Jonas yet to travel to US as envoy; SA eyes relaxing trade rules: Today's top 7 stories
News24 brings you the top stories of the day, summarised into neat little packages. Read through quickly or listen to the articles via our customised text-to-speech feature.
X/@MYANC
Fed-up ANC won't kick DA out but mulls including ActionSA and NCC in GNU shake-up
- The ANC's NEC will not expel the DA from the GNU despite being fed up with their 'theatrics'.
- Instead, the ANC plans to invite ActionSA and the NCC to join the GNU, potentially leading to a reconfiguration of Cabinet positions.
- Concerns about market stability and investor confidence influenced the decision to retain the DA, despite internal criticism.
Joburg political drama deepens as minority parties threaten to pull support for coalition
- Minority parties in Johannesburg's coalition government are threatening to withdraw support due to perceived disrespect from the ANC and disagreements over key positions.
- Former mayor Kabelo Gwamanda says the minority parties feel they deserve the finance MMC position and are not being treated as equal partners in the coalition.
- Mayor Dada Morero faces criticism for governance failures, including a warning from the finance minister regarding unauthorised expenditure and non-compliance with financial laws.
US tariffs: SA govt may relax competition rules for exporters
- South Africa plans to introduce an exemption to competition rules, allowing exporters affected by the 30% US tariff to collaborate in ways that might normally violate the Competition Act.
- The Department of Trade, Industry, and Competition (DTIC) intends to use the proposed transformation fund to help exporters diversify into new markets.
- An export support desk has been established to provide information on the tariffs and assist companies in accessing new markets.
Thulani Mbele/Gallo Images
SA envoy Mcebisi Jonas has not yet travelled to US on official duty - Lamola
- Mcebisi Jonas, South Africa's special envoy to the US appointed in April, has not travelled to the US in that capacity, confirmed by Minister Ronald Lamola.
- The DA criticised Jonas' absence, especially amid strained US-SA relations, while the Presidency defended his behind-the-scenes work on trade and diplomacy.
- The situation has sparked controversy, including accusations of disinformation and political battles, with international relations becoming a point of contention within the government.
Bok evolution: Attack under Tony Brown? What about 'D' under Flannery?
- Tony Brown's attacking mindset is shaping the Springboks' game plan for the 2027 Rugby World Cup.
- Jerry Flannery is building on Jacques Nienaber's defensive foundation while adding his own ideas.
- The upcoming Rugby Championship will test the Springboks' growth against tougher opponents like Australia and New Zealand.
ANCKZN/X
'My wives have been in business for many years': Tender outrage unjustified, says ANC boss
- ANC KZN heavyweight Thanduxolo Sabelo's wives allegedly scored two tenders in the National School Nutrition Programme, sparking conflict of interest concerns.
- The DA has requested an urgent investigation into the awarding of the tenders, citing concerns about companies linked to Sabelo's wives and Deputy Minister Sibiya's wife.
- The DA also alleges that some companies shortlisted for the programme lack valid registration or tax compliance, raising further questions about the integrity of the process.
Mark Wessels
NAF CEO on fest's future, its decreasing scale and navigating funding challenges
- Despite funding challenges and infrastructure issues in Makhanda, the CEO of the National Arts Festival, Monica Newton, remains optimistic about the event's future and its ability to attract a younger audience.
- The festival missed out on funding from the Department of Sports, Arts and Culture due to a technical issue and is adapting to changes in the policy environment and funding models.
- NAF is actively seeking to expand partnerships with foundations and the private sector to ensure financial viability and sustainability while continuing to believe in the power of the arts.
Hashtags
Try Our AI Features
Explore what Daily8 AI can do for you:
Comments
No comments yet...
Related Articles
Bloomberg
35 minutes ago
- Bloomberg
Trump Says FBI Might Have to Get Involved in Texas
"Balance of Power: Late Edition" focuses on the intersection of politics and global business. On today's show, Marta Wosińska, Senior Fellow at the Center on Health Policy at the Brookings Institution, discusses President Trump suggesting pharmaceutical tariffs to come in the near future as high as 250%. State Representative James Talarico (D-Texas) reacts to President Trump stating that the FBI may have to get involved over Texas state democratic lawmakers fleeing the state to halt map redistricting plans. Rep. Beth Van Duyne (R-TX) voices her confidence that the Texas map redistricting will create five additional Republican districts. (Source: Bloomberg)
Yahoo
42 minutes ago
- Yahoo
Why Canada Isn't Sweating Trump's Mob Tactics
Keeping a straight face has been perhaps the greatest achievement of Mark Carney's brief tenure as the prime minister of Canada. For months, Donald Trump has railed against Canada, threatening to turn America's ungrateful northern neighbor into the 51st state, come what may, an achievement worthy of his visage gracing Mount Rushmore — in the same way Trump will annex Greenland, reclaim the Panama Canal, free Brazil's corrupt former President Jair Bolsonaro, repeal the laws of climate change and gravity, and then impose tariffs on all of America's nefarious trading partners, like the evil-doer Canada. The only hitch, as the canny Carney has known all along: America has a thing called a 'treaty' with Canada. Not one of Trump's 'deals,' the chaotic, almost certainly worthless and delusional transactions that involve the president imagining himself astride the world, TV remote in hand, a colossus of reactionary stupidity and cruelty finally delivering his promised revenge. As a true-crime writer, it's long been evident to me that Trump has modeled himself on a Queens rich kid's idea of a real New York City gangster, only the stupid variety, the version of a tough guy who fools like Vice President J.D. Vance and FBI Director Kash Patel and Texas Senator Ted Cruz cosplay as they genuflect to their dullard old man boss like the morons in Jimmy Breslin's classic portrait of Mafia idiocy The Gang Who Couldn't Shoot Straight. In the 2000s, I wrote my first book about the worst crimes in the history of Brooklyn — The Brotherhood: The True Story of Two Cops Who Murdered for the Mafia. During the trial of two NYPD detectives for multiple murders as paid assassins for the mafia, Breslin sometimes sat next to me as we watched the most depraved and corrupt figures in the history of New York law enforcement finally face justice. Breslin was getting older, and he occasionally caught a few winks on my shoulder as a parade of witnesses proved beyond doubt that 'Gaspipe' Casso had indeed paid 'Downtown Burt' Kaplan to slip money to the two detectives to whack gangsters suspected of snitching — until the idiot dirty detectives wound up gunning down the 'wrong' Nicky Guido, murdering an innocent kid, not the flat-nosed gangster they were contracted to kill. Stupidity, as Breslin knew all too well, is always lurking nearby when it comes to the mob — real and imaginary. If he were alive today, Breslin would have Trump's number, I'm sure, seeing through the fake bravado to reveal the chubby spoiled brat who has always relied on Daddy's billions to live out his fantasy as a suave Fifth Avenue real estate genius and author of The Art of the Deal, when he's really a bloated bald nepo baby boob. Geopolitically, I feel sure Breslin would also be the first to laugh at the way Trump is trying to use tariffs to mercilessly leverage an American future with not a friend in the world — exactly like Trump himself. Decades-long strategic endeavors, like the burgeoning alliance with India, are being destroyed in the same penny ante way Trump has always ripped off contractors at his fifth-rate golf clubs and casinos. Starving children in Gaza and AIDS patients in Africa, research scientists, elite universities, hardworking immigrants suddenly treated like criminals, century-old mutually beneficial trade arrangements — all receive the same bully-boy, lawless disrespect Trump paid to the small family-owned businesses he stiffed for decades. As America's erstwhile closest friend, a relationship that means nothing to Trump, Canada seemed doomed to a similar fate — in fact, if you listen to Trump, Canada is already little more than a dependent vassal of the United States. When Canada announced last week that it would finally recognize the state of Palestine, in light of Israel's unconscionable campaign of collective punishment and starvation in Gaza, the offended Trump declared that he would impose a mind-boggling and devastating 35 percent tariff on all goods from Canada — an apparently catastrophic blow to my homeland and yet another display of Trump's all powerful global rule. BUT THE DEVIL is in the details — only in this case, the details aren't really details, they're the sum and substance of the trade relationship between Canada and the United States. When Trump announced the new tariffs on Canada, along with a dizzying and seemingly random array of other countries, the American media noted the existence of the United States-Mexico-Canada Agreement (the new name Trump gave to NAFTA in his first term), without pausing to consider the implications. The new tariffs seemed to fulfill one of Trump's central campaign pledges, as he swept the swing states of Michigan and Pennsylvania and Wisconsin in 2024, promising to put America first. Always adopting the role of victim, Trump portrayed the rest of the world as predators feasting on the carcass of the poor lamb-like American working family — and Canada, of all places, was one of the most exploitative trading partners. So it is that Trump's 35 percent tariffs on Canada sound like the revenge so many Americans seem to desire. But that isn't how things work in the grown-up world that fake mob boss Trump has long pretended doesn't exist — or at least doesn't apply to him. The treaty with Canada isn't a handshake or a shakedown or another of the extortionate deals that Trump is now imposing on the world. The USMCA is a treaty ratified by Congress, an agreement with the force of law — and a legally enforceable agreement that Canada will most certainly enforce if it is required to do so. For months, Trump has given the impression that he can rip up any law, from habeas corpus and birthright citizenship to demanding thinly veiled bribes from supine media corporations, enabled by a cowardly and corrupt Supreme Court clearly afraid to confront the president. But the courts and more importantly the markets wouldn't stand idly by if Trump attempted to unilaterally disregard a foundational, legally binding element of the North American economy like the USMCA — or at least that's a dare that the president doesn't seem willing to risk. In other words, by calling his bluff and asserting an independent policy on Palestine, despite Trump's threats, Canada has dared to speak in the only language Trump understands: leverage. The pervasive terror displayed by American institutions has disguised the fact that it is actually possible to stand up to a bully — as unassuming Canada just proved with its support for a Palestinian state. The truth is that under the terms of the USMCA, 95 percent of the goods and services that Canada exports to the United States arrive duty free, leaving a relatively small five percent subject to Trump's imperial 35 percent tariff. But even that doesn't capture the absurd reality. While Trump imposes across-the-board tariffs on countless countries, for reasons that escape any rational economic explanation, Canada is now perhaps the single most favored trading nation on earth. While scores of countries face Trump's punitive tariffs, Canada largely trades tariff free with the United States because it doesn't need a 'deal' — it has a treaty. Examined further, the truth is even more abject — or ridiculous depending on your point of view. Under the USMCA, Trump's tariffs on steel and aluminum are outside the ambit of the trade agreement because of the fake national emergency Trump has conjured, falsely claiming that Canada is a cause of massive fentanyl imports — when illegal imports from Canada amount to at most one percent of the drug in the United States. But it turns out that even those specific tariffs are almost certain to be illusory as American industry requires huge amounts of Canadian materials to function — the very products that Trump claimed America didn't need. To take the most recent example, Ford desperately needs Canadian aluminum to manufacture its F-150 pickup, but that material is subject to a crippling tariff of 50 percent, making Ford's American production line uneconomical, and perhaps in danger of closing. Nobel economist Paul Krugman pointed out an economic impact of Trump's tariffs that is so obvious it is astounding no one in the White House had the cajónes to mention to the wannabe emperor the consequence of putting huge tariffs on parts like steel and aluminum used by American automakers. Japanese and Korean vehicles are now subject to a 15 percent import tax, but that is small when compared to the 50 percent Trump vig American companies have to pay to import many of the components essential to any automobile — including Canadian steel and aluminum. It follows that Japanese and Korean cars enjoy a relative advantage because they don't have to pay Trump's tariff for their steel and aluminum — hardly the result the red cap-wearing throngs were promised. The world is now being treated to a tutorial in Economics 101 at Trump University. While billionaires like Trump get a giant tax break, the consumption tax Trump has renamed 'tariffs' will disproportionately fall on working-class voters. Despite the bluster, Trump's supposed archenemy Canada now faces the lowest tariffs in the world, and those that have been imposed are causing severe damage in America, making them self-destructive and likely to be quietly revoked. CANADA'S PRIME MINISTER CARNEY possesses degrees in economics from Harvard and Oxford, and they likely provided him with sufficient education to see the truth behind Trump's nonsense — and ensure he has the social graces and political intelligence to not laugh out loud when the president imposes symbolic tariffs like a carnival barker. Leading the Bank of Canada during the global financial crisis of 2008 and the Bank of England through the Brexit catastrophe of 2016 certainly have endowed Carney with the fortitude to quietly keep an eye on the larger prize and persist through times of economic lunacy. In recent months, Canada has come to occupy a unique place in the world. Sent as a canary into the coal mine of Donald Trump's addled mind, Canada has emerged from the toxic subterranean atmosphere alive and with the urgent news that it is possible to survive the craziness that has besieged the American body politic. Lay low and say as little as possible is Canada's message, denying Carney the cheap political thrill of telling Canadians how incredibly fortunate they are that Trump is so stupid — and risk riling the vengeful and easily humiliated Trump. In Canada there's a way of describing what is quickly becoming the global strategy for dealing with Donald Trump. In hockey, the term for what Carney is doing is called 'ragging the puck.' The idea is simple: When you're ahead, don't give the other team any opportunity to win. Hold on to the puck, skate backward away from the play, making it seem like you're still playing the game when you're really playing the clock. When the losing team realizes that the winning team is ragging the puck, it usually provokes an admixture of righteous fury followed by sullen submission, while the clock ticks down to the inexorable end — or 35 months and counting. THE WHOLE WORLD is now following some form of Canada's strategy, countries ragging the tariff puck and playing for time by agreeing to whatever unenforceable concessions Trump wants to announce to the gullible American media and the even more credulous public. A Democratic win in the midterm elections might bring a modicum of relief, perhaps, but the most important thing Canada is showing the world is to not laugh in the face of Trump's idiocy — and to let the clock and his power run out. On some level, Trump's supporters seem to intuitively understand the nature of the deal the boss of the gang who couldn't govern straight has struck for America. The great Jimmy Breslin of course had Trump's measure all the way back in the early '90s, when the would-be casino king was going bankrupt over and over again. Breslin wrote then that the seemingly indestructible Trump survived by dint of the little-known 'Corum's Law.' This obscure but telling insight into human nature comes from a New York sports columnist recruited in the 1950s to run the then notoriously sleazy Kentucky Derby. A keen observer of the self-harming psychology of compulsive gamblers, as well as an old-time, hard-boiled New Yorker in the manner of Damon Runyan, Bill Corum understood that for some fools, getting ripped off was part of the allure of going to the louche Kentucky Derby. The same seems to be true for his supporters in the age of Trump, with the president's P.T. Barnum blarney and winking humor the attraction to his followers, even as he leads the economy off the cliff in pursuit of crackpot theories. Trump's supporters have to know they're getting fleeced by transparently idiotic scams like tariffs — but for true believers, the scam is part of the perverse pleasure of playing the game, as Corum observed decades ago. 'Because, gentlemen, this is the rule,' Breslin wrote, quoting Corum's Law. 'A sucker has to get screwed.' More from Rolling Stone Trump Praises 'HOTTEST' Sydney Sweeney Ad, Bashes Taylor Swift Donald Trump Tries to Spin and Purge His Way to Declaring Economic Victory Poll Shows Widespread Disapproval and Suspicion of Trump's Handling of Epstein Files Best of Rolling Stone The Useful Idiots New Guide to the Most Stoned Moments of the 2020 Presidential Campaign Anatomy of a Fake News Scandal The Radical Crusade of Mike Pence
Yahoo
2 hours ago
- Yahoo
Harry and others criticised in Charity Commission report
The Duke of Sussex and others have been criticised by the Charity Commission for letting a 'damaging' boardroom battle play out in the 'public eye' and harm the reputation of a good cause co-founded by Harry. The charity regulator investigated Sentebale after founders Harry and Prince Seeiso stepped down as its patrons in support of a group of trustees, who resigned following a dispute with board of trustees chairwoman Dr Sophie Chandauka. The watchdog criticised all parties in the fallout for allowing it to play out publicly and described how all trustees contributed to a 'missed opportunity' to resolve the issues that that led to the serious disagreement that risked undermining public trust in charities generally. Harry's spokesperson attacked the findings, saying the report '…falls troublingly short in many regards, primarily the fact that the consequences of the current chair's actions will not be borne by her – but by the children who rely on Sentebale's support'. Dr Chandauka said: 'The unexpected adverse media campaign that was launched by those who resigned on 24 March 2025 has caused incalculable damage and offers a glimpse of the unacceptable behaviours displayed in private. 'We are emerging not just grateful to have survived, but stronger: more focused, better governed, boldly ambitious and with our dignity intact.' The fallout came after Sentebale's trustees sought in 2023 to introduce a new fundraising strategy, with the dispute arising between Dr Chandauka and some of the trustees and Harry, said the regulator. A war of words followed the resignations with Harry and Seeiso issuing a joint statement in March, describing their decision as 'unthinkable', adding the trustees 'acted in the best interest of the charity in asking the chair to step down' while 'in turn, she sued the charity to remain in this voluntary position, further underscoring the broken relationship'. Dr Chandauka hit back in a television interview accusing the duke of being 'involved' in a 'cover-up' of an investigation about bullying, harassment and misogyny at the organisation and said the 'toxicity' of his brand had impacted the charity which had seen a drop in donors since Harry moved to the US. The regulator, which cannot investigate individual allegations of bullying, found no evidence of systemic bullying or harassment, including misogyny or misogynoir at the charity but acknowledged 'the strong perception of ill treatment' felt by some involved. David Holdsworth, chief executive of the Charity Commission, said: 'Passion for a cause is the bedrock of volunteering and charity, delivering positive impact for millions of people here at home and abroad every day. 'However, in the rare cases when things go wrong, it is often because that very passion has become a weakness rather than a strength. 'Sentebale's problems played out in the public eye, enabling a damaging dispute to harm the charity's reputation, risk overshadowing its many achievements, and jeopardising the charity's ability to deliver for the very beneficiaries it was created to serve.' Harry founded charity Sentebale in 2006 with Prince Seeiso of Lesotho to help young people and children in southern Africa, particularly those living with HIV and Aids. The duke's spokesperson said Harry would find alternatives to helping the children supported by Sentebale in Lesotho and Botswana. He said: 'As custodians of this once brilliant charity, Prince Seeiso, Prince Harry and the former board of trustees helped grow Sentebale from the seed of an idea to – like its namesake – a flowering force for good. 'With the original mission of Sentebale firmly in mind – and in honour of the legacy he and Prince Seeiso began – the Duke of Sussex will now focus on finding new ways to continue supporting the children of Lesotho and Botswana.' The commission's role as regulator was not to adjudicate on internal charity disputes and the case sought to establish whether the charity's former and current trustees, including the chair, fulfilled their duties under charity law. After conducting its regulatory compliance case the commission found no evidence of 'over-reach' by either the chairwoman or Harry in his role as patron. But the regulator was critical of the charity's lack of clarity in the delegation of powers to the chair, which allowed for misunderstandings to occur, and trustees at the time did not have proper policies to investigate internal complaints – both issues amounted to 'mismanagement' in the running of the charity. The commission has issued a regulatory action plan setting out steps trustees need to take, including implementing an internal dispute policy, improving the charity's complaints and whistle-blowing procedures, and establishing clearer processes for delegating authority on behalf of the charity. Sentebale said in a statement that since the start of the year the senior executive were now established in southern Africa, closer to operations. It said the action plan aligned with the board's thinking with a new internal complaints procedure in place, alongside a code of conduct for trustees and a new approach to the delegation of responsibilities so that roles were clearly defined, including any future patron relationships. Dr Chandauka said: 'Despite the recent turbulence, we will always be inspired by the vision of our founders, Prince Harry and Prince Seeiso, who established Sentebale in memory of their precious mothers, Princess Diana and Queen 'Mamohato. 'To all who believe in our mission: please walk with us as Sentebale recovers, renews, and rises to meet the hopes and expectations of the next generation.'
