To say journalists aren’t good at maths would be a massive understatement - they didn’t go to Rhodes to count beers, only to drink them.
Let’s break this PEPFAR thing down mathematically.
Every year the USA gave South Africa around $400 million. About $8 billion since the “emergency” funding started. For those of you who battle with big numbers that’s around 14 000 of Cyril’s couches.
Now here’s the interesting part. We have between 7.5 and 8 million people with HIV who ostensibly need ARV therapy. However only around 6 million actually take treatment every month. The cost to treat one patient is approximately R60 per month, meaning that the annual cost for all 6 million is around R4.3 billion or roughly $250 million per annum.
That’s around $150 million or R2.5 billion extra which is not actually paying for medication and goes to funding “NGOs”. However it’s actually far worse than this because according to a peer reviewed paper published in the journal “AIDS”, and quoted by the Department of Health, the PEPFAR funding is only 21% of our total HIV expenditure - meaning that South Africa spends more than $1.86 billion or R28 billion annually.
So in summary we spend more than R28 billion every year on a $250 million problem, a fair chunk of which we’ve been taking from the Americans so that Government and middle men can profit off of a problem which could be solved cheaply and efficiently but for corruption.
You won’t see this in mainstream media because some of the funding comes their way, and because they got confused somewhere around the part numbers larger than 10 were mentioned.
I wrote about the need for private efforts to protect whistleblowers in SA, and what that may look like. An idea whose time has come?
It's well worth becoming a paid subscriber of the @CommonSense_ZA so you can read the articles behind the paywall.
https://t.co/RHPAxpXvPY
Rob is an infinitely better journalist than those vrot onions at News24. He doesn't spend any of his time like the biggest queen after midnight at a gay party. For instance. Then he's extraordinarily well read. Actually wildly intelligent. Different ballpark.
Read @CapeIndy.
Just to clarify, the DA Department of Education is introducing its own policy so that a handful of transgender kids can use whichever bathroom they like, but they refuse to make their own policy with regards to the forced masking of every child under their purview.
The Overton Pod - E34 - Schrödinger's Iran
Iran was never harmless, but that did not stop the experts from being confidently wrong. @Jonathan_Witt and I unpack the war, Tehran’s enriched nuclear material, and what a Trump deal might actually look like.
Back home, we look at Geordin Hill-Lewis as DA leader, Helen Zille’s Johannesburg challenge, and what the Phala Phala ruling could mean for Cyril Ramaphosa.
https://t.co/hgssekdRea
Reaction to @News24’s Ideologically Driven Hit Piece on @afriforum:
The News24 group donated millions of rand to the ANC. AfriForum did not.
AfriForum did not invest in a company called Thebe Stockbroking. Investment managers use Thebe and other platforms to invest in shares on the stock market. These other platforms are also compelled by the race obsessed ANC led government to implement BEE policies. It is virtually impossible to invest in shares on the JSE without some exposure to BEE compliant entities.
For those who would like to know how AfriForum actually spends its money:
Watch this video: https://t.co/Favggcjuz6
Read this article: https://t.co/XAEcgM6ZdC
For the record, below is part of the response I provided to the anti AfriForum activists posing as journalists at News24 when they requested comment regarding Thebe Stockbroking:
I place on record that News24 refused to answer AfriForum’s questions regarding its parent company’s donations of R8 million to the ANC between 2021 and 2025. These questions were aimed at determining whether News24 considers it justifiable that its parent company funds the ANC while numerous individuals in ANC leadership positions have been implicated in corruption.
This question is directly relevant to News24’s enquiries because reference is made to donations by Thebe Stockbroking, which is itself one of the ANC’s donors.
Donations to the ANC
Unlike News24’s parent company, which knowingly donated R8 million to the ANC between 2021 and 2025, AfriForum was obviously not aware in 2013 that Thebe would later make donations to the ANC. Had AfriForum known this, the organisation would have ensured that none of its investment managers made use of Thebe.
In any event, AfriForum had already decided in March 2023 to move its investments away from Thebe as part of a process to consolidate the organisation’s investment portfolio.
By contrast, News24’s parent company continues to donate money to the ANC.
In 2013, AfriForum’s Financial Committee invited investment managers to make presentations on their investment strategies. Following this process, André Laas was selected as one of several investment managers.
The focus was on selecting capable investment managers rather than the investment platforms through which they executed transactions. AfriForum’s funds were invested in shares listed on the stock exchange, not in Thebe.
Within South Africa’s financial sector, it is difficult to find an investment platform that is not subject to BEE requirements. Thebe Stockbroking was neither invited nor appointed by AfriForum. André Laas was.
Companies, including investment platforms, are compelled to implement race based policies. This makes it virtually impossible for organisations opposed to BEE to avoid all indirect or unintended dealings with BEE compliant entities. Fuel suppliers, retailers, service providers and many other businesses operate within the same policy framework.
BEE
AfriForum and Solidarity are unapologetically opposed to the use of race as a mechanism for enriching politically connected elites within the ANC’s sphere of influence.
Policies such as BEE should ultimately be judged by their outcomes rather than their stated intentions. These outcomes have included persistent poverty, unemployment and economic exclusion.
AfriForum’s position is therefore that socioeconomic circumstances, rather than race, should be used as the basis for addressing poverty and inequality in South Africa.
🧵Open Letter to the Minister of Home Affairs, @Leon_Schreib
Concerns about the proposed Digital ID System
Dear Minister Schreiber,
@LexLibertasOnX is a think tank and advocacy group committed to the promotion of basic freedoms and the principles of constitutionalism. In this sense, our central aim is to promote decentralisation and self-governance for the various peoples of South Africa. We also take a stand against particular policy ideas that we believe to be counterproductive to the promotion of decentralised governance.
One such issue is the proposed digital ID system.
We have recently submitted our concerns about the proposed digital ID system to your office, and we have opened a channel through which members of the public could express their concerns. Within days, thousands of people have added their names to our submission. Support for our opposition to the digital ID system is still coming in. For this reason, we will add this to the submission that we already presented to your office at a later stage.
This strong public reaction reflects deep and widespread concern about the direction your Department is taking. While the proposal is presented as a technical improvement aimed at greater efficiency and fraud reduction, we believe it represents something far more serious.
We do not believe that the public should be asked to simply trust that this infrastructure will be secure and free of abuse. The design of the system itself — particularly the mandatory logging of verifications and the broad discretionary powers granted to the Director-General — makes abuse not only possible, but likely over time.
In this sense, there are several concerns that we wish to bring under your immediate attention. We will do so one by one. Thereafter, we will conclude with a list of questions with regard to which we would appreciate your answer.
@TheJaundicedEye@FmdResponseSA This is inexcusable and does not represent all of us, I am truly sorry that you are being treated this way during the current near-impossible circumstances some farmers are facing. IC
𝐖𝐞 𝐬𝐩𝐞𝐧𝐭 𝐝𝐞𝐜𝐚𝐝𝐞𝐬 𝐜𝐨𝐧𝐝𝐞𝐦𝐧𝐢𝐧𝐠 𝐜𝐨𝐦𝐦𝐮𝐧𝐢𝐬𝐦. 𝐅𝐚𝐢𝐫 𝐞𝐧𝐨𝐮𝐠𝐡.
But while we were busy pointing east, something was quietly hollowing out the West from within.
In 1978, Alexander Solzhenitsyn stood before Harvard and warned that material comfort, legalism, and the worship of man had left a deeper void.
Very excited about this film! Spent a week nonstop editing, and it will be on my YouTube channel soon:
👇 Link below:
https://t.co/rl4AqgVXeA
@SimplyMegszcpt Why did it take a court case from @afriforum to lead to this? Why did they not do this at last years budget? Are they scared they are losing support? Good! Don’t fall for the sneakiness of politicians
When you learn that the Left sees everything as a political tool either to be amplified to further their cause, or to be suppressed to protect their cause, then the world starts to make sense.
Maybe go take a cold shower if you have water this week Gareth.
If the DA “drowns the market with comms” on this they will lose even harder there than they are losing here.
An agricultural minister having his ass handed to him by the courts, an education minister doing commie revisionist history, and a communications minister blocking Starlink.
Thats not to mention the public works minister taking his boyfriend on a holiday using taxpayer funds and the Marxist senior advisor/strategist of the party and his transgender kid.
People in glass houses…
South Africa needs more independent investigative journalism.
Joe Emilio is currently raising funds for two new documentaries investigating the land grabs in Hermanus and Grabouw. He’s close to the finish line.
1,500 people donating just R100 each would fully fund the project.
If you can help, donate below. If not, please share.
@Joe_Emilio_
https://t.co/KvSVJotdwm
According to @jsteenhuisen farmers are Afrimaga. His inner circle of @Our_DA Minister's concur including @geordinhl.
Now the chickens have come home to roost. So tell me @helenzille what are your thoughts of John absolutely getting obliterated in court?
You might call @FrancoisRosso15@TheoDJager@MulderCorn@vslandbou and many more Afrimaga but first of all we are farmers.
Farmers that care for our livestock, Farmers that do not bow to big Ag, Farmers that know the struggle and Farmers that will NOT BE BULLIED BY THE LIKE OF THE @Our_DA