Consumers received another shock when electricity tariffs for the next two years were hiked after the National Regulator of SA (Nersa) said it found errors in its price determination announced in January.
Writing in his weekly newsletter, From the Desk of a President, President Cyril Ramaphosa called on South Africans to work together to build a society where corruption is unable to take root.
The Madlanga Commission of Inquiry into criminality, political interference and corruption in the criminal justice system got underway.
In a wandering speech to the United Nations, which contained no shortage of false claims and contradictions, US President Donald Trump dismissed climate change as “the greatest con job ever perpetrated on the world” and blasted wind farms and other renewable energy projects.
EFF leader, Julius Malema, was found guilty of the unlawful possession of a firearm and ammunition, discharging a firearm in a public space, failure to take reasonable precautions to avoid dangers to persons and reckless endangerment. Calling the decision “racist”, he has vowed to fight the sentence.
The KwaZulu-Natal government of provincial unity (GPU) was on shaky ground amid growing calls from within the ANC for the party’s withdrawal from the coalition government. Compromising the IFP, DA and ANC, the KZN GPU has faced turbulence since its formation in June 2024.
The factional fights amongst the police top brass were again brought into sharp relief at the Madlanga Commission of Inquiry, further eroding public confidence in SAPS’ ability to deal with the rising crime levels.
The Gauteng Division of the High Court of Pretoria gave former president Jacob Zuma 60 days to pay back nearly R29-million, plus interest, in state money that was unlawfully used to pay his legal fees and related expenses.
After much waiting, debating, and negotiating, the President announced an expanded GNU cabinet consisting of 32 ministers and 43 deputy ministers. Meanwhile, the country braced itself for a rocky ride, with the president having to navigate a landscape of competing interests while striving to maintain balance, coherence, and unity within his own party.
In the first contentious vote in the National Assembly since the formation of the Government of National Unity (GNU), the DA, FF and several smaller parties broke ranks with their ANC partner over the election of the disgraced Judge John Hlophe to serve on the Judicial Services Commission (JSC).
South Africa felt the impact of global warming as large parts of KwaZulu-Natal were devastated by severe fires while Cape Town was hit by heavy rain, gale-force winds and flooding. According to climate modelling studies and research, the country will become prone to more heat waves, drought and heavy rainfall.
MPs aligned to the Government of National Unity grouping, which includes the ANC, DA and IFP, rallied behind President Cyril Ramaphosa amid attacks from the progressive caucus composed of MPs from the uMkhonto we Sizwe Party (MK) and the EFF.
The Gauteng Division of the High Court ruled that health legislation requiring doctors and health practitioners to obtain a çertificate of need before being allowed to practice in a particular area was unconstitutional. The requirement had been a cornerstone of the proposed National Health Insurance.
The seemingly fragile KwaZulu-Natal government of national unity proved to be resilient in face of speculations that the uMkhonto we Sizwe Party’s (MK Party) dominance in the KZN Provincial Legislature would undermine it.
Maritzburg United, the oldest professional football team in Pietermaritzburg, decided to relocate to Durban, drawing to a close an era and a long-standing battle to secure a “home ground” at the Harry Gwala Stadium.
EFF Deputy-President Floyd Shivambu defected to the recently-formed MK Party, led by Jacob Zuma, causing its biggest rupture since the party was launched eleven years before. Shivambu, who had been implicated in the VBS scandal, had been promised a senior position in the party alongside several state-capture suspects whom Zuma had recently appointed as MPs.
An investigation revealed that Justice Minister Thembi Simelane took a loan of more than a half million rand from an organisation that brokered unlawful investments into the VBS Bank by the Polokwane Municipality – while she was mayor of the city in 2016. Amongst those calling for her to step down were the EFF who had also been implicated in the VBS scandal.
“The rich,” Scott Fitzgerald remarked “are different from you and me”. Reading Tom Burgis’s caustic, witty and, frequently, chilling, book which lays bare the control the super-rich now have, one can only but ruefully agree with the veracity of that observation.
Over the last several decades, the gap between the rich and the poor has, of course, grown even wider despite many governments’ empty promises to do something about it. This, in turn, has placed more and more power and influence in the hands of the extremely wealthy. All too often, the malign influence of their actions on the rest of the population and on the political and social fabric has gone unchecked.
In his meticulously researched expose Burgis, an award-winning investigative journalist, focuses on one man who believes his immense wealth has not only bought him immunity but the power to choose what he wants reality to be and impose it on the world – the Mombasa-born millionaire “dealmaker”, Mohamed Amersi. Determined to figure out who he really is, Burgis has dug into his business dealings, following a tawdry trail that leads him to countries run by criminals where liberal reforms have been blocked and corruption has condemned generation after generation to penury and strife.
Nor has Amersi just confined his dealings to repressive regimes in Russia, Kazakhstan and Uzbekistan. He has done his best to insinuate himself into favour in the supposed liberal democracies. As his fortune has multiplied and his list of (often unsavoury) contacts has grown so, too, has Amersi been studiously careful to reposition himself as a caring philanthropist and thought leader, intent on helping humanity. From his various estates in rural England, he continues to declare himself firmly against corruption. He has even been invited to deliver a lecture on the subject to Oxford’s School of Government.
His wealth has also bought him access to Britain’s elected rulers with the Conservative Party, in particular, being a major recipient of Amersi’s beneficence. Just how powerful a figure he has become in the land was confirmed when he was invited to Dumfries in Scotland to have dinner with the then Prince Charles where he undertook to support his various charitable causes. Impressed by Amersi’s character, the two continued to meet.
With his high self-regard and big fortune, it is hardly surprising that Amersi is openly contemptuous of journalists of the Burgis sort. In their interviews he not only constantly belittles the writer’s intelligence – Burgis faithfully records many of his put-downs – but he tosses out incriminating evidence confident the journalist would back off from using it when faced with his veiled threats, as well as access to expensive top-notch lawyers who specialise in libel cases.
In this, he seems to have misjudged Burgis who went ahead and published his account, despite the threats of very expensive legal action. The resultant book reads like a real-life thriller. Full of deft observations and dry, sardonic humour, it opens the lid on a world where rich, often amoral, businessmen – aided by self-serving politicians -think they can use their vast fortunes to intimidate others into silence while moulding the truth in a way that best suits them; what the author refers to as the “privatisation of reality”. Hopefully, as long as there are good investigative journalists in the Burgis mould around, they will never completely succeed.
Published by Atlantic Books
America may now be the greatest colossus in history but the tectonic plates are shifting and its status as the world’s dominant superpower is increasingly being challenged by the rise of China as an economic and political force. This, in essence, is the subject matter of Sir Robin Niblett’s latest book The New Cold War: How the Contest Between the US and China Will Shape our Century. The author’s central thesis is that the West has entered a new Cold War, one in which the rules are very different to those that applied in the days of the old Soviet Union.
With two diametrically opposed systems of government – the one opaque, state-controlled and intent on imposing uniformity of thought and action; the other based on free market economics, capitalist entrepreneurship, personal freedoms and the rights of the individual – it was seemingly inevitable that tensions should have escalated between the two nations in recent years.
In this growing contest, it has not helped that America has become a deeply divided, strife-torn nation full of self-doubt and no longer sure of what its status is or how best to manage it relationships with the rest of the world. The gridlock in America’s politics has, for example, caused a great deal of anxiety among its traditional allies with Trump’s threats and actions, during his presidency, reawakening European fears of abandonment just when a combined strategy on China is most urgently needed.
Although they no longer share the same communist ideology, Vladimir Putin’s own mounting tensions with the West – especially since his invasion of Ukraine – has driven him to align Russia more closely with China although his country is no longer the powerhouse it once was. Both countries are now actively seeking to draw others into their orbit of influence (as we have seen only too clearly in South Africa under the ANC). Linked to this is another factor affecting the future balance of world power – the growing role and economic clout of those nations which, formerly, used to constitute the non-aligned movement but are now more commonly referred to as the Global South.
Looming large over the whole picture and complicating matters still further is the growing awareness that the amazing human progress enabled by economic globalization came with an ominous downside: climate change. The implications are huge. If we breach 2 degrees C of global warming above pre-industrial levels, as is distinctly possible, it will trigger catastrophic environmental damage. As the author warns – it “is a systematic problem that does not respect international boundaries…It will require a system-level response to which all countries contribute.”
To negotiate this highly polarised world with its “us versus them” mindset and averting the risk of outright conflict with China from becoming a self-fulfilling prophecy, will require great skill and understanding. In his concluding chapter, Niblett, a leading expert on international relations, makes numerous suggestions as to how we can best achieve this. Thoroughly researched and written with great fluency and skill, his book is as useful a guide as you would want to understand the great challenges facing our age.
As the government’s financial woes worsened, Finance Minister Enoch Godongwana slashed the department’s spending as part of an initiative to conserve money and avert a “fiscal crisis”.
As the matric class 2023 sat for final examinations youth unemployment remained distressingly high.
The murder rate in South Africa reached its highest mark in twenty years, with the police powerless to arrest the rising tide of death.
Dozens of state employees who work at a government department in the Pietermaritzburg city centre had to flee their building because of a rat infestation.
There was chaos at the Durban port as the facility battled a backlog of shipping containers that needed to be processed. Some 57 ships, some heavily laden with festive season goods for the retail industry, were anchored in the outer holding facility awaiting permission to enter the port and offload their cargo.
The announcement that Arcelor-Mittal was to close its long steel operations in Newcastle and Vereeniging delivered a devastating blow to the economies of both towns with up to 3500 jobs on the line. The company attributed some of the reasons for the closure to include the current energy crisis and the collapse of South Africa’s logistics and transport infrastructure.
Humanity faced a ‘devastating domino effect’ as the planet warmed, scientists warned as world leaders met for the Cop 28 climate summit in Dubai.
The IFP were the latest party to reject the ANC-backed National Health Bill (NHI). Critics of the bill said it was unworkable in its current form and ran the risk of collapsing an already struggling healthcare system.
Former president Jacob Zuma created another headache for the ruling ANC when he announced, at a press briefing in Johannesburg, that he would be voting for the newly-formed uMkhonto weSizwe party in the 2024 elections.
According to the opposition Democratic Alliance, Msunduzi is far worse now than it was before it was placed under the “selective” and “ineffective administration, which served only to placate ratepayers rather than deal with the problems that had bought the city to its knees”. It is a view shared by many ordinary citizens who continue to voice their concerns over the ever-increasing signs of neglect and poor maintenance.
The Arctic is unravelling faster than anyone could have imagined just a few decades ago. Scientists have warned that the Greenland Ice Sheet, for example, is no longer growing. Instead of gaining new ice every year, it has begun to lose roughly 51billion metric tons annually, discharged into the ocean as melt-water and icebergs.
In the United States, President Donald Trump was condemned by opponents for firing the senior official who disputed his baseless claims of election fraud as the president pressed on with his his increasingly desperate battle to overturn Joe Biden’s victory. This despite the fact that officials declared 3 November’s contest between Trump and Biden the most secure US election ever.
Former President Jacob Zuma continued to duck and dive and do everything thing he could to avoid facing justice. Having briefly appeared before the state capture commission to hear whether his recusal application for commission chair Ray Zondo had been granted he disappeared, without being excused, during the tea break. The commission adjourned to reflect on what to do next.
There were mounting fears that Msunduzi could face a massive blackout if the municipality does not urgently deal with the persistent outages that have severely compromised the network. The City’s electricity problems was also strangling the local economy and some businesses were even considering leaving Pietermaritzburg for towns with more stable power supply.
South Africa has entered a second wave of Covid infections, breaching 6 000 new cases, Health Minister Zweli Mkhize said in a special television broadcast. The peak age bracket is now between 16 and 19. “It’s believed to be due to a large number of parties involving young people drinking alcohol with no adherence to non-pharmaceutical interventions, wearing of no masks and social distancing and hand sanitising not taking place,” Mkhize said.
In an address to the nation, President Cyril Ramaphosa, announced a tightening of Covid-19 restrictions, including the closure of KZN beaches during the main days of the festive season. He attributed part of the cause of the second wave of infections to a lack of compliance with safety measure such as social distancing.
In the wake of a year dominated by Covid-19, being cautious is probably the best thing you could do over the festive period so I decided to make that the subject of my Christmas cartoon.
2020 was a truly terrible year and I think most people were glad to see the back of it – hence my New Year cartoon…
Literature and butterflies are the two sweetest passions known to man.
Vladimir Nabokov.
A host of butterflies. I took this pic near Barberton, Mpumalanga.
It is 7.30 am and I am taking my usual nosey wander down the path that leads from my house to the Kusane river. It is a beautiful, balmy, sun-filled, day. Suddenly a butterfly – or rather a butterfly and its passenger – alights on a plant just to my right.
In the past I would have just cast a cursory glance in their direction and then proceeded on my way.
This time I stop, grab my old Canon out of its bag and start snapping away. The reason for this is that I have recently been given a field guide to the butterflies of South Africa* to review and suddenly I have become enamoured with the subject.
I circle around the butterfly, trying to get closer and closer, angling in for the perfect shot. I have no idea what the butterfly is but as soon as I get home I will get out the book and try and identify it, looking for its most distinctive features (as a political cartoonist I have had a lot of experience in this – it is what I do when a new president or other public figure appears). I will also look at the butterflies habits and distribution, hunting for those tell-tale clues that might aid me in my search.
African Monarch (Danaus chrysippus), Kusane Farm.
Then I will add it to my list.
As an artist my approach to nature has always been more sentimental than scientific. I am attracted by the lyrical rather than the factual. I look for beauty and seek solace in my natural surroundings. I love the intense intimacy you can develop with your local landscape over time.
All of which makes it strange that I have neglected – although not completely ignored – butterflies for so long because if anything inspires a sense of wonder in nature they do.
I am determined to remedy this. I have probably left it rather late in life to ever become anything like an expert but you have to start somewhere. And, because it is so open, Kusane Farm seems a good place to begin. Also, I live here.
A Pirate Butterfly (Catacroptera cloanthe cloanthe) about to take off. Note small beetles. Kusane.
In spring and summer we get lots of wild flowers coming up in the mist-belt grasslands, especially after a burn. That serves as a magnet for the nectar-loving insect.
It is 7.30 am again and I am back on the familiar path hoping to carry on where I left off before. Around me the swallows are diving and swooping with quick forward thrusts. There is a strong impression of activity and movement everywhere.
I home in on a butterfly which has landed in a cluster of flowers.
As I approach it, it glides off, stalls, hovers and drops down on to another flower with closed wings. Out comes its long, thin, tube-like proboscis and inserting it in to the flower it proceeds to feed. Once it has sated itself, off it goes in search of the next flower.
Everywhere I look there are other butterflies doing the same.
Their flight paths seem wildly erratic, they keep making continual adjustments to their speed, direction and angle of flight. Unlike most birds or bees, you don’t get that sense they know where they are going.
And yet they obviously do.
Sometimes – as happens in the annual migration of the Brown-veined White Butterfly (Belenois aurota) which takes place at midsummer each year – they come floating by in straggly groups for days on end. There are thousands and thousands of them in seemingly endless flight. I was amazed to read, in my guide, that this particular species originate in the dry Karoo and Kalahari where they gather in their millions and take to the sky heading in a southerly to easterly direction up through the East Cape and Kwa Zulu – Natal to the Mozambique coastline.
Brown-veined White (aka Pioneer Caper White)…
…on mid-summer migration. Kusane.
That is a long way to fly for something so fragile and small.
What makes this mass migration even more astonishing is that the butterflies need precisely timed stopovers for feeding – which means they need to find flowers growing at regular intervals.
This can’t be easy since to fuel this epic marathon they probably have to harvest hundreds of flowers a day.
The other question which kept whizzing around my brain, as I stood watching them zig-zagging their way across the farm, was this – how can a creature with such a pin-size brain navigate and keep track of its position?! I must confess I have no explanation. As happens everywhere in nature, there still are many unanswered questions, which intrigue amateurs at least as much as scientists.
My butterfly list, so far, is not very long and includes no rarities, just your common varieties (although back in 2018, when I was in Marakele, I did see a Kransberg Widow, a very rare and beautiful butterfly which briefly appears during November and early-December and only occurs on this particular mountain. Unfortunately, I did not get a photograph of it).
I hope to rectify that.
To an outsider this making of lists probably seems like a strange passion, one bordering on obsession. Almost a perversion. They may be right. I don’t care. For me it is all part of the thrill of the chase.
As a long-standing twitcher, I have experienced the sense of excitement and privilege which comes from finding something special (a Pel’s Fishing Owl, Narina Trogon, African Broadbill, Rudd’s Apalis, Southern Banded Snake Eagle, Palm-nut Vulture, a pale, female, morph form of the Eurasian Honey Buzzard – to name a few). That thrill grows even stronger when you come across what we interpret as a “rarity” or a “vagrant” (my list is probably topped by the Gull-billed Tern which I got at Nyamithi Pan in Ndumo Game Reserve in Zululand).
Already I am picking up some valuable tips and learning some important life-lessons as I pursue my quarry and record my sightings.
I have discovered, for example, that while we humans may abhor them in our gardens, butterflies simply love weeds. The irritating black jack, which you find so annoying because it sticks to your clothes when you brush past it, seems to be a particular favourite of theirs.
Garden Acraea (Acraea horta) on blackjack flower, Kusane.
This in turn has caused a major rethink on my part. Suddenly I am far more reluctant to pull these bothersome plants out of my flower garden and toss them to the chickens to turn in to mulch. They fulfil a role. They feed the butterflies who I want to attract to my garden. I want the butterflies to look upon my home as their home.
With climate change already taking its toll, one wonders what will happen to the humble, unassuming, butterfly in the future? Will they be able to evolve or adjust their behaviour?
Rising temperatures, associated with climate change, have already begun to change birds schedules. Many have started moving south.
When I first arrived in KwaZulu-Natal, for example, it was unusual to see the Wooly-necked Stork south of the Zululand parks. An uncommon resident they were regarded as a wetland species associated with lagoons, ponds and rivers. In recent years they have started showing up in increasing numbers in cities such as Pietermaritzburg and Durban, in a sense swapping one habitat for another.
A Wooly-necked Stork in Pietermaritzburg suburbia, ignoring metal imposters. Picture courtesy of Mark Wing.
Some plants are also making this latitudinal shift.
I would imagine the same is happening to butterflies although I don’t know enough about them to be sure. Assuming that tree and flower-blossoming times are also changing it seems likely though.
What I do know for certain, is that I hope they will always be around. If the ancient Greek Goddess, Gaea – the first deity to be born after Chaos, the gaping emptiness – is seen as the personification of the earth and the Mother of Everything Beautiful, then the unassuming butterfly must, surely, be one of her most potent and miraculous symbols?
GALLERY:
Herewith a selection of photographs, showing some of the butterflies in our area:
African Blue Pansy, Kusane
Angled Grass Yellow, Kusane.
Common Zebra Blue, Kusane
Dark Blue Pansy, Kusane.
Forest Swallowtail (aka Bush Kite), Karkloof Forest.
Narrow Green-banded Swallowtail, Kusane
Painted Lady, Kusane
Pea Blue, kusane.
Pirate, Kusane
Polka Dot, Kusane
Rainforest Brown, Kusane.
Garden Inspector, Kusane.
Southern Gaudy Commodore, Kusane.
Vine Leaf Vagrant, Kusane.
Yellow Pansy, Kusane
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* Field Guide to Butterflies of South Africa by Steve Woodhall (published by Struik Nature).
Stidy's Eye 