Court finds Cholota extradition from US was unlawful
BLOEMFONTEIN - The Free State High Court delivered judgment in the trial-within-a-trial involving Moroadi Cholota.
She's accused alongside former Free State Premier Ace Magashule in the asbestos corruption case.
Judge Phillip Loubser ruled her extradition from the US was unlawful.
"The extradition of Ms Cholota from the USA to the Republic of South Africa is declared to have been done unlawfully for want of a valid and lawful request for her extradition by the South African executive power," Loubser said.
"This court does not have the jurisdiction to try Ms Cholota on the offences she is charged with."
She claimed she was taken illegally and that the court has no jurisdiction to prosecute her.
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Daily Maverick
3 hours ago
- Daily Maverick
Private sector signals big appetite for transforming SA's logistics landscape
Transport Minister Barbara Creecy's quest to revitalise South Africa's ailing logistics sector through private sector participation has gained significant traction, with the request for information generating substantial industry interest and setting the stage for major reforms. The Department of Transport's request for information (RFI), which closed on 30 May after an extension due to 'overwhelming interest', received 162 formal responses across three critical freight corridors. The RFI portal alone registered 11,600 visits, signalling a big private sector appetite for participation in South Africa's struggling rail and port infrastructure. Judging by the response breakdown, there's strong interest across all key economic corridors: 51 responses for the iron ore and manganese corridor stretching from the Northern Cape to Saldanha and Nelson Mandela Bay, 48 responses for the coal and chrome corridor linking Limpopo and Mpumalanga to Richards Bay, and 63 responses for the container and automotive intermodal corridor connecting Gauteng to Durban, the Eastern Cape and Western Cape. Creecy, who launched the RFI in March, has been clear about the government's intentions: attract private investment and expertise to bring South Africa's logistics infrastructure to world-class standards while maintaining public ownership of strategic assets. Public ownership with private custodians 'Strategic infrastructure such as rail lines and ports will remain in public ownership, as assets belonging to South African people,' she said, establishing this principle as foundational to the reform process. The minister's approach acknowledges the reality facing state-owned logistics giant Transnet — limited state resources and massive infrastructure backlogs have severely hampered the entity's ability to fulfil its mandate. The solution, according to Creecy's vision, lies in leveraging private capital and expertise while preserving state control over core infrastructure assets. Five pillars of reform The private sector participation process will be guided by five key principles that reflect broader national objectives. Reforming Transnet in accordance with the Cabinet-approved roadmap for freight logistics. This includes the unbundling of Transnet, separating the infrastructure manager from operations, to introduce open access to the freight rail network. Ensuring a just transition with maximum job retention. This highlights the department's commitment to mitigating potential negative impacts on employment during the reform process. Safeguarding state ownership of immovable assets. As mentioned, rail lines and ports will remain in public ownership. Promoting localisation and industrialisation. This aims to develop economic benefits and growth through the private sector participation projects. Supporting Broad-Based Black Economic Empowerment and gender equality. This underscores the commitment to inclusive economic development and transformation within the sector. Under Creecy's leadership, the department has moved swiftly to realise this vision, establishing an interim Private Sector Participation Unit and finalising an agreement with the Development Bank of Southern Africa to host a permanent unit for managing the process. Timeline for transformation The RFI was, of course, just the opening phase gambit of reform. Requests for proposals (RFPs) for freight rail and port projects are expected by August, with the minister projecting 18 to 24 months to reach financial close on these RFPs. The endgame reform agenda is about more than freight logistics. A second RFI batch focusing on passenger rail initiatives will be released in July, covering operational areas including signalling, depots, rolling stock and high-speed rail corridors. The Passenger Rail Agency of South Africa (Prasa) is expected to issue RFPs in October. Creecy has also outlined immediate intervention measures. Independent technical assessments have been completed for the export coal rail network and iron ore corridor, with various funding sources available for immediate rehabilitation efforts, including Transnet's current budget, the National Treasury's budget facility for infrastructure, and private investment through existing customer agreements. A great privatisation? New regulations now allow collaborations between Transnet and private sector operators for short-term interventions to repair and upgrade infrastructure, a convenient bridge while longer-term private sector participation arrangements are finalised. The strong response to the RFI shows significant private sector confidence in South Africa's logistics potential, despite years of operational challenges at Transnet that have constrained economic growth. With all submitted information being treated with strict confidentiality and used exclusively to inform PSP project development, the stage appears set for a fundamental transformation of SA's logistics landscape. DM
Daily Maverick
8 hours ago
- Daily Maverick
Focusing on our formal colonial past obscures the inconvenient present (Part 1)
The corporate takeover of South African universities is the living legacy of Cecil John Rhodes, the mining magnate/politician. This ought to be a prime focus of students who describe themselves as radical, instead of dividing themselves on 'racial' lines. Part 1 in a two-part series. This year is the 10th anniversary of the student rebellion in South Africa and the explosion of the new concepts in popular discussion of colonialism and decolonisation. Forming a related group of ideas are decolonising the mind; a homogenous Africa, along with a similarly homogeneous Global South; and settler colonialism. Other than settler colonialism, which is for another time, this two-part series seeks to show why each of them is problematic. Decolonising the mind is arguably the most obfuscating, while also the most open to question. 1 Colonialism Colonialism is commonly understood as one country establishing and maintaining political and economic control over another territory and its people. Leading dictionaries, encyclopaedias and even the UN agree on this. The Oxford English Dictionary (2014) offers: 'The policy or practice of acquiring full or partial political control over another country… and exploiting it economically.' The Encyclopedia Britannica's version is more succinct: 'The control by one country over another area and its people.' For the UN's General Assembly, Resolution 1514, of 1960, colonialism is 'The subjection of peoples to alien subjugation, domination, and exploitation.' 2 Decolonisation It might surprise knowing that this term has conservative, anti-decolonisation origins, having been coined by the British and French 20th century administrations confronted by nationalist movements and anticolonial liberation struggles sweeping across Asia and Africa. The strategic aim of these colonial administrations was the orderly and prolonged transfer of political control to already established native elites who would minimise changes to the existing colonial architecture. In the 21st century, the term — now widely expanded — is still evoked by the elites in the former colonies. In many ways, sections of the broad left support versions of this conservative understanding of decolonisation, as Pranay Somayajula, a Washington DC-based writer, demonstrates. I shall be drawing on him in some of what follows. In many ways, this expanded use of decolonisation reflects the influence of 'coloniality', a school of thought that emerged in the 1990s in Latin America. Coloniality, in its critique of modernity, emphasises colonialism's importance in shaping modernity. Indeed, decolonial theorists often combine 'modernity' and 'coloniality' as a single term: modernity/coloniality. As two leading exponents of coloniality, Walter Mignolo and Catherine Walsh, write: The 'horizon' of decoloniality is not limited to 'the political independence of nation-states' or 'the confrontation with capitalism and the West,' but rather with 'the habits that modernity/coloniality implanted in all of us; with how modernity/coloniality has worked and continues to work to negate, disavow, distort and deny knowledges, subjectivities, world senses, and life visions'. Framing decolonisation in this way transforms it into a need for psychological liberation, a process of unlearning colonial ideology and reclaiming identity, dignity, and agency. The need to 'delink' from these Eurocentric systems of knowledge and power is, for them, a task whose goal is 'no longer to 'take hold of the state' but to engage in epistemic and subjective reconstitution' [On Decoloniality: Concepts, Analytics, Praxis (Durham: Duke University Press, 2018)] Such disavowals of modernity make it appealing to conservativism, in all its manifestations. Before suggesting what lies behind this development of decoloniality, which embraces all the major, current forms of Identity worldwide — be they racial, ethnic, cultural, religious, language or nation — held by the formerly colonised non-white people, it is important to recognise that Identity, regardless of which particular one, is a social construct. It follows from the rejection of biological essentialism as being without any scientific basis that there is nothing for the supposedly inferior people to prove. This applies to Identity, irrespective of which one different people choose. The challenge is to ensure that the prejudices of the most jaundiced of jingoists are not internalised. There is thus no need to invent cultural histories or celebrate the achievements by, specifically, members of former colonised people. Yet, it is precisely this need to disprove all the dogmas that is daily on display. Hindu nationalism is a prime example of this from Asia. Pranay Somayajula reminds us that, in their calls for a return to an imagined Hindu civilisational glory, a 'golden age', current Hindu leaders frequently invoke the language of overcoming a 'colonised mindset' and reviving so-called 'Indic consciousness' — the array of 'indigenous' philosophies, cosmologies, and epistemologies supposedly suppressed by centuries of Islamic and British colonisation alike. In its most exaggerated form, this atavism can be observed in the viral memes claiming that ancient Indians invented everything from aircraft to nuclear weapons to the internet. This need to invent their own culture or achievements resulted in Afro-Americans inventing their own Christmas, Kwanzaa, in 1966, with twenty-first century estimates of the number of Americans who celebrate Kwanzaa being between 500,000 and 2,000,000. Expressing the same need, African nationalists claimed — some still do — that the Pyramids and the Sphinx were built by black Africans, not Egyptian Arabs, with the Sphinx having been deliberately bombed in order to remove a characteristically African nose. Some black Africans, including those of African descent worldwide, of the Christian faith argue that Jesus was black. Moving on to South Africa, decolonisation hit us, from seemingly nowhere, when a few students at the University of Cape Town threw shit at a statue of Cecil John Rhodes in March 2015. Since then, it has blown across the whole of South Africa to be inhaled as fresh air. Conferences on the subject are big business; there's even a Decolonisation Foundation. To be anything less than exhilarated by the whirlwind is to run the risk of being roughly attacked as racist or reactionary. The gale has especially shaken universities: their need for a thoroughly decolonised makeover, including what is taught and by whom, is the new orthodoxy. During the student rebellion of 2015-17, those who shouted the loudest often made fools of themselves. The proposed rejection of science as a non-African, white Eurocentric imposition was reported across the world. Less well known but in the same league were the medical students who rejected a practical on ankle injuries because the lecturer, attempting to make it real life, had linked the injury to football and football was deemed to be an alien, non-African colonial import. In a similar vein was — and is — the automatic rejection of reading lists on technical subjects purely because the authors are from Europe or the US. Subjects such as architecture have been disavowed for being non-African. Expressions of this same drive for constantly disproving white prejudice was recognised, along with its implicit rebuke, by Mamphela Ramphele, a noted academic, besides being Steve Biko's one-time partner, who said 'we have largely bought into the lie that black people do not have the capacity to excel'. Exposing the lie is manifested in things such as: The need for street names to show that black people are capable of having their own heroes. The rejection of the Homo Naledi fossils because black people have not evolved from baboons. The national celebration following the first black South African to have climbed Mount Everest, a feat which, according to then president Thabo Mbeki, made all South Africans 'stick out our chests in justifiable pride and wonder'. The ANC Women's League's celebration (without any irony) that President Jacob Zuma had used a 'wholly black-owned' bank to pay his Public Prosecutor-ordered, maleficence-laden Nkandla bill. The league's secretary-general noted that the president's 'confidence in supporting black-owned businesses is humbling'. This bank subsequently turned out to be the notorious VBS! The celebration of 'Ubuntu' as a uniquely black South African contribution to world philosophy and ethics. The then minister of Agriculture and Land Affairs, Thoko Didiza, who in 2000 announced that the government wanted to build 'a core of successful black farmers in this country. We want to move away from a perception that only white farmers can make it commercially, and that subsistence farming is only for Africans'. For then president Jacob Zuma it was a case of: 'Let us solve African problems the African way, not the white man's way. Let us not be influenced by other cultures…' The need for black people to be rich to prove black ability and the consequent — and often unconscionable — conspicuous consumption to display black achievement. Thabo Mbeki, the urbane, cosmopolitan, British university-educated intellectual, surprised many by his evident internalisation of the most extreme views of supposedly biologically determined black behaviour. His denial of Aids stands testimony to his fear that the worst of white racism is accurate. Consider the following, for instance, from 11 August 2000: 'The white politician (a reference to Tony Leon who had attacked his Aids denialism) makes bold to speak openly of his disdain and contempt for African solutions to the challenges that face the peoples of our continent. According to him… these solutions, because they are African, could not but consist of pagan, savage, superstitious and unscientific responses typical of the African people, described by the white politician as resorting 'to snake-oil cures and quackery'… This racism has defined us who are African and black as primitive, pagan, slaves to the most irrational superstitions and inherently prone to brute violence.' Or, after referring to medical schools where black people were 'reminded of their role as germ carriers', Mbeki said: 'Thus does it happen that others who consider themselves to be our leaders take to the streets carrying their placards (evidently referring to trade union leaders and Aids activists) to demand that because we are germ carriers, and human beings of a lower order that cannot subject its (sic) passions to reason, we must perforce adopt strange opinions, to save a depraved and diseased people from perishing from self-inflicted disease… Convinced that we are but natural-born, promiscuous carriers of germs, unique in the world, they proclaim that our continent is doomed to an inevitable mortal end because of our unconquerable devotion to the sin of lust.' The gruesome reality of Aids rules out any irony in Mbeki's comments. Let me further make explicit and unequivocal that, notwithstanding the above, colonialism was both real and a primary determinant in shaping our history and socioeconomic architecture. In addition, the rediscovery of colonialism is essential to the final burial of the idea that apartheid — the racial organisation and structure of South Africa — began only in 1948, when the Calvinist Afrikaners, unlike the nice, liberal English, took over the running of South Africa. 3 The colonisation supposedly in need of decolonising the mind The left in South Africa, Europe and the US were/are leading advocates of a decolonisation centred on universities and what is taught there. With South Africa this time being the unusual vanguard, meant Britain and the US — particularly since the Black Lives Matter uprisings of summer 2020 — catching up with the demands made by South African students five years earlier. 'Among the most visible targets' of this catching up, Pranay Somayajula notes, 'were intellectual and cultural institutions — universities, museums, archives, and the like — which came under pressure to 'decolonise' through gestures such as land acknowledgments, renaming buildings, repatriating looted artifacts, and reworking curricula to more adequately 'centre' black and indigenous voices.' This forced European institutions to reckon with their complicity in nineteenth- and twentieth-century empires, North American institutions to reckon with their complicity in settler-colonial violence against the continent's indigenous peoples, and institutions to reckon with their complicity in the trans-Atlantic slave trade. Somayajula's conclusion is that this focus 'on the institutions that function as pillars of Western knowledge production constitutes in many ways an indictment of Western epistemology itself… Implicit in this critique of dominant forms of knowledge production is a call to uplift in their place the indigenous ways of knowing and being that have been suppressed by the same processes of colonial violence and dispossession in which these institutions were (and are) complicit.' South Africa's student rebellion of 2015-17 provides a case study of what this means in practice. The student who threw the poo at Rhodes' statue that sparked the rebellion came dressed as a mine worker. The Marikana Massacre of 2012 is a stark reminder that the problem is not colonialism, or Rhodes' dead legacy, but the awful power of his very-much-alive mining descendants, for whom colonialism is rightly history. The exclusive focusing on the colonial insult symbolised by Rhodes' statue leaves this living legacy untouched. Shouting for the removal of other 'white colonial' names — like in 'Jameson' Hall — makes it very easy for the university authorities to agree. It is easy for them to do so for it serves as a distractive anachronism. Focusing on our formal colonial past obscures the inconvenient present and its truth that UCT is heavily reliant on the various post-colonial forms of Rhodes' legacy for its current funding; a reliance reflected in so many of the corporate names that now festoon supposed 'academic' buildings. Indeed, the entire corporate takeover of all universities, not just UCT, is the living legacy of Rhodes, the mining magnate/politician. This ought to be a prime focus of students who describe themselves as radical. Instead, they divided themselves on so-called 'racial' lines and, as a final mocking irony, did so using the 'races' Rhodes did so much to institutionalise as part of his divide-and-rule legacy. His contribution to the forced creation of an African working class with a ready and self-replenishing supply of dirt-cheap labour for his gold mines is a prominent feature of his legacy. The supposedly 'black students' demanding the removal of the offending statue bring warmth to the coffins containing the heroes of the apartheid pantheon, beginning with Dr Hendrik Verwoerd. These apartheid architects argued that the four 'races' of apartheid South Africa reflected a natural order in which each 'race' had to live separate from the others because of their natural differences and in-born wishes. 'Coloureds' and 'Indians' are not black, according to the students who accused the formerly white universities of still being predominately 'white'. Students were not welcome at some of the student gatherings because of their 'whiteness', even though they fully supported the 'black' campaign to remove Rhodes from UCT as part of the decolonisation campaign that swept the country. Rhodes, too, would have greatly enjoyed this spectacle of how students allowed the 'races' he helped manufacture to divide themselves, even while campaigning against his 'colonial' legacy of dispossession and subjugation. Colour-coding access to scarce resources is the main hallmark of the new, post-apartheid, non-racial South Africa. We'll be returning to this issue in due course. The right wing has also been prolific in its understanding of what decolonising means. The well-known academic, Professor William Gumede, of Wits University, provides one such example in his 2022 Daily Maverick article, ' African economic transformation demands a radical shock to failed post-colonial system '. His article begins: 'Several types of collective mindset changes drove the astonishing industrial transformation of the East Asian developmental states from similar poverty levels to their African and developing country peers, to levels of development similar to or better than those of their former colonial occupiers.' And ends: 'If… South Africa and other African and developing countries want to mimic the extraordinary and radical economic transformation of the East Asian tiger economies, (they) will have to undergo drastic individual and collective mindset changes, and overhaul old institutions, behaviours and customs. Without such a shock to thinking patterns, they will stay locked in mass underdevelopment, poverty and instability.' A single word defines his remedy: entrepreneurship. It is this, he contends, that has transformed all four of the countries he mentions: Japan, South Korea, Taiwan and Singapore. What he singularly fails to mention is that the first three countries all owe their good fortune to the privileges the US allowed them as an integral part of the post-World War 2 challenge posed by both the Soviet Union and the then China. Highly selective perception is required to see Singapore as a success story, as detailed in 'Singapore — little to sing about despite Greg Mills' call for encores', my January 2024 response to a Daily Maverick article by Greg Mills. (This response is the only one never published by the Daily Maverick but is available on request.) Franz Fanon now enters the story with his seminal book, first published in 1952, Black Skin, White Masks. Many worldwide have long attributed the need to decolonise the mind to this book. Yet 'decolonise' does not appear in the book, not even once. It is, indeed, part of his book, The Wretched of the Earth. This difference is not an academic quibble. It alerts us to the confusions caused by the misuse of colonialism and why that matters. Considerably.
Daily Maverick
8 hours ago
- Daily Maverick
Words that wound — ‘Kill the Boer' is legal, but not wise for a fragile South Africa
In March 2025, South Africa's Constitutional Court upheld a contentious ruling that the slogan 'Kill the Boer, kill the farmer,' a liberation-era chant, does not constitute hate speech under South African law. This judgment followed an appeal by AfriForum against a previous judgment. The civil rights organisation argued that the slogan incited violence and hatred, particularly against white South Africans and especially farmers. The court found, however, that the phrase, when understood in its historical and political context, did not meet the legal threshold of hate speech. That said, it is argued here that while the slogan may be constitutionally protected, its deliberate use in contemporary political settings is not merely provocative, it is profoundly unwise. In a society still grappling with the legacies of apartheid, endemic inequality and fragile race relations, words carry weight far beyond their legal definitions. It is within this context that the South Africa Social Cohesion Index (Sasci), developed by the Inclusive Society Institute, has drawn timely attention to a worrying decline in societal cohesion by providing critical insights into why the continued use of divisive slogans serve only to jeopardise the country's progress toward unity and social stability. The Constitutional Court's reasoning The Constitutional Court's dismissal of the appeal by AfriForum was grounded in legal and historical nuance. The justices concurred with the 2022 Equality Court ruling that the chant should not be taken literally but as a symbolic relic of the anti-apartheid struggle. It was not, they emphasised, a call to actual violence against individuals or groups. There was also insufficient evidence linking the use of the slogan to specific acts of harm or incitement, which is a requirement for speech to be classified as hate speech under South African law. This decision reaffirmed the robust commitment of the South African judiciary to freedom of expression, one of the bedrock rights enshrined in the post-apartheid Constitution. It recognises that a democratic society must allow space for emotional, political and even uncomfortable speech. But freedom of speech is not equal to freedom from consequence. Social cohesion under strain According to the 2024 Sasci, South Africa is treading a narrow ridge between cohesion and fragmentation. The index, which measures solidarity, fairness, trust, identity, civic participation and respect for institutions, paints a picture of partial resilience and underlying volatility. Solidarity sits at 61.3, indicating moderate willingness to care for others regardless of identity, but still vulnerable to racial and economic fault lines; Perception of Fairness, however, is a weak point, at 42.7, reflecting widespread public sentiment that South Africa's socioeconomic systems remain unjust; Intergroup Trust is alarmingly low – just 41% of black and white South Africans express some trust in one another; and Identification, that is, the sense of belonging to a shared national identity, is strong at 72.2, and is the glue that is holding the nation together. But this is susceptible to erosion under divisive rhetoric. These findings underscore a society still recovering from historical trauma, where the social glue is thin and brittle. Therefore, it is in this context that the use of a slogan such as 'Kill the Boer' must be evaluated, not in a courtroom, but in the court of public morality and nation-building. The political weaponisation of memory Chants such as 'Kill the Boer' are more than mere slogans. They are symbolic vessels, carrying the memory of past struggles, but also the potential to stir contemporary fears. So, with this in mind, it follows that the historical justification of the chant, which is rooted in anti-apartheid resistance, does not automatically make its current use, politically or socially, justifiable. In today's South Africa, invoking such slogans, especially during political rallies or in highly charged public platforms, is often a calculated act. It is a way of stoking populist sentiment, galvanising political bases and appealing to historical loyalties. But this comes at a steep cost: the polarisation of society, the re-traumatisation of communities and the erosion of hard-won intergroup solidarity. The Trump factor and global amplification The domestic controversy over 'Kill the Boer' took on international significance during South African President Cyril Ramaphosa's visit to the White House in May 2025. In a meeting with US President Donald Trump, the slogan once again found itself at the centre of a geopolitical flashpoint. Trump, resurrecting claims he first made in 2018, alleged that white South African farmers were the targets of a 'genocide'. He presented images purporting to show images of murdered white farmers. President Ramaphosa firmly rejected Trump's assertions, defending South Africa's constitutional land reform process and reaffirming the courts' dismissal of the 'white genocide' narrative. Yet, the damage had been done because Trump's global platform amplified fringe narratives and served to validate domestic fear-based politics within South Africa. This episode demonstrates how international rhetoric can dangerously reinforce internal social divisions, skew the global perception of South Africa's challenges and undermine the legitimacy of its reconciliation and land reform processes. Why legal speech can still be harmful Even if the courts are correct in finding that 'Kill the Boer' does not legally constitute hate speech, it is crucial to understand that legality does not equate to wisdom, unity or responsibility. In a country with such deep wounds, where race, land, identity and violence intersect in volatile ways, rhetoric matters. When political figures or public activists invoke this chant in the present day, they must consider: The historical trauma it reactivates for many white South Africans; The fear it induces among farming communities; The backlash it sparks from domestic and international actors; and Most importantly, the distrust and division it fuels between already polarised communities. Words, especially in political arenas, do not exist in a vacuum. They shape social perception, inform behaviour and influence whether people feel safe, respected and included. What leadership requires Leadership in a democratic society does not simply involve defending rights; it involves exercising them responsibly. South Africa's path forward depends not only on constitutional fidelity, but on a moral and social imagination capable of transcending inherited grievances. Political leaders and public influencers must ask: Does this speech unify or divide? Does it heal or harm? The question is no longer about what is legal, but what is nation-building. This is by no means a call for censorship. It is a call for ethical and moral restraint and for choosing reconciliation over rhetoric. And for choosing unity over provocation. It is possible to honour the past without weaponising it. It is possible to demand justice without alienating communities. It is possible to seek equity without amplifying enmity. Conclusion: The test of nationhood South Africa's journey from apartheid to democracy is often lauded as a global symbol of reconciliation. But symbols can become brittle. The Sasci's data tell us that the social cement is cracking and the slogan controversy is one fault line among many. If left unaddressed, such fissures can widen into fractures. The Constitutional Court has spoken on what the law allows. Now the burden falls to civil society, political leaders and ordinary citizens to determine what wisdom, justice and reconciliation demand. In a country where speech has the power to harm or to heal, the future will not be built by shouting into wounds, but by speaking into hope. DM
