.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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It's literally just wingcuckery of the ANC towards Russia. There's no big mystery or conspiracy. The ANC is genuinely incompetent and very stupid.
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No I get that but South Africa legitimately doesn't have any arms Russia would be interested in enough to risk one of the four countries very visibly associated in the public consciousness to their challenge to the Western hegemony(whatever reality might be). South Africa getting sanctioned and economically imploding will be a
for them. And ANC too wants to stay in west's good graces, for economic purposes, they aren't that r-slurred just corrupt.
Like I think people forget Russia's second largest military exporter in the world. They might have some shortages in drones or artillery shells here and there that they get from Iran and North Korea but they aren't going to buy beat up APCs used against guerillas to use in Ukraine.
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It's a term coined by a Goldman Sachs analyst 20 years ago not le heckin resistance
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That's what it started as, its a bit more nowadays.
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Lol ruskie sophistry is on another level. Regardless it's not a solidified bloc. Unless those four you refer to are iran and nk along with russia and china.
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It is quiet similar to g7, not binding or military in nature but a bunch of developing economies with common interests. More consequential than SCO certainly.
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Honestly I don't see where China and India's economic interests meet. Russia now obviously needs both to stay afloat but I'd assume it's in China's interest for India to stay underdeveloped.
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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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the ANC is genuinely sincerely that r-slurred
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You can trust in the corrupt to always chase the biggest paycheck. The US and its groupies can definitely give them a bigger bribe than Russia rn lol
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The ANC won't even maintain the power grid
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That's a more long term thing, 10 years back the issue wasn't that grave so they didn't think it was a problem to steal and now even if they don't steal the issue won't resolve itself overnight so they just keep stealing(maybe they buy some power backup with part of the proceeds lol). Its a serious problem honestly, how do you compel a third world democracy to make investments that aren't visible and don't get votes considering most third world politicians would gladly steal even the bricks off their offices if they thought they could get away with it, democracy always prioritizes short term gains(such as being able to buy a few more votes with the money you steal). Privatization probably. Its helped the Indian power sector a lot. But outside major cities discoms are still state owned cause they're unprofitable and that remains an issue.
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It was that grave already ten years back, electric engineers were screaming high and low that the entire electric grid was ageing badly and that nothing had been properly maintained since 1995
All the coal plants managers continually complained to reporters that corruption was hobbling the grid but they were not taken seriously
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Yeah but no one cares until the lights go off. For example since last two years there have been a spate of articles here about how many states(including the capital, Delhi itself) weren't paying for their coal which didn't mean supplies stopped because the coal company itself is a government undertaking but obviously would hamper operations and future expansion without external capital injection.
20,000 crore INR is about $2.5B, for reference, about 14% of the coal company's total turnover. Discoms meanwhile owe the power generators about $13B.
Also in the headlines
Every single Indian voting today remembers when power cuts were regular. In the big cities we'd get 2 hour power cuts maybe every 3 or 4 days, in the villages it'd be 8 or 10 hour ones every day. But so the circus continues.
I hate third world democracy so much its unreal.
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