Wynand

To expand my knowledge and understanding of: literature, music, art, human nature, the intricacies of life...

[Wynand @kolgans]

‘ This very heart which is mine will forever remain indefinable to me.Between the certainty I have of my existence and the content I try to give to that assurance,the gap will never be filled.For ever I shall be a stranger to myself.’ Albert Camus.#TheMythOfSisyphus

[Richard Wilkinson @wilkinsoncape]

I am very sorry to hear that RW Johnson has died.

His writing was deeply scarring, fearless, unforgettable. He had a rare gift for exposing malfeasance with clarity and wit.

He annoyed and outraged many of the worst people.

A truly great South African author.

[In A Nutshell🥜 @Markosonke1]

🚨 STOP TELLING PEOPLE HOW TO BE SOUTH AFRICAN! 🇿🇦

Nobody should make Afrikaners feel less important in the country of their birth, just as nobody should make Zulu people feel ashamed of practising their culture and traditions.

South Africa was never meant to be a country where one culture has to disappear for another to exist. We can celebrate diversity without treating it like a competition.

If Afrikaners want to celebrate their heritage through sport or cultural events, leave them. If Zulus want to celebrate theirs, leave them too. The same respect should apply to every community.

Some people behave as if another group's cultural celebration somehow takes food off their plate. Relax. Someone playing rugby, dancing, singing, or celebrating their heritage isn't reducing yours. 😂

The real enemy isn't culture — it's the mindset that only your culture deserves space. A confident nation doesn't fear diversity; it embraces it.

Live and let live. South Africa is big enough for all of us including Malawians😩🙁 🇿🇦

[UNITED24 @U24_gov_ua]

“This song is for the Ukrainian people, Ukrainian soldiers, and Zelenskyy. And fuck Putin.”

Sir Rod Stewart once again showed that the rhythm of his heart beats in sync with Ukraine💙💛

Thank you for your continuous support of our country in these dark days, @rodstewart🇺🇦

[Phillips P. OBrien @PhillipsPOBrien]

Last night Ukraine could not intercept a single Russian ballistic missile. The USA deliberately starving Ukraine of Patriot missiles is now clearly understood by the Russians as American support for their terror bombing. The USA is helping Putin kill Ukrainians.

[Tennis TV @TennisTV]

Unforgettable moments until the very end ✨

@stanwawrinka #Wimbledon

[U.S. Ambassador to the Republic of South Africa @USAmbRSA]

The Government of South Africa rolls out the red carpet for Iran’s Deputy Foreign Minister, while Deputy President Mashatile is in Beijing deepening ties with China. Pretoria calls this "non-alignment." We call it what it is: a choice. The South African people deserve an honest conversation about who their government is choosing to stand with. #NotSoNonAligned

[D.Radka, #NAFO 🇨🇿🤝🇺🇦 @DakdaR22]

- Bridget Brink
Former US Ambassador to Ukraine about her resignation:

"I cannot stand by while a country is invaded, a democracy bombarded, and children killed with impunity.

The America I love, the one our grandparents served, would never stand by and let such horrors happen. Or give up helping our friends. Or appease the aggressor.

I resigned ... because the policy was to put pressure on the victim Ukraine, rather than on the aggressor, Russia"

Respect
🫡

[Wynand @kolgans]

In my opinion it is a photo of decadence.#WhiteHouseUCF

[Dr. Steve Turley @DrTurleyTalks]

This has got to be one of the most iconic photos ever taken.

[Wynand @kolgans]

Pathetic America! You stooped so low!#WhiteHouseUFCEvent.

[Reverend Jordan Wells @WellsJorda89710]

🚨 INSANE: WHITE HOUSE UFC EVENT EXCEEDS SUPER BOWL VIEWERSHIP — 130 MILLION+ WATCHING! 🔥

While the world tuned in for the biggest fight of the year at the White House, something even greater happened…
Over 130 MILLION people heard the truth:
Jesus is Lord.
He is the ONLY way to heaven.
No other name, no other path, no other savior.

“I am the way, the truth, and the life. No one comes to the Father except through Me.” — John 14:6
The lights were bright, the crowd was massive, but the real victory is souls turning to Christ.
Share if you stand with the King of Kings! 🙌✝️🔥
#JesusIsLord #OnlyWayToHeaven #WhiteHouseUFC

[Wynand @kolgans]

Wat de moer gaan aan met ons mense?! Hoe lank wil jul wroeg en skuld uitdeel oor die BEK uitbraak? Die saak word tog nou aangespreek en bestuur. Kom staan in die skoene van die minister van landbou as jul die moed het. Hou op met jul gekerm en gevloek!!#FDM

[Renaldo “Ngamla” Gouws 🇿🇦 @RenaldoGouws]

John Steenhuisen's Chief of Staff, Jana Le Roux, was caught mocking farmers and making light of their concerns regarding the FMD Outbreak. If this is how they act on emails, imagine what they say behind closed doors. They have no sympathy for farmers during this devastating outbreak.

Video Link: https://t.co/blVtBTPah9

[Wynand @kolgans]

Well done Zverev!! 👏👏🎾🎾#FrenchOpen2026

[John Cleese @JohnCleese]

The sad thing is that the animosity he has created in democratic countries will linger long after he's gone

[Rep. Don Bacon 🇺🇸✈️🏍️⭐️🎖️ @RepDonBacon]

Memo to President Trump: 70% of Americans stand with Ukraine. We stand with independence, free markets and rule of law. We oppose a dictator who invades a neighbor. We stand with honor and right… and we oppose evil.

[Handre @Handre]

France-Albert René seized power in Seychelles through a coup in 1977, promising his people the revolutionary paradise that socialism would deliver. He nationalized industries, imposed price controls, and centralized economic planning across the island nation of just 60,000 people. The results arrived swiftly and predictably.

By the mid-1980s, Seychelles faced economic collapse. State-controlled agriculture produced chronic food shortages despite the islands' fertile soil and favorable climate. Tourism, the natural economic lifeline for a tropical paradise, withered under bureaucratic mismanagement and foreign exchange restrictions. The government treasury emptied as subsidized state enterprises consumed resources without producing value. Black markets flourished while official commerce stagnated.

Rene confronted an unavoidable choice: watch his country sink into poverty or abandon the socialist experiment. In 1991, he chose pragmatism over ideology. The man who had imposed single-party rule and Marxist economics suddenly embraced multiparty democracy and free markets. He privatized state enterprises, eliminated price controls, opened the economy to foreign investment, and established the Seychelles as an international financial center.

The transformation was immediate and dramatic. GDP per capita surged from roughly $4,000 in 1990 to over $15,000 by 2010. Tourism exploded as private operators could finally respond to market signals and customer demands. The Seychelles developed a thriving offshore banking sector, attracting international capital with competitive tax rates and regulatory efficiency. Agricultural productivity increased as farmers could sell their crops at market prices rather than government-mandated rates below cost.

Private property rights, enforced contracts, and competitive markets accomplished what central planning never could. Entrepreneurs opened luxury resorts, developed fishing operations, and created service businesses that employed thousands of Seychellois. Foreign investment flowed into telecommunications, transportation, and financial services. The islands became one of Africa's wealthiest nations measured by per capita income.

Rene's conversion represents more than one dictator's pragmatic pivot. His experience validates every prediction free market economists make about socialist central planning. Price controls create shortages. State ownership destroys incentives. Central planners lack the information that market prices provide. Bureaucrats cannot allocate resources efficiently across millions of individual decisions.

The Seychelles experiment also exposes the intellectual poverty of those who claim mixed economies or "democratic socialism" avoid these problems. Rene tried gradual reforms first. He attempted to maintain state control while improving performance through better management and more resources. These half-measures failed because the fundamental issue was not incompetent administration but the absence of market mechanisms.

When Rene finally embraced capitalism, prosperity followed not because he was particularly wise or skilled but because free markets work regardless of who implements them. Private ownership creates incentives for productive behavior. Competitive pricing allocates resources to their most valued uses. Profit and loss guide entrepreneurs toward satisfying consumer preferences.

The most remarkable aspect of the Seychelles transformation was Rene himself remaining in power through 2004. Voters rewarded him for delivering economic growth even though he had initially imposed the socialism that created their poverty. His political survival demonstrates that people care more about results than consistency.

Today, the Seychelles ranks among the world's highest-income countries. Visitors enjoy world-class resorts, pristine beaches, and efficient services that market competition provides. The islands that once suffered under socialist mismanagement now prosper as a free market success story.

Rene accidentally conducted the perfect economic experiment: identical geography, climate, and population under two radically different systems. Socialism produced poverty and stagnation. Capitalism delivered prosperity and growth. The results could not be clearer.

[Pookie's Polls & Opinions @pookiepolls]

I saw this on FB and it made me very sad. Is their absolutely NOTHING that this criminal government can do properly.

Written by James Deacon.

I am about to write what has to be one of the most difficult and painful posts for me to write on Facebook.

On Friday I was given news which unfortunately I cannot disclose yet that has forced me to turn my back on something I truly love with all my heart: Kirstenbosch Garden.

I have been involved there for 19 years due to my love and passion for the garden. However Kirstenbosch is no longer a place that brings me joy and happiness but rather pain and sadness.

When I walk through nursery now I see neglect, decay and death. The amazing plant collections that have taken decades and more to establish sit neglected slowly dying.

The Protea collection is less than a third of what it was and only a fraction of the Ericas remain. One plant has gone from extinct in the wild to completely extinct purely due to lack effort to keep it going. Places once full of plants sit empty and in some cases full of weeds because the production of plants is so diminished.

Great plantsmen and women like Ernst van Jaarsveld, Monique McQuillan , Louise Nurrish , Cherise Viljoen , Anthony Hitchcock who I admired and looked up to all left way before they should have because working there had become so unpleasant and because things like procurement made it impossible for them to do their jobs.

One told me when they tried to order pots the response they got from the management of SANBI the SOE that runs many of the country's botanical gardens was what were they cooking. Another ordered pots and three years later they yet to arrive.

Poor financial management has resulted in the organisation having to use funds donated for educational purpose to pay staff salaries.

Kirstenbosch no longer has a Protea or an Erica expert and hasn't had either for years.

Staff morale is at an all time low and respect for the leadership of the garden has broken down.

The garden cannot produce metal labels to tell visitor what the names of the plants are.

I say all these things not out of animosity to anyone or with the desire to see people in trouble. I say these things because I love the garden and what I am seeing is breaking my heart. I am also saying these things because after all the friends, experiences, knowledge and memories the garden has given me I feel I have a duty to speak out for the garden in difficult times such as these.

I don't know what will happen to me for saying all this. Maybe I will be banned from the garden or get into trouble. However I refuse to stay silent and standby while the things and people that I care about suffer. I also feel that we the current custodians of the garden have a duty to preserve and protect the work of those custodians of the past for the custodians of the future.

We have two choices to be remembered as those who fought for Kirstenbosch during its most difficult and challenging times or as those who sat idly by and allowed it break down and be ruined.

I don't know if anyone will read this or if it will achieve anything but I will not keep silent while the place I love suffers and will continue to speak out against what is happening.

[Kate from Kharkiv @BohuslavskaKate]

APPLEBAUM: United States under this administration is no longer interested in leading democratic coalitions against Russia or anyone else.

President Trump has begun to align US foreign and domestic policies with values and practices of the autocratic world.

Democracy is no longer at center of United States foreign policy or American identity.

President and his administration attempted to strip funding from USAID or Radio Free Europe, American institutions that once promoted democracy around the world.

Trump verbally attacked Canada, European Union, America's Asian partners, placing inexplicably high tariffs on their goods.

Trump shouted at Ukrainian president in Oval Office, threatened to annex Greenland by force, claimed that EU was created to "screw US," and echoed Putin in calling NATO paper tiger.

Trump negotiated with Russia not to bring just peace to Ukraine or security to Europe, but also in order to help US businesses profit from lifting of Russian sanctions.

[Brivael Le Pogam @brivael]

Je veux présenter mes excuses, au nom des Français, pour avoir enfanté la French Theory (qui a enfanté la pire des merdes idéologiques : le wokisme).

Nous avons donné au monde Descartes, Pascal, Tocqueville. Et puis, dans les ruines intellectuelles de l'après-68, nous avons donné Foucault, Derrida, Deleuze. Trois hommes brillants qui ont fabriqué, dans l'élégance de notre langue, l'arme idéologique qui paralyse aujourd'hui l'Occident.

Il faut comprendre ce qu'ils ont fait. Foucault a enseigné que la vérité n'existe pas, qu'il n'y a que des rapports de pouvoir déguisés en savoir. Que la science, la raison, la justice, l'institution médicale, l'école, la prison, la sexualité, tout n'est qu'une mise en scène de la domination. Derrida a enseigné que les textes n'ont pas de sens stable, que tout signifiant glisse, que toute lecture est une trahison, que l'auteur est mort et que le lecteur règne. Deleuze a enseigné qu'il fallait préférer le rhizome à l'arbre, le nomade au sédentaire, le désir à la loi, le devenir à l'être, la différence à l'identité.

Pris isolément, ce sont des thèses discutables. Combinées, exportées, vulgarisées, elles forment un système. Et ce système est un poison.

Car voici ce qui s'est passé. Ces textes, illisibles en France, ont traversé l'Atlantique. Les départements de Yale, de Berkeley, de Columbia les ont absorbés dans les années 80. Ils y ont trouvé un terreau qui n'existait pas chez nous : le puritanisme américain, sa culpabilité raciale, son obsession identitaire. La French Theory s'est mariée à ce substrat, et l'enfant de ce mariage s'appelle le wokisme.

Judith Butler lit Foucault et invente le genre performatif. Edward Said lit Foucault et invente le post-colonialisme académique. Kimberlé Crenshaw hérite du cadre et invente l'intersectionnalité. À chaque étape, la matrice est française : il n'y a pas de vérité, il n'y a que du pouvoir, donc toute hiérarchie est suspecte, toute institution est oppressive, toute norme est violence, toute identité est construite donc négociable, toute majorité est coupable.

Voilà comment trois philosophes parisiens, qui n'ont probablement jamais imaginé leurs conséquences pratiques, ont fourni le logiciel d'exploitation à une génération entière d'activistes, de bureaucrates universitaires, de DRH, de journalistes, de législateurs. Voilà comment on a obtenu une civilisation qui ne sait plus dire si une femme est une femme, si sa propre histoire mérite d'être défendue, si le mérite existe, si la vérité se distingue de l'opinion.

C'est de la merde pour une raison simple, et il faut la dire calmement. Une civilisation se tient debout sur trois piliers : la croyance qu'il existe une vérité accessible à la raison, la croyance qu'il existe un bien distinct du mal, la croyance qu'il existe un héritage à transmettre. La French Theory a entrepris de dynamiter les trois. Pas par méchanceté. Par jeu intellectuel, par fascination du soupçon, par haine de la bourgeoisie qui les avait nourris. Mais le résultat est là. Une génération entière a appris à déconstruire et n'a jamais appris à construire. Une génération entière sait soupçonner et ne sait plus admirer. Une génération entière voit le pouvoir partout et la beauté nulle part.

Je m'excuse parce que nous, Français, avons une responsabilité particulière. C'est notre langue, nos universités, nos éditeurs, notre prestige qui ont donné à ce nihilisme son emballage chic. Sans la légitimité de la Sorbonne et de Vincennes, ces idées n'auraient jamais traversé l'océan. Nous avons exporté le doute comme d'autres exportent des armes.

Ce qui se construit maintenant, en silicon valley, dans les labos d'IA, dans les startups, dans les ateliers, dans tous les lieux où des gens fabriquent encore des choses au lieu de les déconstruire, c'est la réponse. Une civilisation se reconstruit par les bâtisseurs, pas par les commentateurs. Par ceux qui croient que la vérité existe et qu'elle vaut qu'on s'y consacre. Par ceux qui assument une hiérarchie du beau, du vrai, du bon, et qui n'ont pas honte de la transmettre.

Alors pardon. Et au travail.

[Michael C @Michaeach3]

🚨 THIS IS HOW YOU DEAL WITH THE RADICAL MOB.

An anti-Semitic mob tried to blockade the Maersk headquarters in Copenhagen to disrupt critical maritime infrastructure.

Danish police showed absolutely zero tolerance. They moved in, restored public order, and shut the mob down.

European cities need to stop negotiating with these radicals and start clearing them out.

RT to show the world how it is done. 🔄

[Elon Musk @elonmusk]

True