet and remove Steenhuisen from the Agriculture Minister, placing him instead as a Deputy Minister in Trade and Industry.

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Local Government elections are this year. While the DA has had a positive sign that it is maybe making in roads in Black communities, it has surprisingly also harmed its relationships and reputation in its traditional White base and not because of anything to do with reaching out to Black voters but purely because of performance and policy. They really can't blame woke this time. Even Cape Town Mayor Hill-Lewis is frequently under fire these days by suburban ratepayer associations who accuse him of creating an affordability crisis. He also lost a court battle over his plan to increase property charges/rates in the city.

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The demotion of John Steenhuisen may repair these relationships. But the fact that he is being reshuffled instead of being sacked for doing a bad job could also further upset other DA constituencies. The DA is supposed to be a meritocratic party run in a professional and business like manner. Some may ask why Steenhuisen is going to another department if he didn't do a good job at Agriculture.

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The DA loses votes to parties which are further to the right or even far right. Conservative White voters (we would stereotype farmers into this category) often go to the Freedom Front Plus, which is Afrikaner Nationalist, and conservative Coloured voters to the Patriotic Alliance, which is also anti-immigration.

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The DA is discovering that winning is one thing and governing is another. Nobody would have ever imagined that farmers would be the constituency most upset with the DA in national government.

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The removal of Steenhuisen from the Agriculture Ministry represents a concession by the DA that they failed in that portfolio. It is the closing of a chapter on South Africa's fascinating transition to true multi-party governance and the DA's transition to possibly becoming the dominant party in government as the ANC declines. Every few months politics in this country changes in ways you can't expect as a fallout from the loss of the ANC's majority. It is genuinely interesting to watch.

Relevance: LGBTQ rights, social progress

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Summary: The article presents the statistic that about 1/3rd of Ghanaians opposed the 2024 version of the anti-gay bill, and there was one region of the country where a majority opposed it. This is in contrast to the rhetoric of anti-gay campaigners, who argue that the bill represents the will of 90% of the population.

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Take / Relevance:

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Liberals believe in gradual social progress, driven by change in institutions and laws by social activists, and that our values are universal in the sense that people from any culture, racial group, geographic region etc can see them, independently invent them and recognise their value. True liberals do not believe that these values belong to one continent, nor that they are even new and modern. You can see proto-liberalisms throughout the history of the world.

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I grew up listening to liberals in the West, and especially Barack Obama, deploy these ideas in the context of the struggle for gay marriage. Society and its political leaders would "evolve" over time. Activism would change hearts and minds. Laws would protect simple rights which would eventually snowball into a general and pervasive freedom. Amd sometimes change would come via the law first, and then that would drive change in people, certainly in successive generations. But you had to be patient, take it slow, and take one win at a time. And you had to organise.

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However, when it comes to African countries, this is not the tone that many people online adopt. Homophobic legislation doesn't represent a victory by better organised conservative Christian or conservative Muslim forces, but instead it reflects the fundamentally homophobic nature of African societies. Waves of criminalisation in one part of the continent are generalised to the entire continent ("in Africa"), while waves of decriminalisation and improving rights in Southern Africa are discussed as barely interesting, isolated cases. There is no notion of tactics, no sense of a struggle. Most commentators are less interested in figuring out what we have to do to move another step forward. Indeed, many seem to take pride in the idea that gay rights is intrinsically "Western" and unAfrican - endorsing the core idea that African homophobes use to defend their cruel actions.

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These ideas are factually wrong. Just as bad - they discourage mobilization and solidarity. The homophobes are extremely well organised. American and African conservative Christians, and African and Middle Eastern conservative Muslims, are frequently working together and coordinating because they see themselves as one big family. It is ironic that we - supposedly universalist and individualist liberals - don't do that. The conservatives and the leftists believe in internationalism far more than we do. Some people in one half of our family (Westerners) are obsessed with essentialising homophobia into their image of what it is to be African in order to make themselves feel good about being Western, despite evidence to the contrary.

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This is why it matters that 1/3rd of Ghanaians rejected the 2024 bill, and that there is regional variation in support. If it were a Western country, we would seize on this and invoke the idea of gradual, persistent efforts at change built on international solidarity and appeals to the inherent legal irrationality of most homophobic laws. 30% becomes 40%, regional safe zones are created, and then 40% becomes a majority that scraps the law. So we must do the same for those African countries where the homophobes are presently winning.

Kenya's trade minister gives his take on migration issues on the African continent. He is speaking to a South African paper in the context of a wave of anti-immigration protests that spill over into xenophobic violence in South Africa.

Kenya and South Africa recently signed several agreements to introduce visa free travel and deepen integration between them. Kenya is also the leading nation in the East African Community, a regional integration project that has already issued a common passport to its citizens.

Historically, Kenya has faced similar problems with collapse of its northern neighbour (Somali) as South Africa has (Zimbabwe). Kenya then opted for a much less liberal response. They got the UN to create refugee camps in the north and in recent years closed the border with Somalia. The refugee camps have existed for so long that there are multiple generations of people who were born and raised in the camps, on Kenyan soil, but are not Kenyan citizens.

The new government has sought to transition to integrating these people, and is also seeking to open the border with Somalia again, so it seems like they have a consistent pro-integration position. I don't know much about Kenya though, so I stand to be corrected here. Any Kenyans or Kenya observers should please correct my errors.

Relevance: Regional integration, migration and free movement

Freedom of religion is an important human right, and religion as an institution has played an important role in establishing and supporting democracy around the world.

While many of us will be more familiar with examples of Christian faith advancing democratic institutions, this article presents a less familiar example: the Voodoo / Vodún religion of Benin, which overcame and defeated an authoritarian leader and established democracy.

The article doesn't go into as much depth as I'd like, but maybe that's because it introduces such a wild storyline that after reading it you just want to know more. The wannabe Big Man in particular is quite bizarre because he converts from Catholicism to Islam to Evangelical Christianity over his life and also imposes Marxist-Leninist authoritarianism on the country. Apparently he is known as The Chameleon lol.

Anyway, I found this quite interesting to read, and for those of you who are interested in understanding how social institutions sustain and promote democracy, I think this will be an interesting and relevant addition to your collection of case studies.

South Africa is experience a wave of anti-immigration demonstrations including grotesque xenophobic violence. A big march has been rumoured to be planned for June 30th, with fears of more violence yet to come.

The government has responded by doubling down on a message of increasingly effective deportations, border controls and identity digitization as well as fighting fraud and corruption in Home Affairs.

Tonight, June 7th, President Ramaphosa outlined the government's plans to further efforts at fighting illegal immigration, but also condemned xenophobia, vigilantism and harassment. The government seems to be hoping to take the wind out of the sails of anti-immigration voices by adopting ever stronger immigration policies.

The xenophobic violence has brought South Africa in for extreme criticism on the continent, as several African nations have offered hundreds of their citizens repatriation flights.

This article is relevant because it is part of the anti-immigration moment that is seizing global politics at the moment. But South Africa's less capable state and inefficient police force means xenophobes can commit violence and abuse on migrants at a level you would not see in most developed countries.

Summary:

This article describes a recent violent pogrom in an informal settlement near the town of Mossel Bay, where Mozambican nationals were attacked by xenophobic mobs.

It also covers the fact that South African citizens from ethnic groups in the far north of the country were also attacked or harassed, and sought police protection together with migrants.

General Context:

South African xenophobes have made a habit of racially profiling South Africans who are too dark skinned (or in some cases too light skinned or otherwise look like they are from a foreign country). Dark skinned members of the Tsonga and Venda ethnic groups have complained about this, especially when xenophobes ask people to speak Zulu to prove they are South African, even though the language is mostly spoken in only three provinces in the country and not in the far north.

Ghana, Nigeria and a few other countries have offered repatriation flights to their citizens, hundreds of whom have taken these up.

There is apparently a big protest planned for June 30th, with rumours that there will be a wave of violence. Police leadership at the very highest levels have promised protection and cabinet have said they will not allow protests to turn into violence.

Relevance:

It is not as relevant as the best news posts should be. I will probably not post another one of these until something big happens (hopefully never). But I just wanted to present a nice article since the xenophobic wave is currently the main news story in South Africa.