Canadian rating agency praises Uruguay's fiscal consolidation and raises BBB- trend from stable to positive

Saturday, November 27th 2021 

MERCOPRESS

The Positive trend reflects DBRS' view that Uruguay’s fiscal outlook has improved due to fiscal consolidation efforts and improvements to the budget

Canadian credit rating agency, DBRS Morningstar confirmed Uruguay's Long-Term Foreign and Local-Currency – Issuer Ratings at BBB-, and at the same time, elevated its prospect from stable to positive.

The Positive trend reflects DBRS Morningstar’s view that Uruguay’s fiscal outlook has improved due to fiscal consolidation efforts and institutional improvements to the budgetary framework. While spending rigidities remain a medium-term credit challenge, tight expenditure control by the president Lacalle Pou administration and the phasing out of pandemic-related programs next year should help put public finances in a more sustainable position.

Some of the upward pressure on the ratings also stems from the cumulative effects of gradually diversifying Uruguay’s economy and reducing the country’s exposure to external shocks. The Uruguayan economy bounced back from the pandemic in the first half of 2021 but the recovery was uneven. While a large wave of COVID-19 cases from March to June delayed the revival of private consumption, investment and exports expanded quickly.

Fixed capital formation increased 21% in real terms in the first six months of the year relative to the prior year. The boom in investment was driven by the construction of a large new pulp mill in central Uruguay and an associated railroad project. Goods exports also increased markedly, due to a pick-up in global demand and higher prices for agricultural commodities.

While consumption underperformed, the outlook is better for the second half of 2021 and 2022. New COVID-19 cases are now at low levels and 75% of the population is fully vaccinated. Uruguay reopened its borders in November to vaccinate non-residents, which should support the tourism sector. In addition, high-frequency unemployment insurance data points to a recent strengthening in the labour market.

Overall, growth prospects look better than in the pre-pandemic period. The IMF projects GDP growth of 3.2% in 2022 and 2.7% in 2023. The confirmation of Uruguay’s BBB (low) ratings balances its strong political and macroeconomic fundamentals with its medium-term fiscal pressures, modest productivity growth, a partially dollarized financial system, and limited financial depth.

The political environment is characterized by high-quality public institutions, low levels of corruption, and predictable macroeconomic policymaking, all of which constitute an important source of credit strength.

However risks stemming from volatility in the region are elevated, but ample foreign exchange reserves, conservative public debt management, diversified export markets, and sound regulation of the banking system bolster the economy’s defences to potential shocks.

The government has made progress in its multi-year fiscal consolidation plan. The central government deficit (excluding the “cincuentones” pension transfers) is expected to narrow from 5.8% of GDP in 2020 to 4.9% this year, even as the government has continued to provide emergency support to households and firms affected by the pandemic. As emergency expenditures expire and the cyclical recovery advances, the deficit is projected to decline further to 3.1% in 2022, nearly one percentage point better than before the pandemic in 2019

News from Latin America and Mercosur — MercoPress

US, only country with more civilian weapons than citizens; in Falklands, 62 weapons per 100 people

Tuesday, November 30th 2021 

MERCOPRESS

Gallup survey conducted in October 2020, showed about 44% of US adults live in families with weapons, and about a third of the population owns them personally.

The United States is the only country in the world where there are more civilian weapons than citizens. In effect, there are 120 weapons for every 100 US citizens and according to researchers from the Swiss organization Small Arms Survey even when the exact number of civilian firearms is difficult to quantify for several factors, including unregistered and illegal trade, researchers estimates that US citizens account for some 393 million, which is about 46% of all civilian weapons in the world.

However in the world's short list of weapons in the hands of civilians, the Falkland Islands figure second with 62 weapons per 100 people, according to the Swiss organizations. Falklands are followed by Yemen, torn by civil war with 53 units per 100 people.

According to a survey by the American Gallup Institute, conducted in October 2020, about 44% of US adults live in families with weapons, and about a third of the population owns them personally.

However, the production of firearms in the United States continues to grow due to increased demand. According to the U.S. Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives, the country produced 9 million firearms in 2018, double the number in 2008. January 2021 saw a record annual growth since 2013 in the number of requests for federal background checks required to acquire weapons – the number of requests increased by 60% compared to January 2020.

According to a survey by the Pew Research Center in April 2021, almost a third of the US adult population is confident that there would be less crime if more people owned a gun. However, numerous studies indicate the opposite: easy access to firearms contributes to the growth of incidents with their use.

In effect over the past decades, firearms incidents have rocked cities across the United States, but many US citizens consider their right to bear arms, enshrined in the country’s constitution, and “sacred“. Meanwhile, opponents of the Second Amendment argue that it threatens another right: the right to life.

However the Second Amendment of the United States Constitution reads: “A well regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the people to keep and bear Arms, shall not be infringed,.” with such language creating considerable debate regarding the Amendment's intended scope.

United States also has the most per capita deaths due to firearms incidents than any other developed country. According to the Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation 2019, the United States is eight times higher than Canada, 22 times higher than the European Union, and 23 times higher than Australia.

At the same time, the highest indicator among all countries of the world falls on the states of Latin America and the Caribbean, primarily in El Salvador, Venezuela, Guatemala, Colombia and Honduras.

In the countries of the region, the situation is also aggravated by weapons coming from the United States. For example, in 2019, about 68% of the firearms seized by law enforcement agencies in Mexico, and about half of the weapons seized in Belize, El Salvador, Honduras and Panama, originated in the United States. The trade off is normally drugs for weapons, weapons far superior and modern than those from the law enforcement officers in those countries.

News from Latin America and Mercosur — MercoPress

Latin American left wing leaders expecting progressive victories in Chile and Brazil

Wednesday, December 1st 2021 - 

“Xiomara Castro will be the first woman president in Honduras history. This is great news, great news for Central America”, said the ex Spanish president Jose Luis Rodriguez Zapatero

The Puebla Group, a gathering of left-wing leaders from Latin America and Spain held a meeting in Mexico on Tuesday to celebrate the victory of Xiomara Castro in the Honduran presidential election and looked forward to similar triumphs by Chilean candidate Gabriel Boric in December and hopefully Lula da Silva next year in Brazil.

“Xiomara Castro will be the first woman president in Honduras history. This is great news, great news for Central America, which has always presented so many social problems”, said the ex Spanish president Jose Luis Rodriguez Zapatero at the opening of the forum.

He also expressed full support for the Chilean candidate Boric in the run-off on December 19 with conservative Kast, so that Chile “does not return to the painful past”

“Lula's victory in Brazil is going to change the continent and international order, and hopefully a close alliance between Mexico and Brazil, with two progressive presidents, indecisive for such a historical moment”, added the Spanish leader about a possible Lula's victory in Brazil next October.

Former Colombian president Ernesto Samper said that the region needs to confirm progressive winds, such as those from Chile and Brazil. But Samper also spoke about his country and next year's presidential election, “not only is democracy at stake, but also the life that is the difference between peace and war.”

Paraguay's ex-leader Fernando Lugo praised the triumph of Xiomara Castro in Honduras, which was “transparent and transmitted joy to the whole continent”. This “mild draught of wind hopefully becomes a hurricane nobody can stop”.

The Puebla Group was started in 2019 with the participation of 54 progressive leaders from Latin America, the Caribbean and Spain. On this occasion, some of the outstanding personalities are Dilma Rousseff, former Brazilian president; Rodriguez Zapatero from Spain; ex-presidents from Colombia, Samper; Ecuador, Rafael Correa and Paraguay, Fernando Lugo, among others.

Other participants by video conference included Bolivian president Luis Arce, Lula da Silva from Brazil and Argentine president Alberto Fernandez who called “to work to recover the logic of a product development for the whole of Latian America”, and proposed following the path of Liberators such as Artigas, O'Higgins, San Martin, Bolivar, Sucre, of all those great men who made us free and united our Latin America“. He ended by saying that if ”after all that happened, what we are going to do is repeat history, then we won't have learnt a thing and future generations will remember us as those who failed them”.

Famine takes a grip of Latin America and the Caribbean

Wednesday, December 1st 2021 - 

”Latin America and the Caribbean are facing a critical situation in terms of food security,” Berdegué insisted

A United Nations official from the Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) Tuesday announced famine in Latin America and the Caribbean had increased at a higher rate compared to other regions in the world during the COVID-19 pandemic.

“It is the sixth edition in which we must report bad news,” said Julio Berdegué Tuesday in Santiago, Chile, when releasing the 2021 Regional Overview of Food Security and Nutrition. He added the situation has been deteriorating constantly since 2014, but it gained speed under the sanitary crisis.

“Hunger is one of the worst forms, the most serious, of food security, but in this region there are 267 million people who suffer from moderate and severe food insecurity,” Berdegué underlined, as sixty million people in 2019 alone joined the ranks of the undernourished.

“We must say it loud and clear: Latin America and the Caribbean are facing a critical situation in terms of food security,” Berdegué insisted. “There has been an almost 79% hike in the number of people living in hunger from 2014 to 2020.”

Food security deteriorated 9% between 2019-2020 throughout Latin America and the Caribbean. “No other region comes close to it,” Berdegué pointed out, “not even the poorest, like Africa.”

Berdegué also highlighted the private sector was key to finding solutions to this problem, because there cannot be positive action without a change in the productive strategies, where agri-food businesses are essential.

“Governments have to conduct the policies that provide the framework for this turn,” he said as he highlighted Chile's performance in this regard.

But beyond nice words, the truth remained that the number of hungry people in Latin America and the Caribbean has risen by 30% since 2019 to reach its highest level in 15 years. More than 59 million people across the region currently are not getting enough to eat, an increase of 13.8 million people in just one year, according to UN agencies.

The prevalence of severe food insecurity (people without food or have gone a day or more without eating) reached 14% in 2020, a total of 92.8 million people, a huge increase compared to 2014, when it affected 47 , 6 million people.

“This is not solved with personal attitudes. What is required is a food system that satisfies the population in a healthy way.” Berdegué stressed.

Obesity also grew signitifcantly over the past few years, which is in itself another form of malnutrition stemming from unhealthy diets and life conditions. Between 2000 and 2016 it grew 9.5% in the Caribbean, 8.2% in Central America and 7.2% in South America. Childhood overweight has been increasing for 20 years in the region, and in 2020, 3.9 million children - 7.5% of those under five years of age - were overweight, almost 2 percentage points above the world's average.

News from Latin America and Mercosur — MercoPress

Why Is PayPal Denying Service to Palestinians?

BY JILLIAN C. YORK

EFF
OCTOBER 12, 2021


For many years, Palestinian rights defenders have championed the cause of Palestinians in the occupied territories, who are denied access to PayPal, while Israeli settlers have full access to PayPal products. A recent campaign, led by Palestinian digital rights group 7amleh, calls on PayPal to adhere to its own code of business conduct and ethics, by halting its discrimination against residents and citizens of Palestine. 7amleh has also published a detailed report on PayPal’s actions in Palestine.

This is not the first time PayPal has denied service to a vulnerable group; the company routinely cuts off payments to those engaged in sex work or the sale of sexually explicit content, and last year, PayPal division Venmo was sued for blocking payments associated with Islam or Arab nationalities or ethnicities.

Just four months ago, EFF and 21 other rights groups wrote to PayPal, taking the company to task for censoring legal, legitimate transactions, and calling on both PayPal and Venmo to provide more transparency and accountability on account freezes and closures. Our coalition's demands included a call for regular transparency reports, meaningful notice to users, and a timely and meaningful appeals process. These recommendations align with the Santa Clara Principles on Transparency and Accountability in Content Moderation, developed by free expression advocates and scholars to help companies protect human rights when moderating user-generated content and accounts.

It is unclear why PayPal chose to deny service to Palestinians, but they're not unique. Many American companies have taken an overly broad interpretation of anti-terrorism statutes and sanctions, denying service to entire groups or geographic areas—rather than narrowly targeting those parties whom they are legally obligated to block. This practice is deeply troubling, causing serious harm to those who rely on digital services for their basic needs.

PayPal is among the most global of payment processors, and for many it is a lifesaver, allowing people to sidestep local banks' extortionate overseas transfer fees and outright prohibitions. PayPal is how many around the world purchase goods and services from abroad, pay freelancers, or send money to family. By denying access to Palestinians, PayPal makes it hard or even impossible to engage in the normal commerce of everyday life.

We call on PayPal to explain their decision to deny services to Palestinians. And we renew our call—and that of our co-signers—for PayPal to review its practices to implement the Santa Clara Principles and permit lawful transactions on its platform, halting its discrimination against marginalized groups.

Facebook’s Secret “Dangerous Organizations and Individuals” List Creates Problems for the Company—and Its Users

BY JILLIAN C. YORK AND DAVID GREENE

EFF
DECEMBER 1, 2021


Along with the trove of "Facebook Papers" recently leaked to press outlets was a document that Facebook has, until now, kept intentionally secret: its list of "Dangerous Organizations and Individuals." This list comprises supposed terrorist groups, hate groups, criminal groups, and individuals associated with each, and is used to filter and remove speech on the platform. We're glad to have transparency into the document now, but as The Intercept recently reported, and as Facebook likely expected, seeing the list raises alarm bells for free speech activists and people around the world who are put into difficult, if not impossible, positions when it comes to discussing individuals or organizations that may play major roles in their government, for better or for worse.

While the list included many of the usual suspects, it also contained a number of charities and hospitals, as well as several musical groups, some of whom were likely surprised to find themselves lumped together with state-designated terrorist organizations. The leaked document demonstrated the opaque and seemingly arbitrary nature of Facebook’s rulemaking.

Tricky business

Let’s begin with an example: In August, as the Taliban gained control over Afghanistan and declared its intent to re-establish the Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan, the role of the Internet—and centralized social media platforms in particular—became an intense focus of the media. Facebook was of particular focus, both for the safety features it offered to Afghans and for the company’s strong stance toward the Taliban.

The Taliban has long been listed as a terrorist organization by various entities, including the United Nations and the U.S. government, but is additionally subject to various draconian sanctions since the 1990s by the UN Security Council, the U.S., and other countries that are designed to effectively prevent any economic or other service-related interactions with the Taliban.

As a result of these strict sanctions, a number of internet companies, including Facebook, had placed restrictions on the Taliban’s use of their platforms even prior to the group’s takeover. But as the group took power, Facebook reportedly put new resources into ensuring that the Taliban couldn’t use their services. By contrast, Twitter continued to allow the group to maintain a presence, although they did later remove the Pashto and Dari accounts of Taliban spokesperson Zabihullah Mujahid, leaving only his English account intact.

The conflicting decisions taken by these and other companies, as well as their often-confused messaging around legal obligations vis-a-vis the Taliban and other extremist groups, is worth picking apart, particularly in light of the growing use of terrorist lists by states as a means of silencing and exclusion. Not one but several groups listed as terrorists by the United States occupy a significant role in their countries’ governments.

As The Lawfare Podcast’s Quinta Jurecic put it: “What do you do when an insurgent group you’ve blocked on your platform is now de facto running a country?”

Legal obligations and privatized provisions

First, it’s important to clarify where companies’ legal obligations lie. There are three potential legal issues that come into play, and are, unfortunately, often conflated by company spokespeople.

The first is what is commonly referred to as “material support law,” which prohibits U.S. persons and entities from providing material support (that is, financial or in-kind assistance) to groups on the State Department’s list of foreign terrorist organizations (FTO). As we’ve written previously, “as far as is publicly known, the U.S. government has not taken the position that allowing a designated foreign terrorist organization to use a free and freely available online platform is tantamount to ‘providing material support’ for such an organization, as is prohibited under the patchwork of U.S. anti-terrorism laws” and U.S. courts have consistently rejected efforts to impose civil liability on online platforms when terrorist groups use them to communicate. More importantly, the Supreme Court has limited these restrictions to concerted “acts done for the benefit of or at the command of another.”

This is important because, as various documents leaked from inside Facebook have repeatedly revealed, the company appears to use the FTO list as part of the basis for their own policy on what constitutes a “dangerous organization” (though, notably, their list goes far beyond that of the U.S. government). Furthermore, the company has rules that restrict people who are not members of designated groups from praising or speaking positively in any way those entities—which, in practice, has resulted in the removal of large swathes of expression, including art, counterspeech, and documentation of human rights violations. In other words, the company simply isn’t very good at moderating such a complex topic.

The second legal issue is related to the more complicated issue of sanctions. U.S. sanctions are issued by the Department of Treasury’s Office of Foreign Asset Controls and have for many years had an impact on tech (we’ve written about that previously in the context of country-level sanctions on, for instance, Syria).

Facebook has stated explicitly that it removes groups—and praise of those groups—which are subject to U.S. sanctions, and that it relies on sanctions policy to “proactively take down anything that we can that might be dangerous or is related to the Taliban in general.”

Specifically, the sanctions policy that Facebook relies upon stems from an Executive Order, 13224, issued by then-president George W. Bush in 2002. The Order reads:

“In general terms, the Order provides a means by which to disrupt the financial support network for terrorists and terrorist organizations by authorizing the U.S. government to designate and block the assets of foreign individuals and entities that commit, or pose a significant risk of committing, acts of terrorism. In addition, because of the pervasiveness and expansiveness of the financial foundations of foreign terrorists, the Order authorizes the U.S. government to block the assets of individuals and entities that provide support, services, or assistance to, or otherwise associate with, terrorists and terrorist organizations designated under the Order, as well as their subsidiaries, front organizations, agents, and associates.”

The Executive Order is linked to a corresponding list of “specially designated” nationals (SDNs)—groups and individuals—who are subject to the sanctions.

But whether this policy applies to social media platforms hosting speech remains an open question about which experts disagree. On the aforementioned Lawfare Podcast, Scott R. Anderson, a senior editor at Lawfare and a fellow at the Brookings Institution, explained that companies are facing a potential legal risk in providing in-kind support (that is, a platform for their speech) to SDNs. But while hosting actual SDNs may be a risky endeavor, Faiza Patel and Mary Pat Dwyer at the Brennan Center for Justice recently argued that, despite repeated claims by Facebook and Instagram, they are not in fact required to remove praise or positive commentary about groups that are listed as SDNs or FTOs.

US courts have alsoy rejected civil claims brought by victims of terrorist acts and their families against social media platforms, where those claims were based on the fact that terrorists or terrorist organizations used the platforms to organize and/or spread their messages. Although strong constitutional arguments exist, these cases are typically decided on statutory grounds. In some cases, the claims are rejected because the social media platforms’ actions were not a direct enough cause of the harm as required by the Anti-Terrorism Act, the law that creates the civil claims. In other cases, courts have found the claims barred by Section 230, the US intermediary immunity law.

An especially tricky community standard

Facebook’s Dangerous Individuals and Organizations community standard has proven to be one its most problematic. The standard has been at issue in six of the 21 cases the Oversight Board has taken. The Oversight Board has repeatedly criticized its vagueness. Facebook responded by clarifying the meaning of some of the terms, but left some ambiguity and also increased its unguided discretion in some cases. In one matter, Facebook had removed a post that shared news content from Al Jazeera about a threat of violence from the Izz al-Din al-Qassam Brigades, the military wing of Hamas, because the DIO policy stated that sharing official communications of Facebook-designated dangerous organizations was a form of substantive support—failing to apply its own exception for news reporting and neutral discussions. Facebook reversed the decision only after the Oversight Board selected the case, as it did in two other similar cases. In another case, Facebook apparently misplaced important policy guidance in implementing the DIO policy for three years.

The real-world harms of Facebook’s policy

While Facebook—and indeed, many Western counter-terrorism professionals—seem to view the primary harm in hosting the speech of terrorist organizations, there are real and significant harms to enacting sweeping policies that remove such a broad range of expression related to groups that, for better or worse, play a role in governance. The way that Facebook implements its policies—using automation to remove whatever it deems to be terrorist or extremist content with little to no human oversight—has resulted in overly broad takedowns of all sorts of legitimate speech. Despite this, Mark Zuckerberg has repeatedly stated a belief that automation (not nuanced human review) is the way forward.

The combination of ever-increasing automation and Facebook’s vague and opaque rules (none of which cite any legal requirements) make it impossible for users in affected countries to understand what they can and cannot say.

As such, a Lebanese citizen must carefully avoid coming across as supporting Hezbollah, one of many political parties in their country that have historically engaged in violence against civilians. An Afghan seeking essential services from their government may simply not be able to find them online. And the footage of violence committed by extremist groups diligently recorded by a Syrian citizen journalist may never see the light of day, as it will likely be blocked by an upload filter.

While companies are, as always, well within their rights to create rules that bar groups that they find undesirable—be they U.S.-designated terrorist organizations or domestic white supremacist groups—the lack of transparency behind these rules serves absolutely no one.

We understand that Facebook feels bound by perceived legal obligations. The Department of Treasury can and should clarify those obligations just as they did under the Obama administration. But Facebook also has a responsibility to be transparent to its users and let them know, in clear and unambiguous terms, exactly what they can and cannot discuss on its platforms.

A religious minority faces a second genocide in Afghanistan. Jews must act now

Justin Hefter

December 1, 2021

By BULENT KILIC/AFP via Gett...

Every year for Hanukkah, my mother would gift me a book about the Holocaust. Every vacation we took, even within the continental United States, my mother insisted we carry our US passports, just in case we needed to flee at a moment’s notice. Those books and passports served as reminders of my Jewish ancestry — a multigenerational story of persecution and upheaval. Despite living in the world’s greatest democracy, my mother had subconsciously prepared me for the possibility of regime change, and that a day could come when it would no longer be safe for Jews in the United States.

While that day has not come for me, it has come for the Hazara people in Afghanistan. On Sept. 7, 2021, following a swift military campaign, the Taliban – the Hazaras’ most violent oppressors – appointed themselves Afghanistan’s new government.


I run the Jewish refugee agency. Our work in Afghanistan is nowhere close to doneMark HetfieldAugust 27, 2021

Like the Jews, Hazaras have faced violent persecution for centuries because of their appearance, language, and religion. In a country dominated by Sunni Muslims, Hazaras are labeled outsiders for their Mongolian appearance and Shiite Muslim faith. In the 1890s, Afghanistan’s ruler murdered an estimated 60 percent of the Hazara people in a genocide characterized by long death marches. The survivors were sold as slaves and concubines. The Taliban have continued this oppression, as Taliban fighters have been known to force Hazara girls as young as 12 into a sexual slavery they call “marriage.”

During the past 20 years, however, as the US military forced the Taliban from Afghanistan, Hazaras were given an opportunity to thrive. Hazara schools blossomed, businesses grew, and Hazaras were elected to government positions. Hazara girls, armed with school books, wouldn’t be forced to marry the man with the AK-47.

Then, as US forces withdrew from Afghanistan in 2021, the Taliban returned, almost overnight, with a vengeance. In just the first half of 2021, the UN documented more than 20 attacks against Hazaras, killing 143 and wounding more than 300. “The whole Hazara community in Afghanistan, as well as in the diaspora, fear another genocide,” Hazara human rights activist Homira Rezai told the BBC in August.


Reporting from Afghanistan, I learned just how little we Americans knew

Larry Cohler-Esses

August 16, 2021

The parallels between the Jewish and Hazara experience are uncanny. Both Jews and Hazaras know the bitter taste of slavery. Both Jews and Hazaras know the tragic reality that 60 percent of your people can be swiftly wiped off the face of the planet. Both Jews and Hazaras know what it feels like to wake up one morning to learn that your new government wants to kill you.

So a few weeks before the Taliban took Afghanistan, when I learned that my Hazara friend Abuzar was trying to help his family leave the country, I felt morally obligated to help. I researched the countries where Afghans could travel without visas and gave a few suggestions. Abuzar’s response chilled me: “Those would be great options, but my family’s passports have expired.”

A passport. A thin paper booklet filled with ink stamps that seems so ephemeral, yet it can be the difference between life and death. My mother knew that. My ancestors who fled Eastern Europe knew that. And while I recognize we need some legal basis to establish identity, it seems unfair that people should die because of the date stamped on a piece of paper.


The lesson we should learn from AfghanistanAri Hoffman

August 24, 2021

One of those annual Holocaust books I received at Hanukkah was about Chiune Sugihara, a Japanese diplomat who felt similarly. In the 1940s, Sugihara issued paperwork to thousands of Jews so they could flee the Holocaust. There are more than 100,000 people alive today who are descendants of those escapees. Sugihara’s actions were brave yet simple — pieces of paper that could save a life.

Today, though the situation is grim, there are still simple acts all of us can do to support the Hazara people. I know this, because for the past several months, I’ve been working with my friend Abuzar and a team of eight US/UK-based activists, journalists and Afghan expats to help evacuate high-risk Hazara girls and their families. To date, we have helped more than 400 people escape from Taliban-controlled Afghanistan, including Abuzar’s family. We’ve done this by calling on help from friends and reaching out to contacts in governments around the world. Canada, Ecuador and Pakistan have been helpful in our efforts, but more can still be done.

Recognizing our shared history, the global Jewish community has a role to play. We can begin by reaching out to our elected representatives to request more visas for the Hazara people — a people who are natural enemies of extremists and allies of democracy. We can donate to nonprofit organizations helping with the evacuation and resettlement of Hazaras like Canadian Hazara Humanitarian Services and 30 Birds Foundation (which our team recently launched). We can even encourage our synagogues and communities to host Hazara families — families that will resonate strongly with the Jewish experience.


As Taliban take charge, uncertain future for Afghanistan’s Jewish heritage sites

Arno RosenfeldAugust 17, 2021

A few weeks ago, I flew to Saskatoon, Canada to welcome more than 200 Afghans our team had helped evacuate. At the airport, the evacuees were happily surprised by an unexpected guest. A blonde nine-year-old Canadian girl who had come with her mother was passing out dozens of homemade “Welcome to Canada” cards that she and her friends had made. I looked at her and remembered Sugihara’s brave yet simple acts. Pieces of paper that could make a difference.

The views and opinions expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect those of the Forward.

Author
Justin Hefter is a co-founding board member of the 30 Birds Foundation , which supports predominantly female Hazara scholars who have been evacuated from Afghanistan. He’s also the Vice Chair of The African Middle Eastern Leadership Project , which trains, connects and protects young human rights activists. He is based in Cambridge, Massachusetts where he is pursuing a masters in public policy at the Harvard Kennedy School.

The Guptas’ poisonous legacy: How State Capture hobbled Alexkor
The Alexkor diamond factory on the Alexander Bay coast. (Photo: Barry Christianson)

By Micah Reddy for amaBhungane
DAILY MAVERICK, SA
30 Nov 2021 

LONG READ

The Guptas’ poisonous legacy still haunts the diamond coast of the Northern Cape. Alexkor, the state diamond mine at the mouth of the Orange River, ‘has been destroyed by corruption and State Capture’ its miners say.

‘Classic State Capture,” is how Gavin Craythorne described events at diamond miner Alexkor — events that made the state-owned company the subject of scrutiny at the State Capture commission in January this year.

Craythorne is a marine diamond miner — one of many who operate as small-scale contractors for Alexkor. He has been a thorn in the side of Alexkor executives for years now, describing himself as a whistle-blower calling attention to the rot and capture of the state diamond miner.

Appearing before the commission, Craythorne detailed allegations of how Alexkor’s plans to expand into coal mining were part of a ploy by the Gupta family to benefit their companies.

He also elaborated on longstanding allegations that the Guptas attempted to capture the Alexkor diamond marketing chain through a company called Scarlet Sky Investments (SSI).

But over time, he paid a heavy price: shut out of mining concessions, slapped with a defamation suit by SSI and finally forced to sell his ocean diamond mining vessel.

To his detractors, he is driven by ulterior motives.

When it comes to Craythorne, SSI’s director, Daniel Nathan, doesn’t mince his words, claiming Craythorne “is motivated only by his desire to profit from the marine mining activities in Alexander Bay and his desire to somehow acquire the marine mining rights or the proceeds thereof for himself”.

Nathan, through his lawyers, told amaBhungane that allegations that SSI was involved in State Capture are “untrue” and “defamatory”.

Yet some parts of Nathan’s own account of what happened appear questionable, as we shall see.

The Alexkor matter appears to have fallen by the wayside at the commission, which has had to deal with evidence related to a dizzying range of State Capture cases and was beset by delays.

This has left questions about SSI’s appointment and its links to Gupta associates hanging over the company and Alexkor.

So too are there unanswered questions around the coal strategy (unrelated to SSI), and what appears to have been, in that case, an audacious plan to expand the Gupta State Capture machine.

There is an important tale in all of this not only about the machinations of high-level State Capture, but in what it means for ordinary people in an impoverished corner of the country, the remote, barren Richtersveld.

Though the coal plans were ultimately thwarted, the infighting and Machiavellian politics of the State Capture years left Alexkor and its joint venture with the local Richtersveld community in disarray.

The Pooling and Sharing Joint Venture (PSJV), owned 51% by Alexkor and 49% by the community, is the effective custodian of the mineral wealth that belongs to the community and should have been its crown jewel, but ordinary people have seen little in the way of diamond wealth trickle down to them.

Craythorne is by no means the only victim in a saga that has left a community divided and a company in disarray.

Diamonds in the rough

The Northern Cape diamond mining coast has the feel of a rough and tough frontier — arid and dusty, and dotted with small decrepit towns endlessly battered by the Atlantic winds.

For nearly 100 years, the state has been mining diamonds on this corner of the country. Though South Africa is no longer the leading global producer of diamonds that it once was, the industry remains important, especially for local employment.

In the late 1990s, the community lodged a claim to the narrow strip of land along the West Coast known as the Richtersveld, which had been expropriated by the colonial state after the discovery of diamonds there in the 1920s. It was on this land that Alexkor had its mining operations.

Only in 2003, after a protracted legal battle against the state and Alexkor, did the Richtersveld community win its land back — and the mining rights that went along with it were later ceded to them. Alexkor was left with its marine mining rights.

In 2011, the PSJV was set up as a joint venture between Alexkor and the Richtersveld Mining Company, the community’s mining vehicle. It combined the community’s land rights and Alexkor’s marine rights, and became the vehicle through which the diamonds were sold.

Alexkor and the PSJV do no actual mining. Instead, it is outsourced to private contractors, mostly to small boat-based marine divers who dredge the seabed using hand-operated suction devices. The contractors deliver diamond-bearing gravel to processing plants and the diamonds are then sold by the PSJV with the help of a diamond marketer.

In November 2014, SSI submitted a tender to the PSJV to be the sole agent to market and sell its diamonds.

In 2018, amaBhungane wrote about SSI in the wake of the #GuptaLeaks, detailing circumstantial evidence that it could have been a vehicle for the Guptas’ planned capture of Alexkor. There were vehement denials of any link to State Capture.

Since then, however, Craythorne’s testimony at the Zondo commission, further information uncovered by Zondo investigators and amaBhungane’s own efforts have raised further questions about the Guptas’ designs on Alexkor and SSI’s role.

Back when it applied for the tender, SSI did not have a significant trading history — it was a shelf company bought for the purposes of the tender.

Online company records show that effective December 2014, Nathan was registered as a director alongside Kuben Moodley, with Moodley owning a 60% stake through his company Kimomode. The other 40% was owned by Nathan’s company, Daniel Nathan Trading.

Moodley is widely known as a Gupta associate whose company, Albatime, has featured prominently in media reports about Gupta-linked state capture. He has been accused of being a “fixer” for the family and was arrested in connection with alleged money laundering in September this year on his way to Dubai.

The alleged money laundering relates to the proceeds from contracts that were improperly awarded by state-owned Transnet to Gupta-linked consulting companies Regiments and Trillian.

On affidavit, Nathan told the commission, “I have no relationship with Mr Moodley other than our previous association in SSI which ended in and during August of 2015. I have known Mr Moodley since approximately 2001 when we played golf together.”

He said that when he became aware of the Alexkor tender he contacted Moodley to come in as his BEE partner: ”I knew that he had the financial standing, business experience and acumen that would contribute to the business if the tender was successful.”

Two months after Moodley and Nathan were registered as directors, SSI had the tender in the bag when the PSJV board signed off on it, completing a questionable bid adjudication process, as amaBhungane has previously reported.

That marked the start of a bitter dispute over the SSI contract, with Alexkor’s partners in the PSJV and contractors like Craythorne crying foul.

Part of the problem lay in the unusual way in which the PSJV was set up, with the non-executive chairperson of Alexkor occupying the same position in the joint venture, whereas no executive from Alexkor sat on the PSJV’s board.

Percy Khoza, Alexkor’s chief executive at the time, said that he arrived at Alexkor to find that the company’s memorandum of incorporation barred its executives from having direct oversight of the PSJV.

He said that the board’s chair, Rafique Bagus, allowed him to sit on the PSJV board as an observer, but Khoza had no vote and no ultimate control over what was essentially his main operating company.



Team Gupta on speed dial?

The Bagus board had been appointed in 2012 by Gupta-linked Minister of Public Enterprises, Malusi Gigaba, though Gigaba has denied being captured by the Guptas and told the Zondo commission Bagus had been appointed on the basis of “a very good record in the public service”.

But Bagus was well known to the Guptas and was among a long list of politicians and public officials who made a pilgrimage to the Guptas’ infamous Sun City wedding.

Before, during, and after his time at Alexkor, which he left in 2015, Bagus had many phone conversations with the Guptas and their associates, according to an affidavit by an investigator for the state capture commission, Peter Bishop.

Bishop alleges that there were about 26 calls between Bagus and Ajay Gupta between July 2015 and March 2016, and about seven between him and Rajesh Gupta between May 2015 and March 2016.

There were approximately 60 calls between Bagus and Gupta associate Iqbal Sharma, currently facing charges of fraud and money laundering related to the failed Estina dairy scheme — one of the Guptas’ most notorious state capture projects.

The affidavit also mentions approximately eight calls between Bagus and another key Gupta associate — Ashu Chawla.

Bagus, in response to questions, said he did not recall Chawla, but admitted his familiarity with the Guptas and Sharma. He said he knew Sharma from their time together at the department of trade and industry, adding, “I have had several engagements with him over the years, mostly social.”

“As a former civil servant, I am often called for advice. I have not discussed my work at Alexkor with any of these people.”

Bishop’s affidavit also alleges regular calls between Moodley and the chief executive of the PSJV, Mervyn Carstens.

Between September 2015 and May 2017 Carstens was allegedly in contact with Moodley 97 times.

For most of this period Moodley was not a director of SSI. He resigned in November 2015, but retained his shareholding through Kimomode until April 2017.

After resigning from SSI, Moodley went to work as an advisor for then minister of mineral resources, Mosebenzi Zwane, who has been implicated in the Guptas’ state capture project and was the Free State MEC of Agriculture at the time of the Estina scandal. As MEC, Zwane’s department had oversight of the project.

Alexkor’s chief legal officer, Zarina Kellerman, later joined Moodley as an advisor to Zwane.

Bishop’s affidavit also claims that Carstens was in phone contact with Gupta associate Stanley Shane about 10 times between February and July 2016.

Responding to questions about the calls, Carstens said:

“As for me calling Mr Moodley about 97 times, first and foremost I did not call him 97 times. He called me. If I missed his call, I called him back. I have no recollection of what was discussed on any of the calls with Mr Moodley… I had no reason to need to speak to him.

“At one stage, Mr Moodley was interested in becoming an actual mid-water mining contractor or purchasing an outfit and called me to enquire as to some of the background. I recall there were several conversations about this however eventually he did not put in any proposal and certainly made no purchases in this regard. It appeared to me that he had lost interest.”

Carstens said he did recall speaking with Moodley about golf, and that after the #GuptaLeaks and Moodley’s connection to the Guptas became “evident”, “I blocked his number and did not take his call or reply to any of his efforts to reach me”.

“Calling Mr Stanley Shane is also one of those things which I simply have no recollection of, however, any conversations with him would have been around mining. As the CEO of the PSJV I got a lot of these calls on a daily basis.”

Shane was a director, together with Marc Chipkin and Clive Angel (who resigned in 2019), of a company that has been linked to State Capture — Integrated Capital Management (ICM).

This company, Bishop’s affidavit reads, was “intimately involved with [Gupta associate Salim] Essa and the establishment of the Trillian Group of Companies, which was used to capture consulting work from Transnet and Eskom from the end of 2015”.

Innocent or integrated?

Alongside Chipkin, Angel and Shane at ICM was Selwyn Nathan — Daniel Nathan’s father — whose role in the company is more obscure.

Daniel says in his own affidavit, “My father was the honorary chairman of ICM… [he] resigned from that position on 2 November 2015.”

However, a share register and declaration for December 2017 showed that a company of which Nathan senior was the beneficial owner still held a 21.97% share in ICM at that time.

It was Selwyn Nathan who arranged for a R50-million letter of comfort that Scarlet Sky relied on for its bid.

When ICM’s role in supporting Trillian was first exposed by former Trillian Management Consulting chief executive Bianca Goodson, the then-attorney for the ICM grouping, Billy Gundelfinger, objected strongly.

In a 2017 complaint to the Press Ombud, he said ICM was merely an “arm’s-length service provider” and emphatically denied that the company took part in any state capture actions.

Since then the linkages between people associated with the Guptas and people associated with ICM have become slightly clearer.

As early as July 2018 amaBhungane revealed ICM’s role in helping a shelf company linked to Essa extract R647-million from Transnet for changing the venue for local locomotive manufacture from Pretoria to Durban.

Goodson has also since given damning and seemingly unchallenged testimony at the Zondo commission in relation to ICM, alleging that Angel, in particular, was aware of the way in which Essa’s extraordinarily ambitious business model was based on exerting influence over decision-makers.

This included Angel’s knowledge of a November 2015 email which set out Trillian’s plan to capture R10-billion in consulting income from Eskom over just three years.

Shane did not respond to calls and WhatsApp messages. Gundelfinger, on behalf of Angel and Chipkin, told us his clients had instructed him that they did not wish to engage with us.

Daniel Nathan, in his own affidavit to the State Capture commission, has attempted to put distance between SSI and ICM.

According to Nathan, ICM was brought in by SSI to “assist it in preparing and submitting its tender submission document to the PSJV”.

Nathan insisted, “SSl’s engagement of ICM was on an entirely arms-length and professional basis for the purposes as aforesaid.”

But was that true?

As we’ll see, Nathan’s attempt to rubbish Bishop’s state capture commission affidavit led him to proffer a bank document that he must have known contained misleading information.

That, unfortunately, may cast some doubt on his other assurances.

Selwyn Nathan, ICM, Investec and SSI

The process by which SSI was selected as preferred bidder was problematic, an issue to which we’ll return, but it was approved subject to a due diligence check.

A due diligence and verification report on SSI’s and its bid was conducted by the CEO, Carstens, and Zarina Kellerman, the chief legal officer of the PSJV, and submitted to the board in late January.

But the due diligence exercise does not appear to have scrutinised the R50-million issue noting only that “Scarlet Sky has a bank guarantee of R50-million with Investec”.

Had it done so, it might have picked up some anomalies.

Bishop’s affidavit notes that “the commission has subsequently established that lnvestec has no record of any guarantee that was applied for and provided”.

Daniel Nathan hit back at Bishop’s claim in his own affidavit.

According to him, “my father advised [Bishop] that Investec Bank had provided a letter confirming that SSI was an Investec Bank client and that SSI had funds available to it of R50-million”.

As proof of this, Nathan attached a January 2015 letter from Investec stating that it “confirms that Scarlet Sky Investments… is a client of Investec and holds various Investec accounts in their name”.

“We further confirm that as at the date of this letter, Scarlet Sky has an amount of R50,000,000.00 available in their accounts, for use at their own discretion.”

The problem for Nathan, however, is that the information appears to be false. SSI was not a client of Investec and held no accounts with the bank — something he must have known.

Investec told us, “Investec categorically denies any association with Scarlet Sky Investments 60 (Pty) Ltd (“Scarlet Sky”). Investec further confirms that Scarlet Sky was never a client of the bank and that it [Scarlet Sky] at no stage held any accounts with the bank.

“A 2015 letter, intended to convey confirmation of the availability of funds on behalf of two long-standing clients, erroneously recorded that Scarlet Sky was a client of Investec. This was incorrect. Furthermore, the letter clearly stated that it was not a letter of guarantee. No payment was facilitated by Investec for or on behalf of Scarlet Sky.

“Investec has deposed an affidavit to the Zondo Commission of Inquiry detailing the misstatement of fact in the 2015 letter.”

Investec and the Nathans also part ways on the exact circumstances under which this “misstatement” came about but they both try to characterise it as not being material.

amaBhungane sent questions to the Nathans regarding Daniel Nathan’s reliance on the Investec letter and the impression that there may have been an attempt to mislead the commission.

In response, their lawyers labelled our questions “consistent with (and are a further perpetuation of) your previous discourteous, accusatory, reckless and defamatory engagements with our client”.

Regarding the Investec Bank letter, the Nathans’ lawyers said it contained “immaterial inaccuracies (by Investec Bank and not our clients)” — and that there had always been sufficient funds available to SSI, inter alia through Selwyn Nathan’s relationship with Investec.

Round two

SSI’s tender was initially intended to be a short-term gig, so in 2016 the tender process was renewed. Again, SSI was appointed, this time for five years.

By now, a new board was in charge. Bagus had resigned and been replaced by Hantsi Matseke, the Free State Development Corporation’s (FDC’s) chair.

There are traces of evidence in the appointment of SSI for a second term that suggest Gupta-linked Trillian had something to do with tender number two.

Two pieces of information suggest Trillian involvement.

The first is an email sent on 28 March 2016, two days before bids for the second tender closed, from a Trillian employee. SSI’s proposal for bid number 02/2016 — the second diamond marketing contract — was attached to the email and included Daniel Nathan’s CV.

The employee wrote in her email: “I’ve done a grammar check and added the health and safety statement to the proposal. Please find attached all the information required… Please add pictures under the relevant sections and potentially use graphics to enhance layout.”

The second exhibit that points to Trillian involvement is slightly more faint — two emailed meeting notifications.

The first notification, with the subject “Diamond Tender discussion”, was scheduled for 16 March at 10:15am at ICM’s Melrose offices. It was sent by ICM’s Chipkin to Daniel Nathan, and two Trillian employees.

The second notification for a meeting on 22 March was sent to the same group of people.

The Nathans, through their lawyer, flatly denied that they knew the Trillian employees, or that ICM was in any way involved in the second tender.

“Mr Daniel Nathan has no links whatsoever to the Guptas or their associates,” they said.

One of the Trillian employees, who asked not to be named, told us: “Clive Angel, whom I met due to the move to Trillian, asked… if my colleague… and I could assist with collating a proposal for Scarlet Sky.

“Mr Angel introduced us to Scarlett Sky management, whose persons were previously unknown to me, at the ICM offices in Melrose Arch. Our role was to collate the proposal using information primarily provided to us by Mr Nathan, at the ICM offices. Once we were done, there was no further involvement from my side.”

More Gupta fingerprints

In amaBhungane’s initial story, we reported that only three people sat on the panel to decide on the final selection in the first tender — they were Bagus, longtime Alexkor director Roger Paul, and Duncan Korabie, one of the independent directors representing the community on the joint venture’s board.

Korabie gave SSI a full 100% score which, as our initial article noted, “is normally regarded as an attempt to skew a panel score in favour of one bidder”.

The issue of SSI’s scoring became even more charged when Korabie fell out with Alexkor. He later submitted a complaint to the Public Protector alleging various irregularities in the tender, despite his own 100% score.

Representatives of the community in the Richtersveld Mining Company, Alexkor’s partner in the PSJV, were also concerned.

After a complaint by the RMC in late 2015, Lynne Brown, who had replaced Gigaba as minister, tasked Alexkor’s audit and risk committee with investigating the tender.

The committee concluded its investigation and came back to the board in February to say that all was well. There were no major problems with the tender.

But based on what we now know, the committee either did not look hard enough, or was wilfully blind to the problems.

One of the three committee members was Trevern Haasbroek, whose appointment as a board member of Alexkor in August 2015 bore the Guptas’ fingerprints again.

In a now-familiar pattern in the Guptas’ State Capture enterprise, the month before Haasbroek’s appointment, Minister Brown’s personal assistant sent an email to infoportal1@zoho.com. The address was prominent in the #GuptaLeaks and is now known to have almost certainly belonged to Essa.

The email, titled “Trevern’s CV”, is addressed to “Saleem” — clearly a misspelling of Essa’s first name.

In it, the PA writes: “Herewith cv for Alexkor board as discussed.”

Haasbroek did not respond to a request for comment.

At the Zondo commission, Brown denied influencing board appointments in favour of the Guptas and said she was unaware of her PA sending emails to the infoportal1 (Essa) address.

A festering sore

The SSI tender became a festering sore on Richtersveld diamond mines.

Craythorne and some other marine diving contractors claimed that the company was ill-suited to the task of valuing, marketing and selling the joint venture’s diamonds.

They claimed SSI’s appointment was not transparent, that the company did not have the requisite experience, and that diamonds were being undervalued and miners short-changed.

Claims about the undervaluing of diamonds and anomalies in the diamond sales process have been laid out in detail at the State Capture commission, and have been met with vehement and at times compelling refutations by both Nathan and the joint venture chief executive, Carstens.

Both have also pointed to detailed separate reports on the SSI operation issued by two diamond industry experts and another Alexkor mining contractor.

All three said that SSI appeared to run an effective marketing and selling operation that extracted good value for Alexkor — in contradiction to the claims by Bishop and Craythorne.

Nathan alleged the commission investigators had made grievous errors.

“[They] made statements of fact and have arrived at conclusions in their affidavits concerning me, SSI and DNT which are untrue, inaccurate and unsubstantiated, defamatory and reckless,” he said in his own affidavit.

His lawyers told us: “If, as you record, amaBhungane really wants to understand ‘what happened at Alexkor’, then perhaps you should be reporting on the fact that during SSI’s tenure as the entity to market, sell and beneficiate the PSJV’s diamonds, the PSJV’s diamond revenue from sales convened by SSI increased from R276-million in 2014 (the year prior to SSI’s appointment) to R414-million in year 1.

“amaBhungane should perhaps be considering what became of this diamond revenue (which SSI actually generated in terms of its agreements with the PSJV) as opposed to unjustly interrogating our clients.”

That the Alexkor issue appears to have been left in limbo by the commission has not helped in getting to the bottom of a very complicated matter.

A more clear-cut problem, as far as the contractors are concerned, seems to be in the lack of transparency of the diamond sales made through SSI, which has only fuelled the contractors’ suspicions that they are being short-changed.

A report by forensic accounting firm Gobodo, which was submitted to the department of public enterprises in late 2019, underscores these concerns.

Though the report was criticised by Zondo for its sloppiness, it did raise some noteworthy points around the lack of transparency in the marketing and selling of the diamonds.

The Gobodo report claims that SSI kept important information about this classified, even from the PSJV, on whose behalf it was selling the diamonds.

In the rush to complete their report, Gobodo’s team appears to have made a number of errors and ignored some evidence that contradicted their findings.

One thing that stands out, however, is their findings concerning the assessments of the bids and how bidding companies were scored in the original tender process that selected SSI.

The report notes that the weighting of various categories of scores was changed after three bidders, including SSI, were shortlisted. Notably, the weighting of scores for local economic development, job and ownership commitments was reduced.

The report states that “the changing of the points and evaluation criteria is irregular and constitutes an unfair and uncompetitive practice”.

Between mid-2015 and mid-2019, the year before SSI’s contract was eventually cancelled, Gobodo calculated that over R1.5-billion worth of PSJV diamonds passed through Nathan’s company.

Given the huge turnover, the original 2014 procurement process that led to SSI’s appointment appears to have been, at best, extraordinarily amateurish.

Infighting

The relations between the small-scale contractors and the joint venture’s board and management became so strained that several contractors, including Craythorne, did not have their contracts renewed.

In January 2018, a team from the Department of Public Enterprises (DPE) stepped in to attempt to resolve what had become an intractable conflict.

One of the issues that the contractors “raised vigorously” was the SSI contract.

The contractors also questioned the prices that the diamonds were fetching and the lack of transparency in the marketing and sales of the stones.

The DPE team compiled a briefing report of their engagements with the parties, which left no doubt as to who the team felt was more to blame for the falling out — it was scathing of the board and management team.

“There seemed to be a determination to manage by fear in order to drive home the message to contractors that no dissent shall be tolerated.”

The team found that the board had been “economical with the truth” when it claimed that its decision not to renew some mining contracts was based on a legal opinion.

They also drew attention to what was at stake for diamond contractors like Craythorne, who says he has now lost everything.

“The contractors have substantial skin in the game. The contractor literally mortgages all they have to be on the sea during the sea days with an expectation that they will have a good mining day and be able to cover their costs.”

The problems that the department’s team had seen up close, only worsened. In September of the following year, Alexkor was under administration.

When, in 2020, the administrator reported to parliament on the state of Alexkor, he said many of Alexkor’s problems were traced to weak governance.

The administrator noted: “Because the PSJV is an Unincorporated Joint Venture, it has significant governance challenges, as it does not have to comply with the Companies Act and/or the Public Finance Management Act (PFMA), neither has it adopted any of the best practices contained with either of the Acts mentioned above.”

Carstens, the PSJV CEO, relied on precisely this argument — that the joint venture was not beholden to the PFMA — to explain the decisions taken in appointing SSI.

“The allegations of apparent irregularities in the tender process stems from a mistaken view that the PSJV is somehow obligated to comply with the PFMA.

“The PSJV most certainly had a procurement process which was adopted by the Board of the PSJV [which] allowed for the Board to be flexible in its approach.”

Others, including departmental officials, were uneasy with this freestyling approach.

The departmental team had said that the PSJV, “by virtue of the fact that it is an unregistered entity which utilises Alexkor SOC Limited legal status to trade and conduct its business… is bound by the same standards of conduct expected of a state-owned business.

“Moreso, as the resource that is being exploited by the affected miners is the marine diamond deposit whose mining right belongs to Alexkor SOC Limited and by extension the State.”

But to the state capture crowd, the loopholes created by the PSJV structure seemingly represented just another opportunity.

Years later Alexkor and its issues continue to drive a wedge through what was an already divided community.

On 19 May this year, the parliamentary committee on public enterprises reported on their oversight visit to Alexkor, noting a concern about government’s failure to facilitate the election of legitimate community structures and a perception that they were still subject to divide and rule tactics.

The committee also consulted mining contractors on their challenges with Alexkor.

“The contractors raised a number of concerns which included the following: the company has been destroyed by corruption and State Capture… There is a high unemployment rate and lack of development programmes for young people in the community, and that has given rise to high levels of poverty, drug and alcohol abuse.”

The Richtersveld land claim settlement was supposed to deliver justice and development, but its intended beneficiaries seem to have been left as high and dry as the windswept dunes. DM

The amaBhungane Centre for Investigative Journalism, an independent non-profit, produced this story. Like it? Be an amaB Supporter to help us do more. Sign up for our newsletter to get more.

ENDING #GBV IS ENDING #FEMICIDE
Gender-based violence and Covid-19: A collision of pandemics
A protest outside Parliament in Cape Town on 24 April 2021. Amid the Covid-19 lockdowns, young people describe being ‘bored’ as they did not have much to do while schools were closed for months, but they also faced ever-increasing tensions in the home without the normal support systems of friends and school.

(Photo: Gallo Images / Brenton Geach)

By Shanaaz Mathews and Lauren October
DAILY MAVERICK
01 Dec 2021 

We have to ask ourselves: The government has invested billions in the fight against  Covid-19, but are we committing the same level of resources to eradicate the GBV pandemic?

At the launch of the 16 Days of Activism Against Gender-Based Violence in 2020, President Cyril Ramaphosa agonised over the lives lost due to two devastating pandemics facing South Africa — Covid-19 and gender-based violence (GBV).

A year later, nearly 14 million people or a third of the South African adult population are fully vaccinated against Covid-19. In contrast, SAPS crime statistics released in November 2021 reveal a 31.7% increase in child murders and an increase in the rape and murder of women.

At the launch of this year’s 16 days of activism campaign to end violence against women and children, with dismay, the president reflected on the crime statistics as a shameful reminder that we are in “the grips of a relentless war being waged on the bodies of women and children”. We, therefore, have to ask ourselves: The government has invested billions in the fight against Covid-19, but are we committing the same level of resources to eradicate the GBV pandemic?

Protesters at a gender-based violence protest outside Parliament in Cape Town on 30 June 2020. (Photo: Gallo Images / Nardus Engelbrecht)

We have seen leadership from the president in his acknowledgement that the fight to end GBV is highly complex and requires a comprehensive solution. The National Strategic Plan (NSP) on Gender-Based Violence and Femicide (GBV-F) was presented to Parliament and approved in March 2020, as the country went into lockdown. The NSP is an ambitious plan that requires a whole-of-society response.

Simultaneously, the Department of Justice has fast-tracked the review of existing laws and policies on GBV to ensure that they are victim-centred, and other relevant laws respond to GBV. Three laws — the Criminal and Related Matters Amendment Bill, Domestic Violence Amendment Bill and the Criminal Law (Sexual Offences and Related Matters) Amendment Act Amendment Bill — were passed by Parliament in June 2021. But law reform is just a first step and on its own cannot change the experiences of women and children or make homes and communities safer.

Interviews with women, men and young people in communities across the Western Cape a year into the pandemic provide insight into some issues that require urgent attention. Those interviewed confirmed that Covid-19 has had a devastating effect on their lives, and has exacerbated the social norms that drive gendered violence in the home and communities.

Young people describe being “bored” as they did not have much to do while schools were closed for months, but they also faced ever-increasing tensions in the home without the normal support systems of friends and school.

Men, women and young people reported how the loss of employment increased stress levels with “fights” over food not unusual. For men, the inability to financially provide for families caused internal struggles.

01/12/2021 At the launch of the 16 days of activism to end violence against women and children in 2020, President Cyril Ramaphosa, agonised over the lives lost due to two devastating pandemics facing South Africa – COVID-19 and gender-based violence (GBV). (Photo by Alet Pretorius)

As other aspects of their lives were unravelling, men used control over women and children as a means of regaining a sense of power in the home, resulting in severe emotional distress and violence happening behind closed doors. Covid-19 also contributed to an escalation in levels of stress due to fear of the unknown and emotional insecurities, increasing levels of conflict in households.

This toxic mix of stressors heightens the risk of violence in the home both between intimate partners and by caregivers against children. The lack of access to normal psychosocial support systems like schools, extended family or friends meant that many individuals struggled in silence.

Many men, women and young people talked about how the patriarchal structure of the family is core to maintaining social order in the family and community. The normalisation of violence and the tacit acceptance of GBV were prominent in their experiences, with some forms of GBV seen as socially acceptable or desirable behaviour — and no longer considered as “violence” at all.

Through these interviews, we have learnt how boundaries become blurred and sexual engagement with children and young people becomes tolerated and even normalised.

As we enter the 16 days of activism, it is important that we stop, reflect and redirect our moral compass — to ensure the protection of children and young people at all costs. We have an NSP GBV-F that is meant to address the social norms that underpin GBV. This needs to be urgently activated if we want to offer women and children the protection they are afforded by the law.

The evidence from research in other violent contexts is clear — GBV can be prevented. Programmes like SASA! in Uganda mobilise communities and have shown positive changes in community attitudes, norms, and behaviours around GBV.

A march in protest against gender-based violence in Durban on 26 April 2021, organised by the Office of The Premier in collaboration with the Phepha Foundation. The march was triggered by high-profile cases in KwaZulu-Natal in which three women, employed as cleaners, were allegedly sexually assaulted at work by their manager and supervisor. (Photo: Gallo Images / Darren Stewart)

Similarly, Bandebereho, a fatherhood and couples’ intervention in Rwanda, has been shown to substantially reduce women’s experience of physical and sexual intimate partner violence and men and women’s use of harsh physical punishment of children. We need to draw on these innovative strategies to prevent GBV by working together to implement evidence-based interventions that prevent violence across the life course.

Preventing GBV requires a partnership between government, civil society, academics and business. It is crucial that the NSP GBV-F is realistically costed and funded through a mechanism that is able to reach programmes and services in communities where the need is the greatest.

The current budget to address GBV is woefully inadequate and does not match the magnitude of the problem facing the nation. If we are serious about uprooting GBV then we require a multipronged approach and a budget to support this comprehensive plan. This includes a focus on scaling-up prevention programmes, responding to the needs of victims of violence, and providing services to support families and reduce the pressures that drive a cycle of violence that cuts across generations. DM/MC

Shanaaz Mathews is the director, Children’s Institute, Department of Paediatrics, University of Cape Town. Lauren October is a junior research fellow, Children’s Institute, Department of Paediatrics, University of Cape Town.

Tanzania footprints offer clues on origin of human upright walking
By Will Dunham




International team of researchers work at a site called Laetoli in northern Tanzania, where a trackway of five fossilized footprints dating from 3.66 million years ago ? attributed in a new study in the journal Nature to a species in the human evolutionary lineage ? is seen in this handout photograph taken June in 2019. Shirley Rubin/Handout via REUTERS

Dec 1 (Reuters) - Five fossil footprints left in volcanic ash 3.66 million years ago in Tanzania are giving scientists new insight on a landmark in human evolution - upright walking - while showing that its origins are more complicated than previously known.

Researchers said on Wednesday a thorough new examination of the tracks, nearly half a century after their initial discovery, has shown that they were made not by a bear, as once believed, but by a hominin - in other words, a species in the human lineage - and possibly a previously unknown one.

They display a curious gait, adding to the mystery.

Bipedalism - walking on two feet - is a hallmark of humankind, but scientists are still putting together the puzzle pieces on how and when it began.

The trackway was found in 1976 at a site called Laetoli - a stark landscape northwest of the Ngorongoro Crater in northern Tanzania - about a mile (1.6 km) from two sets of fossil footprints found two years later. Those found in 1978 have been attributed to Australopithecus afarensis, a hominin exemplified by the famous skeleton discovered in Ethiopia dubbed 'Lucy.'

The study determined that the various Laetoli tracks - made within days, hours or possibly minutes of one another in the same ash layer - were created by two different hominin species.

Paleoanthropologist Ellie McNutt of Ohio University's Heritage College of Osteopathic Medicine, lead author of the study published in the journal Nature, noted that the Laetoli trackways represent the oldest unequivocal evidence of bipedal locomotion in the human fossil record.

"There were at least two hominins walking in different ways on differently shaped feet at this time in our evolutionary history, showing that the acquisition of human-like walking was less linear than many imagine," said Dartmouth College paleoanthropologist and study co-author Jeremy DeSilva. "In other words, throughout our history, there were different evolutionary experiments in how to be a biped."

The footprints found in 1976 and re-excavated in 2019 bore different traits than those found in 1978, in particular a gait called cross-stepping.

"The trackway consists of five consecutive bipedal footprints. But the left foot is crossing over the right, and vice versa. We aren't sure what this means yet," DeSilva said.

"Cross-stepping sometimes occurs in humans when we are walking on uneven ground. Perhaps that explains this odd gait. Or perhaps just this individual hominin walked in a peculiar manner. Or maybe an unknown species of hominin was adapted to walk in this way," DeSilva added.

Based on the footprints, the researchers estimate that the individual that made them was only a bit taller than 3 feet (1 meter), walked with a prominent heel strike, and had a big toe that stuck out to the side slightly, though not as much as in a chimpanzee.

DeSilva said scientists can only speculate about other aspects of this hominin's appearance and behavior and whether it was one already identified - such as Kenyanthropus platyops or Australopithecus deyiremeda - or a previously unknown one.

The human lineage diverged from the chimpanzee lineage about 6 million to 7 million years ago. A key moment came when our ancestors adopted erect walking on two feet, perhaps adapting to life on the African savanna.

Bipedalism required anatomical changes, particularly in the feet, legs, hips and spine, that evolved long before our species, Homo sapiens, appeared more than 300,000 years ago.

The Laetoli site is a grassland, with acacia trees dotting the landscape and giraffes and zebras plentiful. When the footprints were made, it was a hazardous neighborhood for a little hominin, with ancestors of modern hyenas, lions, and leopards, as well as now-extinct saber-toothed cats, on the prowl.

"Ancestors of a lot of the same animals that live there now lived at Laetoli millions of years ago including, of course, humans," DeSilva said.