Zimbabwe 2.0: South Africa's President Vows To Redistribute White-Owned Land And Businesses

In a stark flashback to the events that led to Zimbabwe"s terminal collapse into banana republic status, as well as unleashing hyperinflation and economic devastation, on Thursday South African President Jacob Zuma pledged to break up white ownership of business and land to reduce inequality, in a State of the Nation address which as the WSJ reports was disrupted by a fistfight, walkouts and a release of pepper spray in the parliamentary chamber. It appears South Africa is not fond of implementing "Rule 19."

Scenes of verbal and physical clashes inside the parliament, some 27 years to the day after Nelson Mandela was released from prison, as well as Zuma"s contentious speech, highlight the precarious future course facing Africa’s most developed economy.

As the WSJ reports, on Thursday, lawmakers from the far-left Economic Freedom Fighters "shouted over an initial attempt by Mr. Zuma to start his speech, after complaining about what they said was a threatening increase of security inside and outside Parliament. Previously the president had for the first time deployed several hundred troops to help lock down Cape Town’s parliamentary precinct in anticipation of potential clashes between ANC and opposition supporters."

Things then quickly got out of control:

“You’re a constitutional delinquent,” EFF lawmaker Mbuyiseni Ndlozi said of Mr. Zuma, referring to a court finding last year that the president had violated the constitution when he refused to pay back public money that an official report found was used for unnecessary upgrades to his private home. Mr. Zuma has since paid back some of the funds. When EFF lawmakers, dressed in their customary red workers’ overalls and maids’ uniforms, refused to quiet down or leave the chamber, they began fighting with parliamentary orderlies. Some lawmakers used their red hard hats to hit the orderlies, while other legislators were dragged out of the chamber.

Soon after, South Africa’s other main opposition party, the Democratic Alliance, walked out in protest over the increase in security. ANC lawmakers shouted after Mmusi Maimane, the DA’s first black leader, as he led his party’s MPs out of the chamber, calling him a racist and sellout. Around the same time, several DA members in the visitors’ gallery
reported that tear gas had been released into the gallery, which quickly
emptied.

According to the chairwoman of South Africa’s upper house, Thandi Modise, an initial investigation showed that the substance released was pepper spray and called the incident a “breach of security” that shouldn’t have happened. She didn’t say who was behind the incident.

Meanwhile, Zuma didn’t acknowledge the disruptions when he returned to the podium to continue his speech. Instead, he focused on the one issue which may soon plague South Africa for years to come: the stark economic divide between black and white South Africans, one of the issues that the EFF has seized on in recent years.

To appease the rising populist anger, and taking a page out of developed economies around the globe, Zuma then said that “today we are starting a new chapter of radical socioeconomic transformation., The president added that 22 years after the end of apartheid “white households earn at least five times more than black households.”

President Zuma’s focus on redistribution comes as his African National Congress party prepares to elect a new leader to succeed him in December and as he finds himself under growing pressure over corruption allegations. He also said that he planned to send back to Parliament a bill that will make it easier for authorities to redistribute land taken away from blacks during colonization, although white landowners will still receive market prices for any seized land.

Where have we seen this kind of land "redistribution" not too long ago? Oh yes, Zimbabwe.

It took Zimbabwe 15 years to admit its mistakes, and invite white farmers back. It now appears that South Africa will have to learn from the mistakes of its northern naighbor in due course.

Hillary "Attack Dog" David Brock Plotting With Soros, Steyer, Sussman To "Kick Trump's Ass"

The last time we encountered David Brock, Hillary Clinton"s so called media "attack dog", was two months ago when we exposed a money laundering scheme involving over a dozen of his Pro-Clinton SuperPACs. Now, it appears that unable to concede defeat, the man who aligned his career with Hillary Clinton, is going for blood, and is soliciting the help, but mostly money, of Clinton"s top donors.

According to Politico, Brock is launching his own Koch-brothers-like donor network to finance attacks on President-elect Donald Trump and to rebuild the political left after Trump’s stunning victory over Clinton last week. In an email sent out on Thursday night, Brock emailed more than 200 of the biggest donors on the left, including finance titans George Soros, Tom Steyer and Donald Sussman all of whom invested millions of dollars in Clinton"s campaign with nothing to show for it, inviting them to a private retreat in Palm Beach during inauguration weekend to assess what Democrats did wrong in 2016, figure out how to correct it and raise cash for those initiatives.

“This will be THE gathering for Democratic donors from across the country to hear from a broad and diverse group of leaders about the next steps for progressives under a Trump Administration,” Brock wrote to the donors in an email.  “What better way to spend inaugural weekend than talking about how to kick Donald Trump’s ass?” Brock said.

The retreat, which is planned as the first in a series of regular gatherings, will feature appearances by an array of Democratic elected officials, operatives and liberal thinkers and group officials, Brock explained in an interview.

While it is unclear how many of the addressed billionaires confirmed their presence at this "secret" gathering, Brock predicted there would be significant interest, noting that the keynote address at his last major donor conference, back in 2013, was delivered by former President Bill Clinton. It is unclear how much Clinton received for one hours of his time.

Brock is a self-described "right-wing hitman-turned-Clinton enforcer" who has used his relationships with some of the left’s wealthiet supporters and billionaire donors to build an armada of aggressive political outfits that have become pillars of the institutional left and that raised a combined $65 million during the 2016 cycle. As profiled previously, Brock’s groups include the conservative media monitoring non-profit Media Matters, the opposition research super PAC American Bridge and the legal watchdog Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington.

That"s not all: other groups in his network include the liberal media-funding vehicle American Independent Institute, the media-training non-profit Franklin Forum and the for-profit social media operation ShareBlue, which The New York Times described as “Hillary Clinton’s Outrage Machine.” A seventh group, a super PAC called Correct the Record that was created to coordinate directly with Clinton’s campaign, is winding down, though Brock said that a number of its functions and personnel likely will be absorbed by his other groups.

And yet one wonders if Brock"s attempt to square things up with Trump isn"t too little, too late, especially for a many who like Huma Abedin, has been so closely associated with Hillary and her now defunct political career: Brock acknowledged in the interview: "There is no question that we poured our heart and soul into this election for Hillary, but these institutions were built before her campaign and were intended to outlast it.”

To separate himself from the Clintons whom he server so well over the years, Brock said in his email to donors that he created Media Matters more than a decade ago to help the left push back during George W. Bush’s presidency.

“In 2005, we were part of a successful progressive effort to regroup, retool and recover,” he wrote. “While today’s situation is more dire, media matters more than ever.”

But the biggest problem for Brock is that he is likely stepping on the very toes of those whose money he is after: as Politico notes, the Palm Beach retreat seems to be a challenge to the 12-year-old Democracy Alliance, a club of liberal financiers that was started by Soros and a handful of other major donors to fund the institutional left. In fact, the club, which held its annual winter meeting this week in Washington, helped launch Media Matters, and many of Brock’s donors belong to its ranks. Brock said he’s inviting the president of the DA, as the club is known, to his Palm Beach retreat.

There is one way Brock"s network hopes to differentiate itself: while the Democracy Alliance at its winter meeting discussed ways to push back on the Trump administration, many of the group’s members have tried to train its focus on pressuring Democrats from the left on issues like fighting climate change, money in politics and drug laws; Brock however is more overtly and aggressively political, and has been "largely agnostic on the philosophical divisions with which Democrats are grappling."

“We don’t think of this as representing a faction of the Democratic Party, but a cross-section of it, so we’re not going to precook things ideologically,” he said. “It is very politically minded, and there is an urgency to it.”

At this point two questions emerge: one of the main reasons why Clinton lost is precisely due to behind the scenes scheming such as this, where political "attack dog" operatives would meet with billionaires and strategize how to shift public perception on any number of items. That has now been proven to be a losing strategy. Have the democrats truly not learned anything from their most shocking failure in history?

The next question is just how much more "overtly and aggressively political" will Brock, whose organizations have been alleged to be behind a number of the anti-Trump riots in recent months, be in his quest to take down, or rather "kick the ass" of Donald Trump. Because if there is one thing that is so far missing from the most scandalous political election in recent history, it is an attempt to physically eliminate the president. We can only hope that the "hitman-turned-Clinton enforcer" will not decide to go that far.