Why South Africa's unemployment rate is so high. . .
How can anyone trust Trump's USA
He's done it for America. He's put America first and bombed Iran.
US bombers struck three enrichment plants. He gloated it was a spectacular success. Just yesterday he was talking peace. He said let's use diplomacy instead of bombs to resolve the Middle East crisis.
But then Israel launched a surprise atack on Iran.
Then Trump said he'll wait for two weeks and then decide whether the US should enter the fray. But suddenly he sends his war planes into Iran to bomb its nuclear sites.
How can anyone trust this double-talking maniac?
Iraq, Libya, Syria, Afghanistan and now Iran. The US cannot stay away from the Middle East. And Trump cannot stay away from controversy and trouble. The attack on Iran was unprovoked attack on another sovereign state. The US has breached an international law.
But who will stop US aggression? The UN? It's a toothless organisation.
As global tensions mount, we wait to see if this US attack on Iran sucks in other powers and escalates into a broader conflict. Already the US has the backing of its long-time ally, Britain. Israel Premier Benjamin Netanyahu is happy that the US has joined him. British Premier Keir Starmer said Iran cannot be allowed to develop nuclear weapons.
Several countries have nuclear arsenals: Russia, the US, China, France, Britain, Pakistan, India. Israel and North Korea. Are nuclear weapons safe with Trump, Putin and Kim Jong Un? | T Markandan Kloof
Race quotas, 'decent work' barriers to jobs
In a weekly newspaper on May 5, Dr Khwezi Mabasa argues that race quotas and the enforcement of 'decent work' standards stimulate economic growth.
He invokes the International Labour Organisation (ILO) as if both policies naturally stem from a shared commitment to worker dignity. This is misleading. The ILO's decent work framework supports affirmative action measures aimed at addressing inequality, but only as temporary solutions. Crucially, it does not endorse permanent racial quotas or systematic racial workforce engineering.
Mabasa's citation of the ILO is thus not accurate. He misappropriates that institution's credibility to defend a policy position that it explicitly rejects.
Mabasa's conflation of racial quotas with the Decent Work doctrine attempts to lend legitimacy to race-based policies by associating them with the superficially appealing rhetoric of worker protection. Far from enhancing dignity or employment, the Decent Work doctrine imposes rigid labour standards that systematically exclude millions of South Africans from the labour market.
The 'decent work' doctrine and its consequences: These enforced standards criminalise jobs that do not comply with arbitrary government check lists, regardless of whether job seekers would willingly accept them.
Under this doctrine, work is lawful only if it satisfies a prescribed check list: mandated wages, benefits, fixed hours, and legal protections, regardless of productivity or consent. Jobs that do not comply are prohibited, even if the worker is willing to take them. At the heart of this system is the Single Breadwinner Fallacy – the idea that every job must support an entire household. This outdated model, born in post-war Europe, assumes that one employed man can provide for a whole family on a single income.
This is a foreign doctrine, suited to affluent European economies. Yet, South African policymakers, under union pressure, have forced it into law, with no regard for our unemployment.
By enforcing this standard, the law disqualifies the jobs that allow multiple breadwinners to support a household, yet this is how most poor South Africans survive.
There is neither economic nor moral justification for outlawing lawful effort. There is nothing decent about sustained unemployment, and no virtue in criminalising work that consenting adults have the right to choose.
The race quota contradiction: Mabasa appeals to the ILO as though its authority lends weight to race quotas. He does not say that the ILO permits racial preference only as a temporary measure. Nor does he explain why South Africa imposes permanent racial targets in law, with no reference to merit or individual need.
The Employment Equity Amendment Act, 2023, authorises the state to dictate the racial composition of workplaces, with penalties for those who do not comply. It follows the same logic as job reservation under apartheid: individuals are classified by race, and legal preference is given to one group over others. This undermines the dignity of work and erodes the trust on which a functioning economy depends.
Race quotas limit opportunity, drive out skills and investment, and make firms more cautious. Compliance replaces output. Smaller businesses, unable to absorb the risk, avoid hiring or exit the formal economy. Jobs are lost long before penalties are enforced. Mabasa suggests that small businesses are exempt. While technically true in limited contexts, this is misleading in practice. Any enterprise that hopes to grow, tender for contracts, or operate within formal supply chains must obtain compliance certification.
The legal requirement may come later, but the economic pressure begins the moment a business starts to succeed.
Conclusion: Free people to work. These policies do not expand employment; they prevent it. By criminalising voluntary agreements and enforcing racial targets by law, the state has made it harder to hire, harder to grow, and harder to work.
The result is plain to see: Massive unemployment, deepening poverty, and no way out. There are fewer jobs, fewer opportunities, and no entry point for willing unemployed people.
Everyone understands that half a loaf is better than no bread. In South Africa, several half loaves are what keep households alive. Yet the law denies them even that – by outlawing the very work that makes it possible for multiple breadwinners to contribute what they can
.No society can prosper by suppressing enterprise and distrusting consent. A job freely offered and freely accepted is not exploitation. It is the first step out of poverty.Let the people work. Let them choose. That is the only decent way to build a free and prosperous society. | Eustace Davie Free Market Foundation president
Playground for political parties
South Africa has become a playground for people who want to open political parties. It's no longer about serving the interests of the people or about ideology, but about a source of income.
After being given a tough time in the EFF, its former deputy president, Floyd Shivhambu, went to the Umkhonto weSizwe Party; where he is now the former secretary-general just 10 months after joining them.
His press conference last week was nothing but a way of trying to bring dignity to the quest to establish a new party… and this party will be useless, just like other small parties that only exist to contest elections and serve the interests of those leading them.
Perhaps he should leave active politics and focus on academia. | Tom Mhlanga Braamfontein
Confronting racism in our schools
The latest incident of alleged racism at Bryandale Primary School in Bryanston is yet another painful reminder that schools have a long way to go before genuine transformation and inclusion are achieved.
It is alleged that an Indian learner told two Black students: 'You stupid Black people are so predictable.' Such language is deeply offensive, dehumanising, and has no place in any learning environment.
This incident must be treated with the seriousness it demands, not as a 'playground misunderstanding' but as a reflection of wider issues of racism and marginalisation that persist in our schools.
While many public and private schools proudly promote values of diversity and transformation in their mission statements, these values must go beyond lip service.
Transformation is not a passive hope; it requires active, ongoing engagement and institutional introspection.
Schools play a critical role in redressing the deep inequalities and marginalisation embedded in our society.They must be proactive in creating safe and affirming environments for all children, not only through symbolic gestures but through deliberate action, anti-racism training, and clear accountability mechanisms.
The incident at Bryandale is not an isolated one. Just a few days ago, a Grade 8 learner at De La Salle Holy Cross College (in Johannesburg) was reportedly told, 'You don't belong… go home, you (K-word).'
In 2024, Pretoria High School for Girls made headlines after WhatsApp messages targeted Black pupils.
That year, Jeppe High School for Girls in Johannesburg came under fire when Black pupils were removed from class for wearing coloured braids, but not white pupils with dyed hair.
These are not isolated 'bad apples'. They reflect systemic failures that schools must urgently address. We call on school governing bodies, education departments, and communities to treat these incidents with the seriousness they deserve.
Silence or delay enables racism to fester. We must demand not only awareness but transformation that is measurable, monitored, and real because if our schools can't be safe and just spaces for our children, we cannot expect our society to be either. | Matthew Cook Johannesburg
Malice or ignorance about the meanings
Unless you are a graduate of Harvard or Columbia and have been indoctrinated by radical left-wing Islamists, you should be able to distinguish between a fact and a libel.
You may even be capable of reading a dictionary and testing its definitions with what passes for journalism in some media or statements uttered by politicians and NGOs.
Let's start with 'genocide', a term loosely used when libelling Israel. In 1948, there were 500 000 Muslims (they were not called Palestinians then) in the areas now controlled by Hamas and the PA. Today there are 2.7 million. By what definition, or historical example, do the victims of a genocide actually grow exponentially?'
Apartheid' is a particularly ugly word. It reminds us of the institutionalised racial segregation that existed in South Africa from 1948 to the early 1990s. A one-day visit to any Israeli city would dispel you of this notion. On the streets and on public transport you will see people of every colour and hear English, French, Arabic and Hebrew spoken everywhere. Arabs are proportionally over-represented in academia.
In all hospitals you will see Jews and Arabs, male and female doctors, staffs and patients. This ethnic and gender mingling exists nowhere else in the Middle East and North Africa. Call Judea and Samaria the West Bank, if you wish, but don't say it is 'occupied'.
Under international law, Israel includes Gaza, Judea and Samaria (see article 80 of the UN charter). Under the Oslo Accords, 100 000 PLO supporters came into Israel and occupied parts of Judea and Samaria, while 60% (area C) remained totally under Israeli control.
Continued misuse of these terms is anti-semitism, whether by ignorance or malice. | Len Bennett Ottawa, Canada
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Daily Maverick
3 hours ago
- Daily Maverick
Electricity tariffs force a choice between food or power, says Electricity Minister Ramokgopa
The minister brokered an agreement between City Power and Eskom, which had almost ended up in court. With electricity tariffs up by an average of 12.74% between April and July (when municipal tariff increases kick in), Electricity Minister Kgosientsho Ramokgopa said energy poverty was biting South Africans. Ramokgopa said that the rapidly rising cost of electricity was forcing households to choose between food and energy (see this report from Daily Maverick in 2024). Because people can't afford their bills, debt owed by municipalities to Eskom is growing at R3-billion a month and has now overshot a total of R100-billion. This, in turn, threatens Eskom's viability. Ramokgopa was speaking, along with Johannesburg Mayor Dada Morero, to announce a deal over a festering dispute between the city distributor, City Power, and Eskom, which almost ended up in court in December. The utility threatened to cut off four substations where most of the R4.9-billion billing debt had racked up; City Power, in turn, said that R3.4-billion had been incorrectly billed and breathed fire at Eskom. On Tuesday, 24 June, Ramokgopa brokered an agreement for R3.2-billion to be paid over four years, with an additional tariff relief of R830-million. An upcoming data investigation by the Daily Maverick has found that there are more than 30,000 power cuts in the city each quarter as City Power struggles with declining revenues (because people can't afford their electricity bills) and a R44-billion bill to upgrade aged infrastructure. Ramokgopa said state departments should not be taking each other to court and that the SA National Development Institute (Sanedi) had mined the data and evidence to help the parties find an agreement that worked for them. Its report took three months rather than three weeks to complete because the work was more complex than initially thought. It offered a template for other billing disputes between Eskom and municipalities. Council proceedings show that City Power increased revenue by 17.4% in the year to June, but expenses shot up by 23%, resulting in a net loss of R602-million. It has a bank overdraft of R15.34-billion in the year to June. Ramokgopa said that while big cities such as Johannesburg could work around the national cost of the power crisis, smaller municipalities were falling off the cliff. Municipalities levy charges on the sale of electricity and make most of their revenue from these. DM
Daily Maverick
3 hours ago
- Daily Maverick
How South Africa's poor continue paying for the privileges of the rich
It is South Africa's political-economic structure, its 'relations of power', that need transformation, if the objective is to reverse our shameful poverty, unemployment and inequality. This transformation begins with the rejection of what has shaped the fundamentals of our economy since 1994 – neoliberalism. The poor continue to be the constant losers regardless of the specific crisis afflicting the economy at any time. Some 20 years ago, for instance, the collapse of the rand against the US dollar, British pound and the EU's euro was offered as part of the explanation why most people were experiencing economic hardship. Then – as hard as it is to remember or imagine – the opposite happened. The rand began to strengthen, doubling its value against the dollar. But the hardships of most South Africans remained unchanged. Indeed, the very strength of the rand was presented as the cause of growing poverty and unemployment. Without our predilection for producing remedial plans for every problem, I wonder how many people have ever heard of – or remember – AsgiSA, the Accelerated and Shared Growth Initiative for South Africa, launched in February 2006. The initiative was supposed to introduce policies and interventions to achieve sustainable economic growth of 6%, which would halve poverty and unemployment by 2014. No sooner was it announced than the global economic gurus, to whom our government is beholden, warned that too much growth was inflationary and then, as now, inflation was presented as a deadly disorder. Interest rates around the world accordingly began increasing to counter the excessive inflationary growth rate. Following this lead, our Reserve Bank claimed that a growth rate of only 4.1% was sustainable if inflation was to be controlled. Leap into the present and the same pattern persists. South Africa's 2025 Budget shows that only some of the particulars of the pattern have changed. The urgency of economic growth as the means to solving our myriad problems – growth being the only issue on which all members of the GNU agree – was central to the brouhaha over the new national Budget. All the GNU's 10 members claimed that the interests of the poor were primary in either shaping or opposing the first two versions of the Budget. The third and finally agreed version was supposedly based on the same objective, with creating jobs as the main one. The finally agreed Budget, however, still left most South Africans the victims of the same macroeconomic policies accepted by all parliamentary political parties since 1994, notwithstanding the occasional rhetoric of some of them. Under the headline of ' Education and health funding slashed while fuel levy increased ' – despite the appalling state of both education and health – Daily Maverick's Neesa Moodley details the impact of the Budget's austerity impact on additional items such as social grant recipients, the early retirement programme for the public sector, the zero rating of more essential food items, and Home Affairs. That VAT is the most regressive of all taxes didn't deter the ANC from wanting to impose a 2% VAT increase, or inhibit it from still seeing itself as speaking on behalf of 'our people'. Indeed, the wanted VAT increase caused the SACP such internal conflict that it pledged itself to stand against the ANC in the next national election – the municipal one in 2026. But, hedging its bets, the SACP remains loyal to its alliance with the ANC. Neoliberalism, with its standard characteristics – austerity, tax rates for the rich that are untouchable unless being reduced, conservative monetary policies, public debt that is unpayable yet remains both permanent and the primary budget line item, growing inequality and dependence on the global 'market' – remains sacrosanct (for those wishing to know more about my understanding of neoliberalism). There is one standout issue, however, that is permanently free from the austerity cuts and restrictions the government says are unavoidable, if, as it must, it prevents getting into even heavier debt by borrowing money. The Employment Equity Amendment Bill, the Mineral Resources Bill, the R100-billion Transformation Fund and the legally binding BEE legal sector code for the greatly enhanced involvement of black (ie African) lawyers are current examples of this exemption. 'SA is busy intensifying BEE', as the former editor of Business Maverick, Tim Cohen, noted in February 2025. He considered this intensification to be the movement from BEE's first wave to its second and third waves. A commitment to this intensification was a central theme of President Cyril Ramaphosa's keynote address at the Black Business Council's (BBC) Annual Conference on 5 June 2025. 'Transformation', apart from being a constitutional mandate as Ramaphosa reminded the BBC, remains legitimised by its claim to be designed to help 'our people' by the imperative of reducing poverty and unemployment. Transformation rich in reassuring rhetoric The reality is less righteous. It is the African rich who feed off the in-your-face African poverty as the rationale for still more measures to promote their wealth. Then-President Thabo Mbeki, rather than feeling the need to camouflage this reality, made it the key theme of his address to the Black Management Forum's annual conference in December 1999. He declared: 'I will speak only to the question of the challenge of the formation of a black capitalist class, a black bourgeoisie'. Despite such frankness, he still felt the need for euphemism. The implicitly all-inclusive 'black bourgeoisie' being one such euphemism. Yet only some five months earlier, the ANC had reaffirmed, at its 50th Annual Conference, that it had a much narrower understanding of who was black. In practice, as well as selected public use, it meant Africans in particular (Thesis 8 of the National Question in South Africa). This dual meaning of black has become sufficiently common for people to clarify their meaning when black is not used generically to include everyone who isn't white. Hence the term black African. President Ramaphosa's response to the question put to him in Parliament on 27 May 2025 by the leader of the Freedom Front Plus, Corné Mulder, is among the clearest and most comprehensive analyses demonstrating that the Budget was not alone in omitting the needs of poor Africans. Transformation does the same, despite the trillions of rands their poverty legitimises when spent on the creation, consolidation and expansion of the African bourgeoisie. Ramaphosa merits quoting at some length. Although himself using the formula 'black people in general and Africans in particular' in 2017, and, more especially when presenting the ANC's President's Political Report in 2022, he reverted to the more inclusive 'black people' in his answer to Mulder's 2025 Parliamentary question (as he frequently did in his aforementioned address to the BBC, in June 2025): 'I am rather surprised and taken aback when I hear that policies of black economic empowerment militate against the growth of our economy. That, I find quite surprising because I work from the starting point that our economy was held back over many years by the racist policies of the past. 'Black people were brought in as hewers of wood and drawers of water and they were just brought in as labourers. They were not even seen as consumers. They were not seen as active players in the economic landscape of our country.' The reality of apartheid, including the wholesale exclusion of black South Africans from the economy, could not be forgotten, as if it were merely 'a bad dream', Ramaphosa reminded Mulder: 'So I am really baffled, I am baffled by people who still hanker for policies of the past and to have you, Sir, say black economic empowerment is holding our economy back.' Ramaphosa was particularly incensed by the accusation that transformation was the major impediment to achieving the reduction of poverty and unemployment. All his GNU member parties agreed that cutting poverty and unemployment was the sine qua non for the way forward. They further agreed that this couldn't be achieved without economic growth. For him, there is no inconsistency between growth and 'black' wealth: 'Why can't black people be made to own productive aspects of our economy, why can't they be rich as well?' He claimed that both the World Bank and IMF had, in separate reports, agreed with him. Ramaphosa said that both institutions had identified an excessively over-concentrated economy as the roadblock to growth. Ramaphosa's still-intact apartheid mindset selectively equated this unhealthy concentration as being the continuation of apartheid, where the white minority enjoyed state protection of their ownership and management of the major sources of wealth. Given his misunderstanding of 'concentration', he was baffled by the new, sustained and growing fashion of attacking transformation, in both South Africa and the US. His expectation is applause for transformation, for its explicit intention is nothing less than forcing open the bolted doors of white wealth, with the keys still secured in white safes. His apartheid-cemented mindset made him unable to comprehend that, as used by both the World Bank and International Monetary Fund (and economists more generally), concentration referred to sector/s of an economy dominated by a small number of very large corporations. These oligopolies, as they are called in standard economics, or monopolies in Marxian terminology, are sufficiently powerful both to set market prices and deter others from becoming competitors. (It seems that some of the established beneficiaries of BEE prefer not having additional competitors created by the continuation of BEE.) In either case, oligopolies are considered to constrain supposedly free markets, which is why most developed economies, including South Africa, have statutory institutions formally mandated to control such anti-competitive behaviours. Provided they don't take this mandate too seriously. If they do, even our (mostly) toothless Competition Commission is lambasted for 'thwarting growth '. This, despite the commission's acceptance of the normalisation of anti-competitive behaviour worldwide and the need for South Africa's corporations to be 'competitive' in markets controlled by much larger corporations than South Africa's large ones. Hence, too, the Treasury's response to pressure from Parliament's Finance Committee to expand the VAT zero-rated food basket. The Treasury explained that zero-rating was a blunt instrument, for it also benefited retailers and distributors who did not pass on the price reductions to consumers. Such additional profiteering was just presented – and accepted – as an unchangeable fact of economies. Capitalism on neoliberal steroids The effects of this modern-day economy (which dominates much of the world) go way beyond the austerity cuts and restrictions of South Africa's current Budget. As argued elsewhere, it is the South African form of neoliberalism that creates and reproduces the very poverty, unemployment and inequality the GNU is committed to reversing. Most of the 187 countries identified by the International Labour Organisation (ILO) in 2020 as austerity-stricken are committed to GDP-measured growth as the antidote to austerity. South Africa, along with the others, sees the antidote as being an injection of foreign capital into their economies. With the world awash with capital seeking profit-maximising investments – there are about 215 other investment destinations that capital can seek, according to Professor Adrian Saville of the Gordon Institute of Business Science – countries are obliged to be even more 'business-friendly' than their immediate competitors. The World Bank Group's President, Tim Young Kim, alerted governments as far back as 2017 to what this means: 'If the conditions are not right for private investment, we need to work with our partners to de-risk projects, sectors and entire countries.' 'De-risking' means maximising the freedom enjoyed by the capital of would-be investors. In addition to the Competition Commission's (standard) impotence, this is why profit shifting from the Global South continues unabated, despite the $242-trillion known to have been involved for the period 1990-2015 (constant 2010 USD). The global amount is $492-billion per year. A 2022 estimate for South Africa's losses is $329-billion over five decades. The Dennis Davis Tax Commission of 2022 put South Africa's losses at more than R100-billion. The free movement of capital is taken as given by foreign capital. This is why calls to tax the rich in the world's most unequal society can only but fall on deaf ears. This is why we are expected to celebrate when the export of food increases, while at the same time attacking the government – whether or not it's in a GNU formation – for the worsening unaffordability of food at home. This – along with a more generalised poverty and despair – is why some of us cry when mothers sell their children, while others applaud when the mothers and their accomplices are given life sentences. And we know well that the self-imposed restraints on budgets compel even well-meaning governments to increase the cost of petrol, notwithstanding their awareness that this will aggravate hunger and poverty, for the imperative of profit maximising will force businesses to increase their prices. The way forward? With the DA still being labelled a 'white' party, it is easy to dismiss their opposition to race-based laws because they oppose transformation that threatens their apartheid privileges. But, apart from such party-political opportunism, there is no reason to doubt the sincerity of Willie Aucamp, the DA spokesperson – or most DA members, for that matter – when, in dismissing the anti-transformation accusation, he added: 'We believe that genuine redress must uplift all South Africans and remove the obstacles that continue to exclude millions from economic participation.' Given the reality of 'transformation', as Thabo Mbeki's brother, Moeletsi has noted: 'As the ruling party, the ANC had the role of nation-building. Instead, it has adopted policies that benefited only the African elite and alienated everyone else.' And because this reality is too discomforting for most of the ANC's political leadership and the more specifically business members of the 'black' bourgeoisie, they, too, probably sincerely endorse the sentiments expressed by the ANC's economic transformation subcommittee head, Zuko Godlimpi. Those opposed to transformation, he contended, have 'routinely tried to turn the legal system into their fighting stick against policies aimed at structural transformation. The grammar of this effort changes over time to be about inadequacies of this legislation, but the substance is the same: retain relations of power that privilege the same historically defined group in terms of economic access, employment opportunity, higher education access and overall social upward mobility.' South Africa's social stability, in his assessment, required nothing less than successful transformation. Ramaphosa developed these themes during his address to the BBC. While acknowledging that 'black African' households had experienced a 46% increase in real income between 2006 and 2023, the average income of 'white' households still remained nearly five times greater than African ones and, thus, failed to meet the demographics required by the Employment Equity and related acts. Since the persistence of 'poverty-stricken' Africans in post-apartheid South Africa is the fundamental rationale for African wealth, as expressed as recently as 9 June 2025 by CEO of Business Leadership SA (BLSA) Busisiwe Mavuso, with white-dominated institutions that 'look like outposts of Europe', Ramaphosa's playing with statistics is not surprising. It is to be expected that he would fail to mention that the 46% increase in African income reflected the huge inequality between the African rich and poor, an inequality that plays a major role in making South Africa the world's most unequal society. It is, indeed, most probable that he is not able to acknowledge this reality even to himself. Such a denial would be wholly consistent with the disjuncture between reality and his illusions on display in his glowing report to the BBC on health, education and unemployment. What he and the DA – like all the other parliamentary parties – are most fundamentally not able to accept is that it is South Africa's political-economic structure, its 'relations of power', that need transformation, if the objective is to reverse our shameful poverty, unemployment and inequality. This transformation begins with the rejection of what still remains nameless in Parliament, even though it has shaped the fundamentals of our economy since 1994: neoliberalism (as I've already revealed). While this first step to the DA's 'genuine' transformation remains beyond Parliamentary thinking, this is unlikely to apply to most of you, the readers of this article. After the experience of 31 years of neoliberal practice, it is a tiny step to guarantee its continued failure – and the consequential growing instability in all its many areas in our society. This knowledge is powerful. It makes it possible for us to increase in size sufficient for our voices not only to be heard in Parliament, but to be represented in Parliament. DM
IOL News
4 hours ago
- IOL News
Trump's fiery response to Israel and Iran's ceasefire breaches
US President Trump criticised Israel and Iran for ceasefire violations. Image: Kamil Krzaczynski / AFP US President Donald Trump expressed anger and disappointment over the fragile ceasefire between Israel and Iran, slamming both countries for violating the agreement on Tuesday. Trump took credit for having brokered the ceasefire, but it appears to have faltered mere hours after its announcement. Speaking outside the White House, a visibly angry Trump said he was not happy with both countries and was looking to reprimand the two nations. "We have two countries that have been fighting so long and so hard that they don't know what they're doing," Trump said, criticising both Israel and Iran for their actions while using profanities. Despite acknowledging that the ceasefire might not be entirely broken, Trump expressed his discontent with Israel saying the country attacked Iran just after they had made the deal. "Israel, as soon as we made the deal, they came out and they dropped a load of bombs, the likes of which I've never seen before,' Trump said. Video Player is loading. Play Video Play Unmute Current Time 0:00 / Duration -:- Loaded : 0% Stream Type LIVE Seek to live, currently behind live LIVE Remaining Time - 0:00 This is a modal window. Beginning of dialog window. Escape will cancel and close the window. Text Color White Black Red Green Blue Yellow Magenta Cyan Transparency Opaque Semi-Transparent Background Color Black White Red Green Blue Yellow Magenta Cyan Transparency Opaque Semi-Transparent Transparent Window Color Black White Red Green Blue Yellow Magenta Cyan Transparency Transparent Semi-Transparent Opaque Font Size 50% 75% 100% 125% 150% 175% 200% 300% 400% Text Edge Style None Raised Depressed Uniform Dropshadow Font Family Proportional Sans-Serif Monospace Sans-Serif Proportional Serif Monospace Serif Casual Script Small Caps Reset restore all settings to the default values Done Close Modal Dialog End of dialog window. Advertisement Video Player is loading. Play Video Play Unmute Current Time 0:00 / Duration -:- Loaded : 0% Stream Type LIVE Seek to live, currently behind live LIVE Remaining Time - 0:00 This is a modal window. Beginning of dialog window. Escape will cancel and close the window. Text Color White Black Red Green Blue Yellow Magenta Cyan Transparency Opaque Semi-Transparent Background Color Black White Red Green Blue Yellow Magenta Cyan Transparency Opaque Semi-Transparent Transparent Window Color Black White Red Green Blue Yellow Magenta Cyan Transparency Transparent Semi-Transparent Opaque Font Size 50% 75% 100% 125% 150% 175% 200% 300% 400% Text Edge Style None Raised Depressed Uniform Dropshadow Font Family Proportional Sans-Serif Monospace Sans-Serif Proportional Serif Monospace Serif Casual Script Small Caps Reset restore all settings to the default values Done Close Modal Dialog End of dialog window. Next Stay Close ✕ He added that Israel had to 'calm down' after he said both Israel and Iran violated a ceasefire he tried to broker. 'I gotta get Israel to calm down now,' Trump said. The Iranian media reported that an Israeli strike on Monday had killed a senior commander of Iran's Basij paramilitary force, linked to the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC). The South African Communist Party (SACP) has also weighed in on the matter condemning the US military attacks on Iran, expressing solidarity with "the people of Iran and the axis of resistance to imperialism and Zionism". SACP spokesperson Mbulelo Mandlana said: "The SACP strongly condemns the United States' military attacks on Iran... We reiterate our solidarity with the people of Iran and the entire axis of resistance to imperialism, Zionism, and its genocidal campaigns in the Middle East." Political Analyst Dr John Molepo said the faltering ceasefire and escalating conflict have raised concerns about the potential for further destabilisation in the region. He said the conflict could easily surge into a bigger war if not stopped now. Cape Argus
