Dietrichsen is one of that dwindling band of diplomats who represented both the apartheid regime and South Africa’s new democracy led by President Nelson Mandela.

His memoir contains gems of a unique history that includes the complex and often exasperating transition between the two.

Dietrichsen writes in a detailed, discursive manner that reminds one of the procedural style adopted by writers of the increasingly popular Nordic Noir genre.

Presumably he owes this either to the kilometers of diplomatic drafts he was required to write in a 35 year career in the foreign service or to his Danish heritage, which explains the puzzling title of the book.

Full disclosure, I did military service with the author in D company of the Army Gymnasium in 1967.

He went on to graduate from the Military Academy in Saldhana Bay. He hung up is uniform in 1972 to join the foreign service.

Over the years, we met up a receptions and foreign affairs events – he as a diplomat and public servant, me as a journalist.

This book puts meat on the bones of what I learned about his rather stellar career.

More importantly, it is a concise and well constructed history of the demise of apartheid and the birth of South Africa’s democracy.

Apart from experiences abroad, he played a role driving the rapprochement with neighbouring Mozambique through the Nkomati Accord; in the eventual inauguration of Nelson Mandela as president; and in the formation of the diverse new Department of International Relations.

The book  is elaborately  embroidered with his personal experiences and family tales. 

His three daughters, who have personally distinguished themselves thanks to or perhaps despite his unsettled diplomatic wanderings, add a colourful tailpiece to the book.

They were clearly inspired by their father’s sense of curiosity and adventure and took full advantage of the opportunities provided by his peripatetic lifestyle.

Dietrichsen overcame the disappointment at being pushed aside to make way for an “affirmative” appointment , having been named as ambassador to Indonesia and received agrement  from the host government.

He went on to become ambassador to Switzerland  Liechtenstein  and Ireland.

He left the department in 2007 to accompany his wife on her posting to Hanoi. 

Never one to put up his feet, he has embarked on an academic career training the leaders of tomorrow.

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Surely in this age of social media that gossamer thin excuse has disappeared.

Some Germans might have claimed they did not know about the Nazi genocide until the Nuremberg trials painfully mapped them out.

The Truth and Reconciliation Commission obliterated any ability South Africans might have had to profess ignorance of apartheid’s crimes against humanity.

No Moroccan with a smart phone or personal computer can pretend not to know about that country’s invasion, occupation and lethal repression of the neighbouring Saharawi people..

In all three cases the perpetrators of these outrages or their supporters not only knew exactly what was happening but they have the blood on their hands from backing it to the hilt.

Let us accept that over the years millions have been swept along by the wicked wind of history.

They are not exactly innocent. Just ignorant.

So we should give the benefit of the doubt to the Americans who accepted Donald Trump as President without knowing what he really was.

His conservative support base put him in the White House for the purpose of turning the tide of liberalism that has been washing over the the United States for more than half a century.

They were prepared to put him there despite his bullying, narcism.

They are planning to keep him there to continue that trend even though he represents everything they are taught not to be.

For this to happen, there has to be support, however unwitting, from middle America.

This came from people who either don’t vote for him or will later claim they were swept along by his anti-establishment image and didn’t know what he really represented..

Monday’s bombshell from the New York Times has made that impossible.

Donald Trump has not paid tax for 12 of the past 18 years.

He paid a paltry $750 in each of his first two years as US President. 

The average U.S.tax bill is about $12 000. Trump paid less tax than the undocumented workers he employed at his golf estates and resorts

How has he managed to do this?

For starters he is nowhere near as rich as he claims to be.

So the idea of the offensive, potty-mouthed braggart making himself acceptable because of his business skills is pure cant.

He has been bankrupt more times than he has had years in office.

And his business ventures continue to post millions in losses, despite his pouring into them money earned from his “Apprentice” television series.

These losses, together with some imaginative returns have allowed him to avoid paying taxes.

He claimed $70 000 for personal hairdressing.

He paid his daughter Ivanka $750 000 in consultation fees even though she is already on the family payroll.

That is called double dipping, I believe.

When Hillary Clinton pointed out during their 2016 debate that Trump has paid no taxes on some years, he interrupted her to declare: “That takes me smart!”

Does it? 

Are Americans prepared to pay their share and see their President dodge paying his?

The New York Times, brings up this blatant unfairness, and also points to a national security issue.

Trump owes close to $400 million dollars that will fall due during his second term, if indeed he is re-elected.

The potential embarrassment of having creditors foreclose on a sitting president notwithstanding, the most concerning thing is not knowing if they include foreign countries or individuals.

Trump’s son Eric has boasted that they don’t use American banks because they have  access to Russian funds.

What leverage does this give the Russians over the President?

An audience of 80 million people is expected for the  first debate.

Whether or not Joe Biden is able to capitalize on the bombshell revelations by the New York Times, the American people have been given the truth about the current occupant of the White House.

They will not be able to say we didn’t know.

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by Jean-Jacques Cornish

South Africa’s courts have been a constant in the country’s hazardous path through wicked colonization, cruel apartheid and the vagaries of democracy.

So it is both inevitable and desirable that they should be called upon to rule on events in the biggest crisis the country has faced since the Second World War 75 years ago.

Government has assumed unprecedented powers to deal with the COVID 19 pandemic.

These have had an immediate impact on the rights of South Africans guaranteed in their Constitution that is justifiably the envy of most of the world.

They will also have an unfathomable long term impact on the socio-economic life of South Africa that is euphemistically referred to as challenging.

The first legal foray is being launched by British American Tobacco South Africa and the Fair Trade Independent Tobacco Association.

They argue that the National Coronavirus Command Council has taken measures that fly in the face of individuals right  to choose and are unnecessarily injurious to the exchequer. They further argue that the the NCCC is suffocating the country’s socio economic prospects.

Government counters that the prevention of tobacco and alcohol sales during the lockdown are justified on purely health grounds.

They say these steps have been emulated by Mexico Hong Kong and Greenland.

The second matter to come before the courts is challenging the  constitutional mandate  and the power of NCCC.

President Cyril Ramaphosa is being asked to explain the source of the power he has wielded delegating executive functions to a body that includes some but not all of his Cabinet.

To this, government will cite Constitutional Court President Arthur Chaskalson 1995 ruling outlawing capital punishment.

Judge Chaskalson said that the rights to life and dignity are the most important of them all. In make any ruling on human rights, these have to be placed above all else.

Ramaphosa argues that regulations put in place to combat COVID 19 are founded on government’s commitment to life and dignity.

In extreme circumstances, he holds, it is necessary to put a temporary restriction on other rights like the freedom of choice, movement and association.

Education is at the root of the third legal challenge.

The Tebelia Institute for Leadership, Education, Governance and Training 

and the Africa Institute on Human Rights and Constitutional Litigation are challenging the opening of schools.

They say government cannot keep parents at home to prevent the spread of COVID 19 while sending innocent children to school to save the academic year.

Basic Education Minister Angie Motshekga  says, in effect, it is still up in the air.

She acknowledges that her department has indicated children could be returning to school as early as this week.

However, she says it is only the “education sector” not necessarily the schools themselves that  have opened up today.

As Tom Wolfe said in Bonfire of the Vanities, we are truly now in the web of the law.

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Jean-Jacques Cornish, who covered the Lancaster House Conference that secured him the Zimbabwe Presidency, recalls the man who’s early successes where overshadowed by the ruination caused by his clinging to power.

As president, Robert Mugabe liked to invite me to state house in Harare to recall the Lancaster House conference in London, where he stamped his authority to become Zimbabwe’s first democratically elected leader.

He was a great success for more than a decade  in this role – persuading some of South Africa’s apartheid leaders that a majority government in Africa could work.

But when he used  the land grab to stave off political opposition, he wrecked  his country’s agriculture and economy turning the region’s bread basket into a basket case.

From there it was all downhill for Zimbabwe. 

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The gathering, hosted by the regional grouping SADC, has drawn participation from 28 countries.

At the ministerial meeting, the point was repeated made that international solidarity had been effective in ending colonialism and apartheid.

Morocco, which is responsible for the last act of colonialism in Africa, has tried to deflect attention from this summit by holding a meeting on Western Sahara in Marrakesh.

ANC chairman Gwede Mantashe says Morocco’s  tactic of using the proceeds from stolen Western Sahara resources to buy influence is not surprising.

“I would have expected that from Morocco., because they are exploiting Western Sahara resources. They are using them to by support and they are succeeding,” he said

The Marrakesh meeting broke up yesterday.

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Briefing reporters in Pretoria, Sisulu rejected any comparison between current critics of government policy now using the media and anti apartheid activists seeking international support.

Lindiwe Sisulu says she was pointedly measured in her response to US President Donald Trump’s ill-informed remarks about land seizure in South Africa and the large scale killing of white farmers.

The foreign minister  says she’s given her phone number to her US counterpart Mike Pompeo to avoid a repeat of this.

Government would to sit back and allow pressure groups to spread lies about South Africa.

“The comparison between those people who are lobbying the international community against land reform and the struggle against apartheid is an insult that has no measure,” she says

Apartheid was declared a crime against humanity but  the ANC government, seeking land reform, has committed no crime

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There’s been a furious reaction of social media to Malema’s remarks at the Youth Day rally

Julius Malema declared that black South Africans have suffered more than any other race.

He rounded on Indian journalists for coming to the defence of the deputy secretary general in the Treasury Ishmael Momoniat after EFF chief whip Floyd Shivambu objected to the presence of a non-African at a Parliamentary committee meeting.

Malema said there’s a tendency among South African Indians  to look down on Africans and that there was a hierarchy of oppression under apartheid.  He also said Indians were better off than mixed race South African called Coloureds, who were in turn better off than Africans.

According to Malema, this is why the liberation struggle was to free blacks in general and Africans in particular.

He went on to say that Africans must never apologize for this, and they must never be scared to say most Indians are racist. 

He also claimed that  the majority of Indians hate Africans.

Malema believes that this a reality Africans have to deal with.

This is not an entirely new issue. A year ago Mama infuriated the Indian community saying they exploited African workers and monopolized the economy of the KwaZulu/Natal province where most of them live. 

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With 20-20 hindsight, one see why reviewers had problems with this book which is a first draft of the Pullizer Prize winner’s classic “To Kill A Mockingbird”.

It was dishonestly feted by the profit-driven publisher as a sequel.

So this a story of Southern manners, iconoclasm and coming of realization is often irritatingly naive precisely because the true craftswoman had not yet come into its own.

However her potential shines through every page

With the hyper cautious lenses required in politically correct South Africa one is amazed that the lamentable racism attributed to the heroine’s father is even given ink.

I like to think that growing up, starting work as a journalist and  coming of age  in the darkest part of apartheid has given me an understanding of the fear-based bigotry that drove much of the United States in the same period.

Their liberating period of hope and idealism came more than a decade before ours – indeed it was part of the inspiration for ours.

Our periods of disillusionment have disturbingly coincided.

This book is well worth reading because it is a first draft of history and the early work of one of the greatest American writers of the 20th century.

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Reporters Without Borders says Apartheid era legislation and the 2004 terrorism laws are used to limit South African media  coverage of institutions in which national interest is supposedly at stake.

Reporters Without Borders’ annual barometer says Norway, Sweden and Finland have the freest media on the planet.

Namibia number 24, Ghana at number 26, Cape Verde, one place below that, and 31st placed South Africa are the top scorers on the continent.

At the bottom of the 180-nation table is North Korea with Eritrea only just place ahead.

Fifty two journalists died doing their jobs during 2017 and 178 were jailed by angry authorities.

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