The German leader stepped all over Ramaphosa’s  careful explanation of why South African abstained in a United Nations General Assembly vote condemning Russian aggression.

Ramaphosa carefully added that his German counterpart had understood South Africa’s wish for negotiation, dialogue and engagement to end what hecalled “the conflict”, carefully avoiding taking any sides.

“I don’t see any other way,” said Ramaphosa.

“Sanctions against apartheid were different to the sanctions imposed on Russia.

“What really ended apartheid was negotiation.

“Our position will be to end the conflict through negotiation and Chancellor Scholz understands that.”

Without hesitation Scholz countered: “We agree that the war in Ukraine is a war of aggression by Russia to conquer territory that does not belong to it.

“Ukraine must be give the ability to defend its territorial integrity and sovereignty.

“There must be no new delimitation of the Ukraine border,” he said, adding for his host’s benefit that the Kenya’s  President Uhuru Keyatta had acknowledged this at the United Nations.

“We are giving financial support and humanitarian assistance to Ukraine along with other European countries

.” said Scholz

“Ukraine must be able to defend itself and this is why we though sanctions against Russia are necessary.

“We discussed South Africa’s action in the UNGA and how this differs from Germany’s position .

“We are doing our utmost  to stop the war and get Russia to withdraw its forces from Ukraine.

“We want to see the restoration of Ukraine’s territorial sovereignty and integrity.

“We also discussed the global implications of Russia’s aggression in Ukraine.  Many countries in Asia, Africa and America are affected.”

Scholz confirmed Germany was supplying weapons, along with other countries, to enable Ukraine to defend itself and said he supported excluding Russia from the G20 summit and inviting Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky.

Scholz said Germany  intended stopping oil imports from Russia by the end of this year and also finding alternative LNG sources to those currently coming from Russia.

Germany intends having  a carbon neutral economy by 2045.

In this regard he and Ramaphosa will be visiting Sasolburg, south of Johannesburg later today for the launch of a green hydrogen project 

ends

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The ripple effect of the world’s 13th largest carbon emitter making such an undertaking will likely drive countries like Indonesia,India, Russia Brazil and Malaysia  to make more substantive pledges at the 26th conference of the parties on climate change.

With this mind, the climate envoys of Britain, France, the United States, Germany and the European Union are currently in South Africa.

They are seeing government , trades union, financial bodies, non governmental organisations and the energy generator ESCOM pressing for such a commitment.

Realising that it entails a monumental cost in jobs and to the fiscus the envoys are offering financial assistance.

No less than 90% of electricity generated by ESCOM’s is coal fired.

South Africa’s dependence on carbon-generated power has not diminished since it hosted the 17th COP in Durban a decade ago.

Indeed new plants like Madupe will ensure South Africa’s reliance on coal for decades to come.

But as generating sustainable energy becomes cheaper, coal-fired power become more expensive and increasingly difficult to finance..

The language in mining and energy sectors grown increasingly pro-transformation.

This is reflected in South Africa in recent pronouncements by SASOL – the oil from coal giant – and Ashanti.

The European Union is demanding tariffs that punish coal use.

The climate envoys are concentrating more on carrot than stick in their talks to a fellow G20 member committed to transformation.

Diplomatic sources say an agreement on helping finance this radical change in energy thinking will be a game changer.

Most importantly, it would come at a time when climate experts are saying the crisis is not decades or even years away but is with us right now.

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Waiting for the sms from the vaccine authority seems rather like standing in an orderly queue for a lifeboat on the Titanic. Admirable, but unwise.

Completing the process at the DisChem headquarters in Midrand took five hours.

Sure it was a Ben Hur, but without exception every Dischem employee I encountered – from the guard who showed us our place in the queue to director Stan Gates who walked into the “recovery room” to ask recipients how things were progressing  – was obviously bent on being helpful.

It was one of the seminal new South African experiences: along with the first democratic election in 1994 and hosting the Football Word Cup in 2010.

We were in this fight against COVID together, and determined to beat the lurgy.

On social media I learn that many friends have received their vaccine must quicker and more efficiently. Good luck, I say to them. We are in this fight together.

It seems that all of us now have to wait 42 days to get the second jab.

There is a bid to tell us this is the most efficacious application of the vaccine. I don’t believe it.

We are being made to wait so that more people can get the first dose of the limited supplies of  vaccine available.

Remember the people now telling us about the need to wait are the same people whe were telling us 14 months ago that we did not need masks because they were afraid we would gobble up the available masks to the detriment of the health workers.

So wait I will.

Not at all sure where I will go to get the second jab. It would be great to avoid the five-hour process at GenChem, even if this means missing another chance to see  my new-found pandemic friends.

Discovery boss Adrian Gore has written a letter saying members should try the sites being set up by his medical aid society.

He seems confident there will be enough Pfizer to dispense the second injections.

From his mouth to God’s ear!

President Cyril Ramaphosa just tightened a band of cold steel around my testicles – metaphorically speaking, of course – telling us that South Africa would chuck out two million does of Johnson & Johnson vaccine.

He’s blaming a contamination scare at its source in the the United States.

To his credit, Ramaphosa acted swiftly, decisively and courageously locking down South Africa early on in the pandemic.

However his government’s record in dispensing the vaccine this year as been less than impressive. Plainly speaking it has been marked by dithering and, by all accounts, corruption.

That is the antithesis of the British experience where Boris Johnson fiddled at the start of the pandemic, costing thousands of lives, but has done a sterling job of getting vaccine into Britons’ arms.

Could the G7 come to our aid?

At their summit in Cornwall last weekend, the leaders of Britain, France, the United States, Germany, Japan, Canada and Italy committed themselves to providing a billion doses of vaccine to poorer countries within the year.

Critics say this is a drop in the ocean for the developing world that needs at least ten times that amount.

We can talk about lifting the intellectually property rights to allow vaccine to be manufactured in South Africa, Senegal and other countries ready and able to do it.

If successful, that would be months away.

We need a quicker solution if we are to achieve the much vaunted herd mentality and avoid the plethora of variants to which we no longer may attach a national appellation.

Away with the political correctness and down with the blame game, I say with unashamed selfishness as I prepare to line up for my second dose.

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The mendacious Mediterranean kingdom sought to take advantage of the continental talkshop’s leadership paralysis.

Using PAP official stationery, a certain Roger Nkodo attacks the European Parliament for criticizing Morocco’s cynical use of refugees in a spat with Spain.

Nkodo purports to be a past president of the PAP and a goodwill ambassador of the African body.

Through its clerk, the PAP fired back: “Nkodo is is not a goodwill ambassador or a past president of the PAP and does not hold any position in PAP that entitles him to speak on behalf of PAP.

“His statement did not originate in PAP. It is his own personal statement without reference to or authority of the PAP.” 

Morocco is well used to being slapped down by European countries for playing fast and loose with the truth.

In recent months Germany reminded the kingdom that it holds no legal authority of Western Sahara.

A Spanish court summarily dismissed a glaringly fake legal bid by Morocco to have the Saharawi President Brahim Ghali tried for human rights abuses.

Madrid rejected Moroccan criticism for allowing Ghali to receive treatment for COVID in a Spanish hospital.

Morocco responded angrily to this by removing its guards around the Spanish enclave of Ceuta, allowing thousands of Moroccan refugees to stream onto Spanish territory.

The European Parliament rapped this action by Morocco.

Morocco has  recently return to the African family, decades after storming out of the OAU when it recognized the Saharawi Arab Democratic Republic which has been illegally occupied by Morocco since 1975.

It is seeking to establish stronger ties with African countries, using its revenue as the largest importer of dagga into Europe.

It has skin in the game of the PAP leadership imbroglio, providing finance and private jet for the Malian candidate Haidra Aichata Cisse.

Undercover payments are not uncommon in African politics where they are euphemistically known as pot au vin or matabiche.

It remains to be seen how long African leaders will tolerate their new member’s bare faced lies.

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The practical issues of fighting the pandemic is best summed up in the assertion that no-one if safe until everyone is safe.

The moral issues, equally plain, have been more problematic as rich nations grab more of the vaccine than they need to save their faltering economies.

The foreign ministers of Britain, Canada, France, Germany, Italy, Japan  and the United States had a packed agenda preparing for next month’s G7 summit to be hosted in Britain.

In pre-meeting briefings they listed Russia, Myanmar and Iran ahead of COVID a.

Then members of the Indian delegation – invited as observers along with Australia, the Association of South East Asian Nations, the European Union, South Africa and South Korea- reported cases of COVID and were forced into self-isolation.

India and Brazil are responsible for the overwhelming majority of COVID cases as the pandemic goes into its third wave.

The media covering the deliberations at Lancaster House in London’s West End have eyes for nothing else.

Former British Prime Minister Gordon Brown set the moral tone calling on the G7 to fund the global push for COVID vaccine.

Speaking as the UN Envoy for Global Education he called on the richest nations raise $60 billion over two years, saying inaction now would lead to greater global division.

“By our failure to extend vaccination more rapidly to every country, we are choosing who lives and who dies”, he warned. 

“And I say the world is already too deeply divided between rich and poor to allow a new unbridgeable divide to become entrenched between the world’s vaccinated who live, and the under-vaccinated who are at risk of dying.” 

Brown asserted that mass global vaccination is not an act of charity, but “the best insurance policy for the world”.  Though costing billions now, the result will be “trillions of additional economic output, made possible when trade resumes in a COVID-free world.” 

Brown will be remembered as the British premier who hosted the G20 summit in 2009, where the world’s major economies committed an additional $1.1 trillion to address the fallout from the global financial crisis,  

World Health Organization  chief Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus thanked Brown for his call to the world’s economic and political leaders. 

“The G7 are also home to many of the world’s vaccine producers. We will only solve the vaccine crisis with the leaders of these countries”, he said.

For those of a more cynical or dubious bent, a poll by the People’s Vaccine Alliance shows that70 percent of G7 citizens believe their governments should ensured pharmaceutical companies share the formulas and technology of their vaccines.

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Not surprisingly France’s President Emmanuel Macron was among the first world leaders to congratulate Joe Biden on winning the US Presidency.

Paris and Washington have a crowded schedule of business, starting with Biden bringing the United State back into the climate change agreement signed  in the French capital four years ago.

Biden will be an extremely welcome participant at the climate summit in Scotland.

France continues to control the file on this make-or-break issue for the world.

Running close behind welcoming America’s more prominent green agenda , France is looking for increased US support for the initiative to fight Islamist jihadis in the that strip of land between North Africa and the Sahara Desert known as the Sahel.

President Donald Trump has effectively told Macron that this French-led initiative is to Paris’ account.

Washington’s has given $8,5 million to Chad to help it counter ISIS terrorism.

This pales next to the boots on the ground and cash contributed to the G5 comprising Chad, Mali, Burkina Faso, Niger and Mauritania.

The group was set up in 2014 when Mauritania held the AU presidency.

It has been underpinned by two resolution of the United Nations Security Council.

The world organization has committed 10 000 troops to its anti terror group in the region known as MINUSMA.

France has put its muscle where its mouth is with 3 000 troops from Operation Barkhane .

France stepped into drive out the Islamists who took advantage of a 2012  coup in Mali.

Things have become vary complicated since then and France could do with help form a fellow permanent Western member of the UN powerhouse.

Ibrahim Boubakar Keita, installed in 2012, was unseated in another coup last August which led to Bah Ndaw becoming become the interim president.

Further confusing things, Amadou Toumani Tourè, who led Mali for a decade during which he introduced democratic reforms before he deposed in the 2012 putsch, died in Turkey this week.

It will be impressed on Biden that Germany has provided 900 troops to the Sahel operation and the European Union  has chipped in 50million euros.

Even the cash-strapped African Union has contributed $3 million.

The world is waiting on the new administration in Washington.

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Assailed by things deadly, horrible, inexplicable and invisible we naturally ask why?

That plaintive question bridges, race, gender, class, identity and education.

Why is COVID 19 killing more men than women?

Why is the accursed virus proving more deadly to minorities in the northern hemisphere countries were it now rages?

My guess is we will still be asking these and other questions by the time a vaccine is discovered and tested.

One recurring question, however, bears immediate examination: why are women leaders dealing with the pandemic better than men.

I think immediately of Germany’s Angela Merkel, New Zealand’s Jacinda Ardern, Finland’s Sanna Marin, Norway’s Erna Solberg, Iceland’s Katrin Jakobsdottir and Taiwan’s Tsai Ing-Wen.

They constitute a healthy slice of the 7% of female heads of government on the planet.

How does one judge a leader’s performance in the worst international crisis since World War II?

It might actually be too bold to make a judgement before we can more accurately gauge the economic disaster brought on by the virus and the lockdown to keep it out.

We might have to reconsider after seeing what is left of the economies that were opened up..

But for now we know that the severity of the pandemic is determined by three things: population density, exposure to travelers carrying the virus across borders and the speed with which borders were closed and people forced into lockdown.

Leadership had little to do with the first two points, but it can be judged on the third.

The severity of the pandemic was substantially lower when leaders acted sooner to lockdown – even by a week.

This flattened the curve , reduced the RO factor which is the  number of people each coronavirus victim infects and prevented new cases.

There were male leaders who acted swiftly. 

But those who stand out now: US President Donald Trump, British Prime Minister  Boris Johnson and Brazil’s Jair Bolsonaro down-played the risk of COVID 19 until it was too late.

By contrast each of the woman mentioned above acted days sometime weeks ahead of their neighbours.

In doing so they took the  bold and unpopular step of closing down life as they knew it against an invisible enemy.

Despite the dishonest bluster and backsliding of their President, 80% of American males still picked men  when asked to name leaders they most admire.

Nearly three-quarters of men believe they are more intelligent than their peers.

By comparison 57% of woman believe they are smarter than average.n

They don’t suffer the over-confidence of men, preferring to seek input and listen in order to make decisions that support communities.

They engage diverse advisers and a wide network of opinions, building teams rather than trusting their own judgement and instincts as men tend to do.

Women acknowledged for being “other directed” and emotionally intelligent are showing themselves in this crisis to be every bit as  decisive and transformational as men by excelling on vision, inspiration, direction setting and thinking outside the box.

Perhaps there is something instinctive about turning to a woman in matters of physical hurt.

When you grazed your knee, bumped your head or cut your finger, who did you turn to first?

Why, Mum, of course.

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President Cyril Ramaphosa had his work cut out when he took on the chairmanship of the African Union this year.

He is committed to steering the continental body along its final bumpy stretch of road to the ambitious goal of silencing the Guns in 2020.

More importantly, the bean counters argue, he  has to oversee  the final implementation of the African Free Trade Agreement.

Both of these face an existential threat from COVID 19.

Silencing the guns means ending all wars, civil conflict, violence conflict, and gender-based violence on the continent.

Herculean does not being to describe this task.

Since their inception, African conflicts have gobbled up the lion’s share of United Nations peacekeeping operations.

Deploying the blue helmets currently takes up an amount approaching $8 billion a year. That is $1 billion more than the overall budget of the world organisation.

Of the 13 active UN peacekeeping operations around the planet, no fewer than seven – Western Sahara, Darfur, Central African Republic, Abyei, South Sudan, Mali and the Democratic Republic of Congo – are in Africa.

The latter is the largest and most expensive blue helmet operation, taking up 20 000 of the 100 000 UN peacekeepers deployed worldwide.

To put some perspective on this, the number of UN troops deployed in the DRC is half the number of US troops stationed in Germany.

The United States currently picks up 28% of the UN peacekeeping tab which is less than one percent of total US defense spending – about as much as Washington spends in a month on its military operation in Afghanistan.

African leaders have for a time sought to pay more for peacekeeping in their determination to give credibility to the principle of African solutions for African problems. 

The best they can manage is a 25:75 split in costs with  the UN and this has yet to be inked.

As the battle with the COVID 19 pandemic turns the G7 economies on their heads, African countries know that they will feel the cost even  more keenly.

They are having to go to the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund for money simply to feed their people.

The Bretton Woods institutions are obliged to make their assistance conditional on the recipients adhering to strict austerity policies.

Silencing the Guns and implementing an African Free Trade Agreement are undeniably desirable.

Silencing the Nevertheless AU chairman Cyril Ramaphosa will be hard pressed to convince the lenders that these projects take priority over fiscal discipline and  financing the bare necessities.  

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They say they’re echoing the call by United Nations Secretary General Antonio Guterres.

The ceasefire call comes from French Foreign Minister Yves le Drian and his counterparts from Germany  Heiko Maas and Italy Luigi Di Mayo.

EU foreign policy chief Joseph Borrell has endorsed the call which was spurred by the refusal of Tripoli’s  Government of National Accord led by Fayez Al Sarraj to accept an EU blockade of Libya to enforce the United Nations arms embargo.

The government, which is backed by the UN, says the naval action has failed to stop weapons getting through to rebels led by Khalifa Haftar who are bent on occupying the capital. 

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President Nana Akufo Ado says the relaxation of the stay-home will be tailored, adding that it was doing enormous harm to the country’s poor.

ends 

The Ghanaian cities of Accra and Kumasi opened at the same time as cities in German and Denmark and India.

There are still restrictions in the West African state.

Busses and taxis have to carry a mimum number of passengers and stores have to ensure social distancing.

Many Ghanaians say its asking too much of the police to ensure these are obeyed.

Ghana has tested 68 000 people and found 1042 confirmed cases of COVID 19. The virus has killed nine people.

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