.webp?h=8 "Merry Fistmas!")
About two weeks ago a massive drama shitstorm erupted in both /r/southafrica and South Africa IRL when Burger Ambassador accused ANC of sending arms to Ukraine conflict.
=========Earlier, the US ambassador to South Africa, Reuben Brigety, told local journ*lists in a briefing that Washington was confident a Russian vessel had uploaded weapons and ammunition from South Africa in December.
“Amongst the things we noted were the docking of the Russian cargo ship Lady R in Simon’s Town between December 6 and December 8, 2022, which we are confident uploaded weapons, ammunitions … as it made its way back to Russia,” Brigety said in a briefing to local journ*lists, as cited by the Reuters news agency.
“Arming of Russia by South Africa with the vessel … is fundamentally unacceptable,” Brigety said, adding that senior US officials had “profound concerns” about South Africa not respecting its professed policy of non-alignment and neutrality with regard to Russia’s war.
This “does not suggest to us the actions of a non-aligned country”, he said.
Washington has repeatedly warned countries against providing material support to Russia, cautioning that those who do may be denied access to the world’s most important markets.=====(from article)
It's important to note that most RSA liberals are very pro Ukraine, but this depends on race as well. CoLoureds are all over the place, ANC wingcucks and leftwingers in general tends to suck russian peepee because of the Cold War allegiances, regardless of whether Russia is actually still communist or not.
A lot of the infighting between people in /r/SouthAfrica is pretty r-slurred. Most white liberals support Ukraine and considers the conflict to be Imperial aggession on Russia's part. Many black liberals are in conflict with their black left winger counterparts, because of wingcuckery. Black liberals consider this a moment to call out russia's assault on Ukraine, as staying silent or neutral makes them just as impassive to worldly evil happening across the globe, as they have accused europeans to have been silent on the Apartheid regime for decades.
Thus this is a watershed moment for many black and white liberals, as they realize their wingcuck black leftwing friends are pro russia simply to spite the Western powers like UK, USA or Western Europe, or because they are wingcucked into being pro Russia, and literally demonize Ukraine - a country which has never harmed or colonized Africa. This creates bitter ideological spats between peeps both IRL and on /r/Southafrica.
Point is it's infighting galore. Yet regardless of how pees feel, the ANC government has always been pretty ultra pro Russia, and has overlooked Soviet warcrimes and conquest of nations while highlighting American and Western global crimes like toppling Leftwing govs in South America by CIA operatives.
Point is ANC is now in a bind, they clearly desperately wanna suck off Russia, but America an europe make out the vast majority of RSA's exports. Thus openly supporting Russia would make South Africa a pariah, and doom the economy if America applies sanctions.
Can't find the original post, but drama started here:
https://old.reddit.com/r/southafrica/comments/13elvv6/us_ambassador_says_south_africa_gave_weapons/
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Lot's teeth gnashing and sneeed followed this revelation. It was unbelievable! RSA economy worst in like 15 years, COVID had ravished the economy, and now the ANC wants to pull this stunt?
"I mean for the last 20 years or so the ANC has been on a "become like the NP" speedrun." (The NP is the National Party, the group ruling during Aprtheid)
"This does make me scared of potential sanctions. I hope nothing major like that comes true but at this point man. Why this country is supporting one of their lower trading partners instead of ACTUALLY staying neutral is beyond me."
"Can this please be the final straw that breaks the ANCamel’s back."
I wonder what would happen if South Africa’s major trading partners decide to sanction the country for the country’s “neutrality”
"Hey ANC, what happened to the last SA government that managed to get sanctioned by the west?"
Very soon after the struggling Rand immediately tanked
https://www.news24.com/fin24/markets/breaking-rand-breaches-r19-20230511
Some other South africans were Memeing with some pretty funny posts, mocking the accused weapons send to Russia, and joking that primitive traditional South African weapons like Assegai spears or Kipi shields were to be send via ship to the Russian forces!
More joke post about the Russian ships which suspiciously docked at RSA ports in "broad daylight" while Ukraine conflict rages. This one jokes about common RSA foods
https://old.reddit.com/r/southafrica/comments/13fhvn9/photographic_evidence_of_sa_shipping_arms_to/ 
Some more sneeding as Rand continues to crater. Here's a random crypto r-slur
https://old.reddit.com/r/southafrica/comments/13eexiv/rand_drops_to_a_3_year_low/jjq4f6u/
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Climate change action for one. India and China are the only checks against EU style environment lunacy being enforced globally.
Eh despite efforts I doubt India will ever be a very sophisticated manufacturing power so economic niches are going to be different as China itself transitions out of sweatshop labour. Of course militarily they'll want India to stay undeveloped but economically India is the only large market that's going to keep growing stably over next few decades, half are supposed to be middle class by 2030. Even right now with an economy 1/7th the size Chinese exports to India are 1/4th of exports to the US(120B). Then there's investments, outsourcing as their own labour pool collapses and so on. Its happening right now as a matter of fact, despite a lot of unilateral economic sanctions from Indias side chink phone companies are setting up export oriented plants here.
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I would have expected they would do that in Africa with what a shitton of money and labor they've put into buying their mineral resources and building infrastructure, nonexistent regulations, and with how it's the only continent with positive demographic change. I remember a few years back reading that they were starting with Ethiopia
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Nah they'll set up mines and retail businesses there but Africa just doesn't have prerequisites for manufacturing boom. Non existent technical training means they'll have to fly in chinx and pay for their security, all that increases costs even without illiterate villagers. And the people hate being bossed around, they aren't buck broken by 12 years of school into obedience.
Plus even with 'stable' countries like Ethiopia(well before the civil war) or Nigeria there's usually deep structural problems that get ignored cause they are in Africa and relative to their neighbours they are better but globally makes them noncompetitive. Racism towards other ethnic groups I've seen in both countries is something else. Here at most there'll be some racist jokes if you're from out of state, the poors in some places might try to scam you and very rarely you might be shamed for not speaking the local language. In those countries being killed isn't strange. Like when the Tigray war happened, maybe most countries would have suspected loyalties of personnel coming from a rebellious province and not kept them in sensitive roles. But they just outright started massacring them. It's very difficult to run a country when that's how your citizens feel about each other.
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