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1 month ago | 
dailyfriend.co.za | Andrew Kenny
Why was the Marshall Plan so successful in developing Germany after WW2, and why was a bigger sum of aid so unsuccessful in developing Africa? (The official name for the US Marshall Plan was the European Recovery Plan.)Foreign aid for Africa, especially South Africa, is a hot topic now, with Trump’s shutting down of the US Agency for International Development (USAID) and the ending of the US President’s Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief (PEPFAR).
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1 month ago | 
dailyfriend.co.za | Andrew Kenny
In just under two months, President Trump has helped to save the world from one destructive folly but threatened it with another. He seems incoherent to the point of insanity. Some people say that his mad plans, such as evacuating all the Palestinians out of Gaza, are not meant to be taken literally but are just intended to break up the policy logjam of the past and provoke radically new policy thinking.
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1 month ago | 
dailyfriend.co.za | Andrew Kenny
The Hawks are investigating dockets of high treason against AfriForum and Solidarity. This is because of their high-level meetings in Washington with Trump’s administration. They would be better investigating high treason against President Ramaphosa for his long list of actions that have harmed the country and people of SouthAfrica, and will harm them even more in the future.
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1 month ago | 
dailyfriend.co.za | Andrew Kenny
There is an interesting and silly racial row over the origins of white people. You can tell it’s silly because the South African Human Rights Commission (SAHRC) has become interested in it. It began when Nhlamulo “Nota” Baloyi made the following remarks about white people: “They are inferior species (compared) to us. We’re Homo Sapiens; they have got Neanderthal blood in them. This is the science. This science was not done by black people, it was done by them”.
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2 months ago | 
dailyfriend.co.za | Andrew Kenny
Nuclear power, nuclear weapons, South Africa, and Iran are the subject of yet another unfortunate and potentially damaging row between the USA and South Africa.
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2 months ago | 
thespectator.com | Brendan O’Neill |Andy Ngo |Andrew Kenny |Ido Vock
So Hamas has committed yet another act of depravity against the Bibas family. It said Shiri Bibas was in one of those four coffins it put on grim display in Gaza yesterday before handing them over to the Red Cross. But she wasn’t. It was the remains of some unknown person that Hamas passed off as the mother-of-two whose return the whole of Israel has been crying out for. Truly, is there no end to the cynicism and savagery of these terrorists?
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2 months ago | 
businesslive.co.za | Andrew Kenny
Support our award-winning journalism. The Premium package (digital only) is R30 for the first month and thereafter you pay R129 p/m now ad-free for all subscribers. Whoever wrote Monday’s editorial had obviously not read the Expropriation Act (“Can Ramaphosa keep his eye on the ball?”, February 17). Far from being “not so contentious”, the act essentially ends all private property rights in SA. It is a blunt warning to locals and foreigners not to make any fixed investment here.
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2 months ago | 
thespectator.com | Amy Everett |Dave Seminara |Andrew Kenny |Lawrence Osborne
“No lions?”“No lions. It’s fast-flowing water, so there shouldn’t be any leeches. We do have slender-snouted crocodiles, but they’re quite shy.” “Hippos?”“One we see every now and again.”Swamp-walking hadn’t been on the year’s bingo bingo card, but I’d found myself wading through clusters of floating dung and algae in the largest tropical rainforest on the African continent. Rubber slip-ons heavy with silt, sulfurous foam collecting in my shirt pockets, I felt strangely calm.
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2 months ago | 
thespectator.com | Toby Young |Mark Galeotti |Roger Kimball |Andrew Kenny
No one can accuse Donald Trump of inaction. For once, the US has a government with the urgency of a private corporation. The speed at which the new administration has acted in all kinds of areas has pleasantly surprised Trump’s supporters and flummoxed his opponents. It is hard to grab on to anything and oppose it when the announcements are coming out of the White House at such a speed.
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2 months ago | 
thespectator.com | Toby Young |Mark Galeotti |Roger Kimball |Andrew Kenny
I can’t say I know the new President of the United States very well, but during the five years I lived in New York between 1995 and 2000 we were on nodding terms. That is to say, when I turned up at a party and he was there too, we would politely acknowledge each other. This was for two reasons, neither of which reflects particularly well on me. The first is that I was briefly the party columnist for Vanity Fair, deciding whose photos should appear in the monthly roundup.
