QueeningInSA

Intellectual. Analytical. Well read. I think what I like. #Tweets are in my personal capacity. #Retweets are just food for thought.

[QueeningInSA @nkhubana]

Amilcar Cabral: Tell no lies. Mask no difficulties. Claim no easy victories.

[Estelita Borges ☮🚩 @EstelitaBorges]

Não entendo os estadunidenses. Se querem lítio da Bolívia, o que custa negociar com o governo boliviano? Por que precisam matar, corromper, roubar o lítio dos bolivianos? Que gente horrenda gasta bilhões fazendo o mal quando poderia simplesmente serem honestos e dignos?

[Joy Spark @FakeJoySpark]

She kept growing. So did his arms.

[Richard Calland @richardcalland]

Very good piece.

[Daily Maverick @dailymaverick]

Between candour and coercion — why SA won’t bend to Washington’s dictates https://t.co/cIRn7rwCFr

[Phumzile Van Damme @zilevandamme]

You know, in life, when someone tells you who they are, believe them.

This man has no interest in South Africa.

South Africa. The people. The country. The home of multitudes. A bustling, complicated, contradictory community of communities, identities, histories, interests and ambitions. A country that cannot be reduced to one constituency, one grievance or one community’s interests above all.

To know South Africa is to know it in its entirety. To appreciate South Africa is to understand it as a whole.

He is not here to build a relationship with that South Africa. He has made that patently clear.

He is here to be America’s voice for Afriforum. He is here to position himself as the voice of a very particular constituency: not even all Afrikaners, but Afriforum’s Afrikaners.

He is here for that singularity.

That’s who he is. That’s what he cares about.

And that’s OK.
Absolutely fine.
Not a problem at all.

But then that is how he must be received and treated.

You cannot demand the privileges of a relationship with South Africa or its government elected by its people while showing no interest in building one.

No more treating his every utterance as though it requires South Africa’s response.

We cannot be expected to turn all our attention to one problem, as though it is the be-all and end-all of who we are, what we are and what plagues us.

To fix South Africa is to fix it in its entirety.

That is South Africa’s political project. That is its constitutional obligation.

It is WE, the People of South Africa. Us. All of us.

It is not that he does not understand that.

It is that he does not care.

And perhaps that is the point: take the man at his word. Take his stated priorities seriously. And stop granting him the relationship, access and attention he demonstrably is not attempting to build reciprocally.

Regards,
Done.

[Présidence du Faso @presidencebf]

Le Président du Faso, Capitaine Ibrahim TRAORÉ, a inauguré ce 28 septembre 2026 RAFFINOR-BF, première raffinerie d’or du Burkina Faso. D’une capacité initiale de 164 tonnes/an, elle marque une étape majeure vers la maîtrise nationale de la chaîne de valeur aurifère.

[Reuters @Reuters]

Burkina Faso inaugurated its first-ever gold refinery, with President Ibrahim Traore saying the country wanted to process its mineral resources locally and take control of the entire value chain

[patty. @jesuispattieb]

The breakdown.

Again, South African's ask - how is our taxes fundamentally benefitting us?

[Mteto Nyati @mteton]

https://t.co/eCM0aKISNS
I do not usually comment on commentary about me. Today I am making an exception.

Redi Tlhabi has written a piece that goes beyond personalities. It asks a more important question: when an institution starts to recover, who is allowed to own the work - and who is still treated as a problem to be managed.

[Khangisa (Prof. ) @Siyakhangisa]

48%.

That is the effective tax burden on someone earning R30,000 a month in South Africa. Same rate as someone earning R432,000 a month in a top European country.

The numbers sound wrong. They are not.

​​Where the 48% comes from.​​

PAYE is what people see on the payslip. It is not the whole picture.

VAT - 15% on almost everything. Every swipe. Every fill-up. Most people do not think of VAT as a tax. It is the largest single source of government revenue after income tax.

Fuel levy - built into every litre. Petrol at R26.92 inland includes roughly R3.80 in fuel levy and Road Accident Fund levy. That is a tax on getting to work.

Then there are the charges that look like fees but function like taxes. E-tolls. Municipal surcharges. Electricity tariffs with embedded levies.

Add the visible and the invisible - you get 48%.

​​The key difference with Europe.​​

In the Netherlands. In Denmark. In Germany. High taxes come with a social contract.

Free tertiary education. Universal healthcare that does not require medical aid. Childcare subsidies. Paid parental leave that covers an actual year. Robust unemployment support.

You pay 45%. And you get services back.

In South Africa you pay 48%. And then you pay again - privately.

Medical aid because public healthcare is collapsed. Security because policing is broken. Private schools because public education cannot be trusted. Solar panels or a generator because Eskom cannot guarantee power. Water tanks because the municipality cannot guarantee supply.

The middle-class earner pays twice. Once in tax. Once in escape.

​​Who actually pays.​​

There are about 8.3 million personal income taxpayers in South Africa. A relatively small slice of the population. The top earners supply most of the revenue.

Corporations optimise. The wealthy structure. Offshore trusts. Semigration. Emigration. The R30,000 earner cannot escape - it comes out before they see the money.

The base is narrow. The burden is concentrated. The services are not.

​​Why it accumulated this way.​​

No one designed this system. It grew.

Income tax funds the general budget. VAT funds the general budget. Fuel levy funds roads and the general budget. Each mechanism made sense when it was introduced. Each one expanded quietly.

Raising income tax visibly upsets people. Raising VAT is less visible - it is embedded in the price. Raising fuel levy is buried in the pump price. Municipal charges are non-negotiable.

The objective was not fairness to the middle class. It was revenue extraction with minimum political friction.

​​The uncomfortable part.​​

This is not a policy failure. It is a policy success. The system extracts efficiently. It offends quietly. And the people who carry it do not have the means to opt out.

The question is not whether 48% is too high.

It is how long the R30,000 earner can pay twice - once in tax and once in escape - before something breaks.

[Nick Miller @Frankleespiking]

I think we should do the same for apartheid deaths!!!!

[QueeningInSA @nkhubana]

@mteton Thank you.

[Mteto Nyati @mteton]

Over the past two months, the bodies of nine women have been found across Ekurhuleni in and around Kempton Park, and in places such as Rhodesfield, Olifantsfontein, Clayville, KwaThema and Dawn Park.

They were young women, most of them in their twenties and thirties. Several have been identified. Others still wait to be named by their families.

One of them, Elizabeth “Tsontso” Moselakgomo, left home for an afternoon run and did not return. Her eight year old daughter was the one who raised the alarm. That child’s life has been changed forever. That is not a statistic. That is a wound in a family, and in a nation.

Police have said many of the women were found unclothed or only partly clothed, and that some showed signs of violence. They have not confirmed that these deaths are the work of one man, or of one group. A suspect was arrested in connection with the first case in July. That person remains in custody. The other cases are still being investigated, including whether they are linked. We must not outrun the evidence. We also must not hide behind it.

What we already know is enough to confront ourselves. These were women. They died violently. And in this country, the people who inflict this kind of harm on women are overwhelmingly men.

In African society, men are often granted respect simply for being men. We are told we are protectors. That title is not an inheritance. It is a duty. When we look at how too many of us actually live, the question becomes unavoidable: has that unearned respect been misplaced?

We are too often the ones who disappear from our children’s lives, leaving boys and girls to grow up without fathers or male role models. We fill the prisons. We are too often the ones who turn homes into places of fear. We are too often the ones who violate other people’s dignity and safety. In moments of xenophobic violence, it is frequently our voices and our hands that lead.

That is not the whole of us. The majority of men are decent. Many are God fearing. Many work, provide, love their families and want this country to stand. But a decent majority that stays silent is not innocent. Silence is a form of permission.

We know this. In too many families, workplaces and circles of friends, we know men who harm women. There is a male code that treats speaking as betrayal. We once called the person who spoke impimpi. That word was born in a different struggle. We are in a different era now.

Protecting women is not gossip. Taking information to the police is not selling out. It is patriotism. It is the defence of the next generation. It is the only way the silent majority stops being defined by a violent minority.

If you know something, say something. If a friend jokes about hurting a woman, stop him. If a relative’s behaviour towards women is dark, do not look away. Raise your sons to believe that strength is restraint, presence and protection not domination.

These women were not headlines. Their children and families are not collateral. The police must do their work, thoroughly and without fear. Men must do ours.
Break the code. Make courage ordinary. Make silence the shame.

That is how we earn the respect we have been given for free.

[Sherwin Bryce-Pease @sherwiebp]

Comparing U.S. Ambassador’s X posts …on August 28th vs September 16…

#sabcnews

[QueeningInSA @nkhubana]

@USAmbRSA We will not be bullied. Maybe you should stay away far from us - leave maybe?

[GhettoSnob™ @TheRealsiyaG]

@USAmbRSA Eh baba. Patience run out with who? This is not your colony. You are a guest in this country. We will not be dictated to by you or that Cuban Marco Rubio.

[Thabo Shabangu @Thabojs]

@USAmbRSA America will not dictate how South Africa must run its affairs. We have no big brother called the USA. You can't always use our name for relevance. You have your own problems, we have ours. Deal with your internal affairs and let SA do the same. Stop annoy us

[Where Are They Now @Past_2Present]

@USAmbRSA We don't care. Our government can never be run in Washington; we're a sovereign state. At this time of war, Americans are isolating themselves. The Red Sea is on fire; the Strait of Hormuz is on fire. The only good sea route is via the Cape of Good Hope

[Keketso Monyepao @Cheddar_Xpress]

@USAmbRSA @DIRCO_ZA Expel the Ambassador of U.S, recall our own top diplomat in The U.S. then @PresidencyZA start structuring and implementing tarrifs on all rare earths sent to U.S as well as any other export product that doesnt exceed 2% in overall economic decline as a result.

[Xilumani @kingkenzo015]

You're a non factor in the world now, way behind real forces of China and Russia because of this colonial mentality of bullying. You used to be the leader of the free world but now you're chasing shadows in Iran and stealing oil all over the world, this will not make SA do anything but will make you even more irrelevant here