Benji Shulman

Jan 16, 2025 | sajr.co.za | Benji Shulman

This past December was unusual, with Chanukah coming later in the year and coinciding with Christmas when many members of the community were well into their summer holidays. In Cape Town, South African Jews celebrated by lighting chanukiahs on the beach, while the Sea Point promenade was adorned with tinsel and multi-coloured lights.

Dec 4, 2024 | businesslive.co.za | Benji Shulman

In 2009 SA media began reporting that the ANC had received financial support for its election campaigns from Libyan dictator Muammar Gaddafi. The ANC has denied these allegations. However, in his new book, Witness to Power, former ANC treasurer-general Mathews Phosa has confirmed that these reports were in fact accurate. He reveals that the ANC received money from Gaddafi over several years, through successive treasurers-general. British sources estimate that the total amount exceeded $10m.

Dec 4, 2024 | thespectator.com | Philip Patrick |Brian Martin |Benji Shulman |Daniel DePetris

Six hours. That was the duration of the profoundly disturbing and simultaneously farcical version of martial law invoked by South Korea’s president Yoon Suk Yeol on Tuesday night — the country’s first experience of military rule for 40 years. It was so brief in duration that if you weren’t plugged in to social media or watching TV you may not have been aware it had even occurred.

Nov 26, 2024 | businesslive.co.za | Benji Shulman

It was only in 2004 that SA finally established ties. This included an SADR embassy that is hosted in Pretoria at the expense of the SA taxpayer (along with the embassy of Palestine). The ANC regularly cites Western Sahara in its policy documents, calling the area “the last colony in Africa”, and has frequently clashed with Morocco, including working with Algeria to try, unsuccessfully, to keep Morocco out of the AU.

Nov 21, 2024 | thespectator.com | Benji Shulman |Charles Lister |Michael Murphy |Alexandra Coghlan

South Africa’s recent foreign policy has both surprised and dismayed Western diplomats and strategists. Many of these entered their careers during the era of the “end of history” when the Soviet Union had collapsed and with it, or so the thinking went, the last serious threat to the Western liberal order. Western democracy had triumphed, and policy doctrines of hard power and deterrence could give way to strategies of acquiescence and engagement.