Bottom line: I did not want to lie to my readers.

And puffing up their expectations for COP 26 would be doing exactly that.

A few paragraphs in, I was overwhelmed by deja vu making me look back on my files.

I’d already written the piece. five years ago, ahead of the Paris summit.

My skepticism was based on my covering COP 17 in Durban, back in 2011,

That meeting overran by more than 24 hours before delegations from nearly 200 countries arrived at a deal that would put the world on the the path to climate salvation.

It could not be said to actually save the world for the generations to come.

But it set a pattern that could be picked up in Paris.

Sound familiar?

My earlobes glow red with embarrassment when I recall that I actually told my readers and listeners this.

Within a day, Canada has reneged on the deal struck in Durban.

Just as the United States under President Donald Trump pulled out of the climate convention agreed in Paris four years later.

No punitive measures have been taken against either of these world powers.

Neither will there be anything more than  tsk tsk against India watering down the anti-coal mood of the Glasgow Agreement.

As a United Nations Correspondent in the 1970s, I recall all three of these nations taking an uncompromisingly  tough line against the apartheid regime.

They would not have brooked any backsliding on the arms embargo slapped on Pretoria in 1977. Rightly so.

Yet when it  comes to saving the planet, they give themselves some wriggle room.

I am an inveterate multilateralist. I never fail to support the United Nations against critics who dismiss it as a talk shop.

I am also a journalist committed to telling the unvarnished truth.

This means I cannot allow myself to be led by the nose to report on breakthroughs in fighting climate change that are nothing more than meaningless compromise.

Where is the commitment we expected from developed countries to pay developing countries to assuage the damage done by climate change?

So today, as they try to pick up the pieces and paint the bravest picture they can of what occurred in Glasgow, let me ask those journalists: Are you ready to do it all again at Sharm El Sheikh? 

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The meeting, which will include international economic groupings, is unashamedly a French bid to solidify and broaden relations with African nations.

Macron wants to move beyond the former French colonies to countries like Ethiopia, Kenya, Nigeria and South Africa.

It takes place against a backdrop of waning French public support for France’s gendarme role in Africa and leaders of the continent questioning the value of a series of summit meetings with Western development  partners.

Nevertheless they will fly to Paris – the only Western capital from which large quantities of COVID vaccine have been shipped by a  donor country to developing countries.

In week where we learn that 140 million doses of that vaccine supposed to go to the poorer countries via the COVAX programme will be retained to deal with India’s surge of infections, the summit participants know they will be talking to representatives of the largest vaccine financiers.

The summit will see a rare visit to France by Rwandan President Paul Kagame. This means the still smoldering issue of France’s role in the 1994 genocide in Rwanda is unavoidable.

Important as it is, other African leaders will also want to move beyond making up the $300-billion shortfall caused by the pandemic.

They want to leave the summit with heartening news for their people about addressing critical shortfalls in potable water, schools and healthcare facilities.

Even though the leaders of countries with which France has active disputes, such as Republic of Congo President Denis Sassou Nguesso have not been invited, Macron cannot expect to escape pointed question about colonial legacies like the Central African franc, which Africans say binds currencies of former dependencies  too tightly to the French economy.

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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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This casts into doubt the central African country’s ability to organise new elections in July as ordered by the the Constitutional Court.

The Malawian who has tested positive for coronavirus travelled to India  Two people who came into contact with him have also tested positive.

President Peter Mutharika declared a state of emergency  last month that closed the country’s borders.

The second term he won at the helm has been overturned by the Constitutional Court that found the elections last May were fraudulent.

Malawi’s electoral commission has announced new elections in early July.

It remains to be seen whether these can be organized with the COVID 19 pandemic raging around the the world.

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Dubbed “mad Mike” by the East German media he made his name as a hired gun in the Congo crisis and became a laughing stock for a disastrous failed coup in the Seychelles.

It is surprising that Mike Hoare, who lived a dangerous life to the full, should have lived to 100.

Born of Irish parents in India, he embarked on a military career that saw him end the Second World War as a major.

After emigrating to South Africa, he met Congolese leader Moïse Tshombe and fought as a mercenary for him.

But it was the failed Seychelles coup in 1978 that saw him jailed and transformed him to soldier-of-ill-fortune 

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He is speaking on the eve of summit Russia hope will give it a leg up in dealing with Africa.

Vladimir Putin knows the toughest competition Russia faces in boosting ties with Africa comes from China, the United States, India and Turkey.

He will tell the 47 African leaders gathered in Sochi this week that Russian friednship is based on their demand for African solutions to African problems.

There are sound economic reasons for improving relations with the fastest growing consumer market on the planet.

But, as China has shown, the immediate benefit is political with winning votes at the the United Nations and support in other international forae. 

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Minister of International Relations and Cooperation Lindiwe Sisulu tells the closing ceremony of the BRICS business council in Johannesburg that the R30-billion  development deal done between ESCOM and BRICS New Development Bank will go a long way to ensuring an end to power shedding in South Africa.

Ends intro

Foreign Minister Lindiwe Sisulu says being part of the grouping with  Brazil, Russia, India and China has revolutionized South Africa’s economy and the way that it gets things done.

South Africa will help the BRICS Business Council navigate its way around Africa.

(take in the partners clip here)

Sisulu welcomes the coming into force of the African Free Trade Agreement with the ratification this week of the AU resolution by a 22nd country. 

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Britain, the European Union, India and Australia have joined the growing list of countries temporarily barring the plane from their airspace.

Some families of the 157 people who died in last Sunday’s Ethiopian Airlines crash have 

visited the site near Addis Ababa to lay flowers.

Experts are coming the wreckage in an attempt establish the cause of the crash – and particuarly to learn if there are similarities with the Lion Air crash outside the Indonesia capital Jakarta last October.

The US Federal Aviation Authority insists the Boeing 737 Max is airworthy.

However US Senators and aviation workers are urging the government to keep the plane grounded until the investigations can confirm this.

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Work done so far has increased production by 12 000 barrels a day. This increase could reach 70 000 barrels a day by the end of the year.

China, which has the biggest stake in South Sudan’s oil, is joined by Malaysia and India in fixing broken oil wells in the country devastated by a civil war that broke out two years after it got independence from Sudan in 2011.

Interestingly, Sudan is also helping with repair.

It lost the bulk of its oil production with the departure of South Sudan. 

But it’s still the only export route route for South Sudan’s black gold.

So it has a vested interest in keeping the oil flowing to Port Sudan

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This will enable authorities to seek the extradition of the Gupta brothers, the Indian businessmen alleged to be the architects of state capture during the Presidency of Jacob Zuma.

The  office  of Justice Minister Michael Masutha says the treaties on extradition and mutual legal assistance in criminal matters with the United Arab Emirates will enable the two countries to assist each other in the investigation and prosecution of crimes.

The Gupta brothers Ajay, Atul and Rajesh fled to the UAE city of Dubai earlier this year as criminal investigations into alleged corruption accelerated after their friend and ally, former president Jacob Zuma, lost his grip on power.

They have since been spotted in both Dubai and the country of their birth, India.

Multiple charges have been laid against members of the Gupta family.

The Guptas asked to cross examine witnesses who implicated them before the commission of inquiry into state capture headed by Deputy Chief Justice Raymond Zondo.

He’s refused their request to do this outside South Africa because they fear arrest if they return.

Democratic Alliance shadow minister of public enterprises Natasha Mazzone says the Guptas are fast running out of places to hide as they can now face extradition to finally answer for State Capture.

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