IZWI

Check out SA Tourism’s new Google Earth overlay.

The attempt to extract $400 billion in reparations for apartheid from some 50 multinational corporations via the US courts over the strenuous objections of the South African government won a reprieve this week. The endeavour remains quixotic, nonetheless. The only redistribution of wealth ever likely to result is from shareholders to lawyers. There has been plenty of that already. There will be more. Read the full article

Between 1960 and last year, according to the Department of Homeland Security, 78 239 South Africans received green cards (actually the things are white), signifying their right to reside permanently in the US.  Of those, 26 408 obtained permanent residence status between 2000 and 2007. This compares with 21 964 between 1990 and 1999, 15 505 in the 80’s and 10 002 in the 70’s. The exodus, it will surprise no one to learn, has been gathering steam. Read the full article

Offshore drillers turn to Cape Town to have their rigs maintained and upgraded.

South Africa’s US ambassador, Welile Nhlapo, reaches out to South Africans living in the US at a lunch he hosted for the Global South Africans project and Homecoming Revolution on May 1, 2008. HR’s Martine Schaffer, Guy Lundy (see below) and I spoke before him.

Martine Schaffer of the Homecoming Revolution speaks at New York Stock Exchange reception hosted by Global South Africans on April 29.

Futurist Guy Lundy, CEO of Accelerate Cape Town, speaks at a Global South Africans reception at Kendall College in Chicago on April 24. To his right is Martine Schaffer of Homecoming Revolution. The sound quality was not improved by a torrential rain storm.

Here’s a Q&A on Thabo Mbeki and Zimbabwe I did with Murray Williams for the Cape Argus’ Friday Grill column.

MW: Do white South Africans reserve special hatred for President Robert Mugabe because he is black?

Izwi: I can’t speak for others. As far as I’m concerned, misrule is misrule is misrule. The one specifically race-related objection I have to Mugabe’s conduct is that he is reinforcing every terrible stereotype about this continent and its people. Read the full article

The charm offensive is working. Zuma was relentlessly caricatured in the run-up to last December’s ANC leadership election at Polokwane. Now he’s undoing the damage. Consider this profile by Ivan Fallon, who ran Tony O’Reilly’s Independent newspaper stable in South Africa for some years.

Ill-informed calumny is an occupational hazard for practitioners of constructive engagement if they fail, as they often will, to gratify quickly. Calumny because they will very likely be seen as supping with the devil; ill-informed because constructive engagement entails quiet diplomacy and the use of public statements less to inform than to manipulate. Read the full article