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    The making of Elon Musk: how did his childhood in apartheid South Africa shape him?

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    With an imposing double-winged redbrick main building, and school songs lifted directly from Harrow’s songbook, Pretoria boys high school is every inch the South African mirror of the English private schools it was founded in 1901 to imitate.Elon Musk, who has rapidly become one of the most powerful people in US politics, spent his final school years in the 1980s as a day pupil on the lush, tree-filled campus in South Africa’s capital, close to his father’s large detached home in Waterkloof, a wealthy Pretoria suburb shaded by purple jacaranda blossoms in spring.View image in fullscreenSouth Africa was rocked by uprisings as apartheid entered its dying years. In 1984, black townships across the country revolted. By 1986, the white minority government had imposed a state of emergency. But in the segregated white enclaves, life was affluent and peaceful.“While the country as a whole was very much in flames and in turmoil, we were blissfully very safe in our little leafy suburbs, going about our very normal life,” said Jonathan Stewart, who was a year above Musk at Pretoria boys, which also counts the Labour politician Peter Hain, the Booker prize-winning novelist Damon Galgut and the murderer and Paralympian Oscar Pistorius among its former pupils.“You had this wealthy set, in relative terms, and everybody else was excluded.”View image in fullscreenMusk, who was born in Pretoria in 1971, railed on his social media platform X last month against the “openly racist laws” of the country of his birth and responded “yes” to the statement: “White South Africans are being persecuted for their race in their home country.”After the posts by the man now at the helm of Donald Trump’s “department of government efficiency” (Doge), a special group Trump has created, the US president signed an executive order accusing South Africa’s government of “unjust racial discrimination” against white Afrikaners, citing a law allowing land to be expropriated in certain circumstances. The order cut aid to South Africa, which receives 17% of its HIV/Aids budget from the US, and offered asylum to Afrikaners.It was not clear the extent to which Musk, who left South Africa in 1989 for his mother’s country, Canada, and then went to the US, had a direct hand in encouraging Trump to issue the order.Trump has taken an interest in the alleged persecution of white South Africans since his first presidency, when an Afrikaner rights group travelled to the US to claim, falsely, that white farmers were being murdered for their land with the complicity of the government. Trump saw one of the group’s leaders interviewed on Fox News and tweeted his support.Trump has also been influenced by other interests, including US groups critical of South Africa’s case against Israel at the international court of justice (ICJ) over the war in Gaza, which he referred to in his executive order.View image in fullscreenBut with Musk now among Trump’s closest advisers, it is unlikely he has not made his views known to the president, given they are also tied up with his business interests in South Africa.Musk has claimed that land reform laws, in a country where the white minority, who make up just 7% of South Africa’s population, still own more than 70% of agricultural land, are racist and amount to theft. He has endorsed claims that the killings of white farmers amount to genocide; research suggests the crimes are financially motivated.Musk’s attacks have ratcheted up at a time when he is in a dispute with the South African government about affirmative action laws, as he tries to sell his Starlink satellite network in the country. The world’s richest man objects to a law requiring that foreign investors in the telecoms sector provide 30% of the equity in the South African part of the enterprise to Black-owned businesses.Trump’s executive order will add to the pressure on South Africa’s government to exempt Musk from the Black empowerment laws.X’s press team and Musk’s lawyer did not respond to interview requests or emailed questions.To what extent Musk’s years growing up under the collapsing apartheid regime influenced his positions today, from making what looked like a Nazi salute – a characterisation he rejects – at Trump’s inauguration celebrations last month to his embrace of far-right political parties such as Germany’s Alternative für Deutschland, remains an open debate.View image in fullscreenWhite, English-speaking South Africans such as Musk’s family benefited from apartheid’s racial hierarchy but lived mostly separate lives from the ruling Afrikaners.Musk spent the first two years of South Africa’s five high school years at the all-white Bryanston high school in Johannesburg’s leafy northern suburbs. Founded in 1968, it is a mixed-sex, English-language, fee-paying state school, made up of rectangular mid-century buildings.Like South Africa then and now, Bryanston high was sports mad. “It was a little bit like when you think of American society,” said Lesley Burns, who finished at the school in 1984, Musk’s first year. “There were all the jocks and the popular guys in the football team.”Musk, who was on the school’s chess team in 1985, was viciously bullied. The hounding culminated with him being thrown down a set of stairs, beaten so badly that he was hospitalised. The school declined an interview.View image in fullscreenMusk’s father moved him and his brother, Kimbal, to Pretoria boys, where he was well liked, according to Gideon Fourie, who had computer science classes with Musk.“He was a very average personality,” Fourie said. “He wasn’t in any way like a super jock, or a super nerd, or a super punk … He had a group of friends.”South African media were subjected to strict government censorship. Newspapers would appear with censored sections blacked out, particularly reports of the growing unrest in the townships and mass arrests, until those were also banned.In contrast, the fee-paying Pretoria boys was liberal, for its time. In 1981 it became the first government school to admit a Black pupil. The then headteacher, Malcolm Armstrong, used a loophole that allowed it to let in the sons of diplomats from the “homelands” within South Africa that the apartheid system claimed were independent states.“Armstrong even defied the authorities by meeting with the ANC [African National Congress] in Dakar while it was still banned,” said Patrick Conroy, who was in Kimbal’s year, two years below Musk. “He frequently addressed our school assemblies, emphasising the importance of democracy, human rights and social justice.”The school’s current headteacher, Gregary Hassenkamp, was also in Kimbal’s year and has similar memories of his predecessor, although he noted that not all teachers shared Armstrong’s liberal views.View image in fullscreen“I remember him forcing boys to think about the country in which we lived and the attitudes we had,” Hassenkamp said in an interview in his wood-panelled office, wearing a flowing black gown and a tie and socks in the school’s red, white and green colours.Musk has previously described himself as “not a conservative” and backed the Democratic candidate in every presidential election going back to Barack Obama’s victory in 2008, until he moved to the right. But Musk is clearly suspicious of democracy and the leaders it produces.In the 1930s, his grandfather headed an anti-democratic fringe political movement in Canada with fascist overtones, which campaigned for government by elite technocrats. He then moved to apartheid South Africa because the racist system appealed to him.Musk now appears happy to embrace the US version of the “strongman” ruler by backing Trump’s claim that the will of the president is paramount.Some of Musk’s school peers speculated that his current views of South Africa may be influenced by his missing out on the ups and downs of the negotiations to end apartheid and the “miracle” of Nelson Mandela becoming the country’s first Black president in 1994.Since then, the governments led by Mandela’s ANC party have failed to address the world’s worst economic inequality. While its Black economic empowerment policies offer tax breaks and state contracts to Black-owned companies, Black people are five times likelier than white people to be unemployed. South Africa also has one of the world’s highest murder rates.It is not uncommon to hear white South Africans say they are being discriminated against, often citing affirmative action laws. In mid-February, hundreds gathered outside the US embassy in Pretoria carrying signs with slogans such as “Thank God for President Trump” and “Make South Africa Great Again”.View image in fullscreenWhile it is rare to hear white South Africans say they want a return to apartheid, it is also not uncommon to hear older people express nostalgia for that time.“It was a good time, because we had no crime. There were no problems. People, Blacks and whites, got on very well with each other,” Errol Musk said in a video interview from his spacious Cape Town home, when asked about his son Elon’s childhood. “Everything worked. That’s the reality. Of course people don’t want to hear that, but that’s the truth.”Musk and his two younger full siblings, Kimbal and Tosca, have had a tumultuous relationship with their father. Kimbal told Musk’s biographer Walter Isaacson that their father would scream at them for two to three hours, calling them worthless and pathetic. Their mother, Maye, has accused him of physical abuse.“It’s rubbish,” Errol said when asked about the allegations, which he has repeatedly denied.The brothers became estranged from their father in 2017, not for the first time, when he had a child with his 30-year-old stepdaughter, Jana Bezuidenhout, according to Isaacson. In Errol’s telling, they got angry with him when he expressed his support for Trump in 2016, at a party in Cape Town they threw for his 70th and Musk’s 45th birthdays.“Things changed when Biden came in and Elon realised they’re trying to destroy America,” Errol said. “Now we exchange messages about every day. Of course, he’s not always able to answer, so his PA will answer me.”Additional reporting by Chris McGreal More

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      Trump’s attacks on South Africa are a punishment for independence | Achille Mbembe and Ruth Wilson Gilmore

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      On 7 February, less than three weeks after taking office, Donald Trump issued an executive order: “Addressing Egregious Actions of the Republic of South Africa.” The order directed US agencies to halt aid to South Africa, condemned South Africa’s case against Israel at the international court of justice (ICJ) as an “aggressive position”, and declared that white Afrikaners be prioritized for resettlement in the US based on the duplicitous claim that they are “victims of unjust racial discrimination”.The humanitarian consequences of this executive order are devastatingly clear. On 26 February, notices were sent out terminating support for HIV organizations funded by the US President’s Emergency Plan for Aids Relief (Pepfar), initiated in 2003 by then president George W Bush. The termination of funding to Pepfar is catastrophic for South Africa. Studies predict this could result in more than half a million unnecessary deaths and up to half a million new infections.But Trump’s order is an escalation of an existing strategy to condemn, isolate and punish South Africa for charting an independent course for its people and their relationship to the international community at large.On 11 January 2024, the South African government presented its case at the ICJ, arguing that Israel’s military actions in Gaza – endorsed, funded and armed by the United States – constituted genocide under the 1948 Genocide Convention. The ICJ case was not the first time that South Africa had broken with Washington on the global stage; in 2003, South Africa strongly opposed the invasion of Iraq, warning that the war amounted to “a blow to multilateralism”, in the words of its then president Thabo Mbeki.South Africa’s renewed appeal to multilateralism did not keep the Biden administration from responding to the ICJ case against Israel with immediate hostility. On 3 January, before arguments were even made, the state department spokesperson Matthew Miller declared: “We find this submission to be meritless, counterproductive, and completely without any basis in fact whatsoever.”While South Africa’s ICJ case was widely welcomed at home, some white actors with significant power in the country’s public sphere were hostile. Strident demands for South Africa to align with the west were issued by organisations such as the Johannesburg-based Brenthurst Foundation, among others. They found easy allies in Washington. In early 2024, several members of Congress argued that South Africa’s stance on Israel should disqualify it from receiving preferential trade benefits, including removal from the African Growth and Opportunity Act (AGOA), which aims to improve economic ties between the US and sub-Saharan Africa.Last month’s executive order marks a dangerous new phase in the efforts to strangle South Africa’s international solidarities – but this time with an explicitly white supremacist twist, focused on the country’s efforts to redress the compounded, multi-generational inequalities of apartheid. Trump has long supported the far-right conspiracy theory that falsely claims white farmers in South Africa are subject to a government-backed campaign of violence. In August 2018, he tweeted that he had asked then secretary of state Mike Pompeo “to closely study the South Africa land and farm seizures and expropriations and the large-scale killing of farmers”.These views have been nurtured by organisations such as AfriForum, a rightwing Afrikaner group that has actively cultivated relationships with American conservative institutions since around 2017. In 2018, AfriForum representatives met with then National Security adviser John Bolton and conducted interviews on Fox News, promoting conspiracy theories about a non-existent “white genocide” in South Africa. A network of far-right white South Africans in the US, including Elon Musk, has similarly gained access and influence. Joel Pollak, an editor at Breitbart, is widely tipped to be Trump’s new ambassador to South Africa.These conspiracy theories aim to present white farmers as victims as South Africa moves toward remedy for dispossession. A 2017 government land audit found that white people, 9% of the population, owned approximately 72% of all privately owned farmland – a direct result of colonial dispossession that must be addressed as an urgent moral priority, as indicated in South Africa’s 1996 constitution.But if the target of Trump’s executive order is South African land reform, its principal casualty will be the beneficiaries of Aids treatment. One of the great successes of South Africa’s democracy has been its HIV treatment program. With approximately 5.9 million people receiving antiretroviral therapy through the public healthcare system, it is the largest HIV public health program on the planet. Pepfar has been funding a fifth of these costs, part of a program estimated to have saved 25 million lives worldwide.The Trump administration makes an intentional target of South Africa’s health policy. The deadly cruelty is the point.From Mexico to Greenland, Panama to Ukraine, the Trump administration is bullying allies to align with its vision of national primacy and ethnic supremacy. The rapid implementation of this new Trump doctrine requires Americans to join together with people across the world not only to oppose reactionary measures – but also to remain steadfast in their joint commitment to internationalism that enhances wellbeing. That commitment will require richer countries to spend in solidarity, not charity.The immediate task is of course the most urgent: rapid multilateral action is needed to secure the safety of the huge numbers of HIV patients whose lives are now in danger. The many pharmaceutical manufacturing facilities dotted through the global south should be turned to producing what people need, even as land and housing reform also necessarily shape regional agendas.But the risks posed by this executive order transcend its particular measures. There is enough; the problem is allocation, and the symbolic and conceptual as well as material means to realize human well-being.

      Achille Mbembe is a research professor in history and politics at the Wits Institute for Social and Economic Research in Johannesburg, South Africa.

      Ruth Wilson Gilmore is a professor of earth and environmental Sciences, and American studies, at the Graduate Center of the City University of New York. More

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      US suspends aid to South Africa after Trump order

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      The state department has ordered an immediate pause on most US foreign assistance to South Africa, according to a cable seen by the Guardian, officially implementing a contentious executive order by Donald Trump.The directive, issued on Thursday, implements Executive Order 14204 targeting what the administration called “egregious actions” by South Africa. It orders all state department entities to immediately suspend aid disbursements, with minimal exceptions.“To effectively implement EO 14204, all bureaus, offices and missions shall pause all obligations and/or dispersion of aid or assistance to South Africa,” reads the cable, signed by the secretary of state, Marco Rubio.The cable follows the 7 February order, amid a broader reassessment of US foreign aid which paused certain foreign assistance pending review.The order specifically cites “unjust racial discrimination” against white Afrikaners – descendants of Dutch colonizers who implemented the segregationist regime that denied basic rights to the Black majority until 1994.The South African-born billionaire Elon Musk, a Trump super-ally who heads the administration’s government efficiency team and has condemned his homeland for “openly racist policies”, is widely seen as influencing the administration’s stance toward a country where white South Africans, just 7% of the population, still disproportionately control most wealth and land.According to the cable, Rubio has delegated authority to Pete Marocco, a Trump loyalist who presided over the administration’s evisceration of foreign aid programs at USAid and the state department, to determine whether specific aid programs should continue. The guidance emphasizes there is “a very high bar for such requests”.Only Pepfar, the US global HIV/Aids program that provides life-saving treatment to millions of South Africans, will proceed without additional review, according to the cable. All other assistance programs require special permission, even those that had received prior exceptions under the January foreign aid pause.This is the latest sign of escalating tensions between the two generally friendly nations, starting when President Trump accused South Africa of using its new land law to discriminate against white citizens – claims the South African president, Cyril Ramaphosa, rejected as misinformation.The bill in question controversially permits government acquisition of private land without compensation in certain circumstances, though its supporters say such seizures would be rare and subject to judicial review.Trump has also criticized South Africa’s leading role in its genocide case against Israel at the international court of justice, while also offering refugee status to wealthy white Afrikaners who wanted to relocate to the United States, further incensing the country.The aid freeze also follows South Africa’s recent announcement that it is preparing a new trade proposal for the Trump administration, as officials anticipate the possible end of the African Growth and Opportunity Act – which has allowed billions in duty-free exports to the United States.Earlier on Thursday, South Africa issued a statement acknowledging the US withdrawal from the Just Energy Transition Partnership (Jetp), which has canceled previously funded climate projects following Trump’s revocation of international climate finance initiatives.The state department did not respond to a request for comment. More

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      ‘Little agency that could’ cheered for act of resistance against Trump and Musk

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      Members of Elon Musk’s so-called “department of government efficiency” (Doge) unit were barred from entering a small, independent federal agency promoting economic development in Africa on Wednesday after a tense standoff with federal staff they had been sent to fire.Workers at the US African Development Foundation (USADF), which Donald Trump has ordered to be closed, refused to allow Doge operatives to enter after they arrived at its Washington headquarters on Wednesday afternoon. But the Doge team returned on Thursday, accompanied by agents with the US Marshals Service, and Peter Marocco, the acting director of the now-shuttered US Agency for International Development, according to a government official familiar with the situation. This time, they were able to gain access to the building, the official said, and no staff were present.Scores of legal challenges have been lodged against the sweeping project to upend the government bureaucracy, producing a spate of court rulings declaring the halting of aid illegal and ordering the reinstatement of fired federal workers.In Wednesday’s episode, workers instructed a security guard at USADF’s headquarters to deny the Doge team access when they arrived with Marocco. Trump is trying to install him in a similar role at USADF.Staff cited a letter sent by the agency’s chair, Ward Brehm, who was not present at the time, to a Doge subordinate the previous day making clear that his team would not be allowed to access the agency’s offices in his absence.“In my absence, I have specifically instructed the staff of USADF to adhere to our rules and procedure of not allowing any meetings of this type without my presence,” he wrote, according to a copy of the letter reviewed by the Guardian.Brehm also declined to cooperate with Marocco unless he was officially appointed to the agency’s board.“I will look forward to working with Mr Marocco after such time that he is nominated for a seat on the board and his nomination is confirmed by the Senate,” Brehm wrote.“Until these legal requirements are met, Mr Marocco does not hold any position or office with USADF, and he may not speak or act on the foundation’s behalf.”About 30 workers were in the building when Marocco arrived with a Doge team – described as young men wearing backpacks – intent on carrying out firings based on an executive order issued by Trump on 19 February, the Washington Post reported.The standoff, led by one of the smallest government agencies, with only about 50 employees, has been cheered by government officials as a mighty act of resistance against Trump and Musk’s war on the federal bureaucracy.“This is the little agency that could,” the official said.Trump’s order declared USADF and three other agencies – the Presidio Trust, the Inter-American Foundation (IAF) and the United States Institute of Peace – as “unnecessary” and subject to elimination.Wednesday’s standoff followed a similar exchange at the IAF’s headquarters earlier this week.The workers’ defiant stand comes after Democrats publicly condemned the attempted dismantling of the agency as illegal.“Any attempt to unilaterally dismantle the USADF through executive action violates the law and exceeds the constitutional limits of executive authority,” Democratic members of the House of Representatives’ foreign affairs committee wrote in a 24 February letter to Trump.Democrats have argued that Doge lacks the authority to eliminate an independent entity created by Congress, and that attempts to install Marocco as the acting chair of USADF and IAF are unlawful.The official familiar with the situation said that unlike other federal agencies such as USAid, USADF is a “congressionally chartered corporation” operated by a board of directors whose members are nominated by the president and confirmed by the Senate.“It’s expressed in the statute that you can’t dissolve ADF except by an act of Congress,” the official said. “The president [of ADF] doesn’t take orders from anyone except for the board. The president [of ADF] isn’t even authorized to take orders from the president of the United States.”The agency, created by Congress in 1980 to support small businesses and grassroots organisations serving marginalised communities in Africa, has long enjoyed broad bipartisan support. Between 2019 and 2023, it handed out grants worth about $141m to 1,050 community enterprises serving 6.2 million people. More

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      Trump’s plan for Gaza leaves Arab nations facing an impossible choice | Nesrine Malik

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      Arab states are in a bind. King Abdullah of Jordan squirmed in the Oval Office last week, as the press asked him and Donald Trump about the latter’s Gaza plan. He is in a tight spot, wanting to keep Trump onside while at the same time not agreeing to the ethnic cleansing of Gaza. Immediately after, anonymous Egyptian “security sources” – not parties prone to leaking without strategic direction from President Abdel Fatah al-Sisi – said that Sisi would not accept an invitation to visit Washington as long as the Gaza displacement plan was on the agenda. Now, this was probably more for the Egyptian public’s consumption than for Trump’s benefit – Egypt is in no position to make an enemy of the new administration – but it nonetheless shows how hard it is for Trump to secure the acquiescence of even the US’s closest allies.Saudi Arabia also postponed a visit to the US once Trump announced his intentions for Gaza. And in a remarkable change of tune, Saudi, which before 7 October 2023 was en route to normalisation with Israel and is not usually a country to make heated statements, lost its patience. When Benjamin Netanyahu quipped that maybe it would like to take Palestinians from Gaza (“they have a lot of territory”, he said), Saudi state media unleashed a storm of invective against him. When Trump announced his plan, Saudi Arabian authorities immediately put out a statement rejecting it. So keen was the government to signal that rejection that it released the statement at 4am local time.Leaders are scrambling to calibrate their responses at an emergency summit on Thursday hastily convened in Saudi Arabia. But they will struggle to do so without landing themselves in hot water with Trump, members of the Arab public or global opinion on the illegality of the plan. “The current approach is going to be difficult,” the United Arab Emirates (UAE) ambassador to the US said when asked if his government could find “common ground” with Trump on Gaza. He might have got away with that. But perhaps feeling that it was a little too strong, he went on to say that “we are all in the solution-seeking business” and he doesn’t really “see an alternative to what’s being proposed”. The clip immediately started doing the rounds on social media as evidence of the UAE’s endorsement of ethnic cleansing. There is clearly no consensus on Trump’s Gaza approach, or even how to respond to it, between countries that make up a political bloc but have divergent interests.Time is running out. On Sunday, Marco Rubio kicked off a trip to Israel and the Middle East. Conversations that some have been avoiding on Trump’s home turf will have to happen there. A need to come up with a common line and strategy on behalf of Arab countries is now pressing. The task is to thread a needle: flattery of Trump and rejection of his Gaza plan are irreconcilable, and each time even a single head of state engages with Trump or is asked about Gaza, there is the risk of a comment that inflames feelings or infuriates the US emperor. The Arab summit seems a very long way away when every day brings another Trump gambit or threats to the end of the ceasefire in Gaza.The scramble is part of a bigger problem. Arab states are unable to settle on a position on Palestine. Before 7 October, normalisation agreements with Israel had been secured by some Arab nations and were under way with others, with Palestinian statehood a nominally plausible prospect subject to technical questions, even though in reality everyone knew it was more remote than ever. The war killed that plausibility, and Trump buried it.With the stakes so raised, it is impossible for Arab nations to engage with Israel and the US on Gaza and Palestine one way or the other without undoing something big. The political landscape is finely balanced. Egypt and Jordan are the most important parties when it comes to any displacement of Palestinians from Gaza due to their proximity, and would be most affected by any resettlement campaign. They are also big US foreign assistance recipients with weak economies and governments with shaky mandates. These payments and military aid are in part remuneration for these states being “stabilising” parties in the region, serving as buffers between Israel, Iran, Hamas and all proxies, absorbing refugees and facilitating the movement of US military assets through the region. Losing US aid weakens not only their economies, but also their militaries, security agencies and ability to maintain the patronages and oppressions needed to stabilise politics.But there are other calculations. Agreeing to a plan that involves the expulsion of Palestinians in essence turns all receiving and facilitating countries into parties to what will simply be a wider, differently configured Israel-Palestine conflict. Instead of the removal of Palestinians from Gaza being an end to something, it would be the beginning of something else, with the horror of mass displacement on top. It is unfathomable not only in cruelty and criminality, but also in terms of practicality: already, 35% of Jordan’s population are refugees. Also – and Trump can be forgiven for not getting his head around this, considering how invisible they are – people live in these countries, millions of them. They might not have a say in how their politics is run, but they have an opinion. That opinion has historically been managed but by no means erased. It’s not a safe bet to assume that the mass removal of Palestinians won’t set off something explosive, either in terms of popular discord, or its exploitation by competing political or even extremist players.In short, Arab governments are being forced to confront and settle a question that goes to the very soul of the contemporary region – what does Arab identity even mean any more? Is it just a group of countries that speak the same language and share borders, but with regimes and elites that have become too enmeshed with the west to be viable on their own terms? Or is there still some residual sense of agency in those regimes, some echo of political integrity and duty towards other Arabs?Beyond the existential, though, here is what Arab leaders should learn from Trump giving them orders about their territories and people: the price of their US-stabilised status quo is now so high that it makes less and less sense on a practical basis. To submit to Trump would be to accept full vassal status and summon new domestic challenges, and all for an unreliable benefactor. To defy him would entail a full-blown reconfiguration of politics in the region that might seem too colossal to contemplate. Arab political elites find themselves in this mortifying position because of their historic feebleness on Palestine: it is a concentrated expression of their own weakness, capture and shortsighted self-interest. The future of Gaza is no longer an issue that can be finessed while saving face indefinitely. Trump’s plan is a gateway to the final erosion of the integrity and sovereignty of the wider Middle East.

      Nesrine Malik is a Guardian columnist

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      The Long Wave: Why Trump’s USAid freeze endangers millions

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      Hello and welcome to The Long Wave. I have been following Donald Trump’s suspension of the US Agency for International Development. USAid is the world’s single biggest aid donor, and the decision to halt its work has sent shockwaves around the world. This week, I trace the effects of its potential demise on the Black diaspora. But first, the weekly roundup.Weekly roundupView image in fullscreenFresh calls for DRC ceasefire | A summit of leaders from across Africa, including Rwanda and the Democratic Republic of the Congo, has called for an immediate and unconditional ceasefire in DRC. The Rwanda-backed M23 rebel group has seized swathes of territory in eastern DRC, leaving thousands dead or displaced.Altadena seeks justice for LA fire victims | A memorial service at the First African Methodist Episcopal church in Pasadena, led by the Rev Al Sharpton, has highlighted the Eaton wildfire’s disproportionate impact on Altadena’s Black residents in a rally for justice and equality.Liverpool waterfront’s role in slavery | Canning Dock in Liverpool, England, where ships trafficking enslaved Africans to the Caribbean were fitted out and repaired, is opening to the public so lesser-told aspects of its history can be explored. This project, alongside other redevelopment programmes, aims to shed light on the waterfront’s role in the transatlantic slave trade.Overtourism fears for Bo-Kaap | Residents of the picturesque, candy-coloured Bo-Kaap district in Cape Town, South Africa, are grappling with the impacts of tourism. Many have expressed frustration about road traffic, crowds blocking streets for photos and rising gentrification.Black hair animation makes waves | Researchers at Yale University and the University of California, Santa Cruz, have developed algorithms to capture the true form of afro-textured hair in animation and computer graphics. The development marks a huge step for the portrayal of Black characters in animated films, cartoons and video games.In depth: What is USAid and why has it been suspended?View image in fullscreenThe significance and reach of USAid’s operations came very close to home when I realised that even in the war-stricken cities of my birthplace, Sudan, USAid was providing support to soup kitchens crucial to the survival of cut-off civilian populations. The freezing of USAid’s work has severely compromised these life-saving efforts, as well as that of US-funded facilities caring for malnourished babies. In the capital, Khartoum, two-thirds of Sudan’s soup kitchens closed in the first week after the aid suspension.On Donald Trump’s first day in office, he announced a 90-day pause in the organisation’s operations because they were part of a “foreign aid industry and bureaucracy … not aligned with American interests”. USAid was established by John F Kennedy in 1961 as an independent agency of the US government. It grew to have a large remit, providing everything from humanitarian assistance to disaster relief. But it also plays a role in education, promoting democratic participation and governance, and supporting the health ministries of the countries it operates in. The range of its programmes and the number of locations in which it is active is staggering.The USAid budget was more than $40bn in the 2023 fiscal year. The suspension, which looks like a permanent dismantling, is embroiled in legal disputes. A federal judge has blocked the decision to put thousands of USAid workers on administrative leave, on the grounds that the Trump administration does not have the authority to abolish an agency established by congressional legislation. As the process unfolds, the work of the agency has been halted overnight, with severe repercussions.Sub-Saharan AfricaView image in fullscreenCountries in sub-Saharan Africa account for more than a third of US foreign assistance spending. In addition to famine relief and medical and humanitarian support in conflict areas such as Sudan, USAid assists health ministries and, most urgently, a large sexual health and HIV prevention programme. Approximately 40,000 healthcare workers in Kenya partly financed by USAid are likely to lose their jobs. The impacts on treatment available to patients, pregnant women and disease treatment are almost too vast to estimate.What is unfolding in South Africa – where patients have showed up for treatment and medication to find that clinics were closed – offers a small insight into what could happen next to people at the sharpest end of medical emergencies. The country is in the grip of one of the world’s largest HIV/Aids epidemics, constituting a quarter of cases worldwide.Latin AmericaView image in fullscreenUSAid’s work focuses on the challenges most prominent in any given location. In Latin America, support for those displaced by guerrilla violence, integration of migrants and the prevention of sexual exploitation have relied heavily on US foreign assistance. Almost 8 million Venezuelans have left the country in the past decade, fleeing economic crises and settling in neighbouring countries. About 3 million of them are in Colombia, the largest recipient of US foreign aid in South America. Last year, USAid funded the feeding and nutrition of a large number of refugees in Colombia, partnering with the UN World Food Programme and extending almost $50m in relief. Abandoning such vulnerable populations not only deprives them of food, but leaves them prone to exploitation and abuse by the sort of criminal gangs that prey on the displaced and hungry.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionThe ramifications of the suspension extend to the preservation of precious and fragile ecosystems. In Brazil, USAid forged the Partnership for the Conservation of Amazon Biodiversity, an agreement that supports Indigenous people and rural communities, and in doing so protects the Amazon and helps combat the climate emergency. The loss of that support affects not just these communities and those employed by such foreign assistance programmes, but the environmental health of the planet.The CaribbeanView image in fullscreenIn the Caribbean, USAid projects are diverse and embedded in civil society, environmental protection and future proofing younger generations. In Jamaica, among the programmes that have halted is the Youth Empower Activity, which is targeted at the most at-risk people. It helps them access education, professional training and improve job prospects, with a view to increasing household income and promoting national development. Thousands of Jamaicans are enrolled in the scheme – but now a total of $54m of US funding is under threat in the country, according to government estimates.The suspension could also interrupt a USAid-funded, Caribbean-wide project to bolster food security by increasing fruit and vegetable farming, scholarships for degrees in agriculture and support for small farmers. The shutdown came days after the launch of a programme to reduce the risks to marine and coastal biodiversity – an attempt to ameliorate an environmental crisis affecting the region’s coral reefs and biodiversity. Beyond the impact on individuals, small business owners, and the environment, there is, as with all such stoppages, the loss of livelihoods of people employed by these schemes.Soft power lostView image in fullscreenDespite the large sums deployed, USAid, and US foreign assistance in general, is perceived to also benefit the United States. Although it cannot be quantified in exact numbers, supporters say such assistance contributes to the US’s soft power abroad. That soft power is twofold: the first is in a sort of preventive measure, whereby aid helps to stabilise poorer countries and pre-empt deepening crises that could compromise the US’s global security agenda. The second is that aid is seen as a bulwark to the influence of countries such as Russia and China, both of which are particularly active in Africa, for example. In maintaining a presence on the ground across the world, and strong alliances with governments and civil society organisations, the US promotes a foreign policy that aims to curtail the ability of its adversaries to create their own alliances and political footholds.Aid model under scrutinyView image in fullscreenThe speed of the suspension, and how it has plunged so many around the world into hunger and uncertainty, raises questions about the wisdom of depending so profoundly on a country that has proven to be so unreliable. Ken Opalo, a specialist in development and the author of An Africanist Perspective on Substack, wrote: “The cuts are a painful reminder that aid dependence isn’t a viable development strategy.” If the USAid suspension remains, that viable development strategy, or the stepping in of alternative funders, will not materialise overnight. In the meantime, millions of people wait to learn if their sudden change in circumstances will become permanent, subject to a huge constitutional battle thousands of miles away.

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      Humpback Whale Sets Record for How Far It Traveled

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      The adult male swam more than 8,000 miles from South America to Africa, most likely in search of a mate, researchers said.A humpback whale set a record by traversing at least three oceans and more than 8,000 miles — most likely in search of a mate, according to a new study.A team of scientists identified the adult male, which swam 8,106 miles from breeding grounds in Colombia in South America to breeding grounds in Zanzibar in Africa from 2013 to 2022.The unusual odyssey is the longest recorded distance traveled by the species and is the subject of a study published Wednesday in the journal Royal Society Open Science, potentially providing new insights into the migration patterns and behaviors of humpback whales.The study suggests that mating and environmental factors could have influenced the whale’s long voyage.According to the study, scientists looked at pictures on Happywhale, an online platform that collects photos of whale flukes — or tails — from scientists and members of the public from around the world. The platform uses artificial intelligence-powered photo-matching algorithms to help automatically identify the whales in submitted photos. Those matches were confirmed or rejected by data mangers, the study said.The whale was first photographed in July 2013 off the coast of Colombia in the Pacific Ocean, where it was part of a “competitive group” that included seven humpbacks. We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      John Dramani Mahama Is Set to Return as Ghana’s President

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      John Dramani Mahama, who served as president from 2012 to 2017, is set to return to office after his main opponent, Mahamudu Bawumia, conceded defeat.John Dramani Mahama, a former president of Ghana who was voted out of office eight years ago, staged a dramatic political comeback on Sunday after his main opponent conceded defeat in the West African country’s presidential election.While official results from the vote that took place on Saturday have yet to be released, the candidate of the governing party, Vice President Mahamudu Bawumia, said he had called Mr. Mahama to congratulate him on his victory.Mr. Bawumia said in a statement that data collected by his team showed that Mr. Mahama had “won the presidential election decisively.”Ghana, the largest gold producer in Africa and a key U.S. security ally in a region beset by coups and jihadist insurgencies, has been struggling with one of its worst economic crises in decades.After the government defaulted in 2022 to its international lenders, last year it contracted a $3 billion loan from the International Monetary Fund.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      The Long Wave: How Juls journeyed the Black Atlantic to curate his sound

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      Hi everyone. The first thing you’ll notice about this newsletter is that I’m not Nesrine. But don’t worry, we don’t need her to have a good time. I’m Jason, the editor of The Long Wave, and I’ll be writing the newsletter this week and occasionally in the future.Last month I attended a pop-up in London for the pioneering British-Ghanaian DJ and producer Juls. If you’re a fan of African music, like me, you’ll know that when a track opens with “Juls, baby” you’re about to hear straight fire (for the uninitiated, start with Wizkid’s True Love and Wande Coal’s So Mi So). So I was very excited to meet the man himself as he celebrated 10 years shaping modern Afrobeats, and the launch of his most recent album, which takes listeners on a journey through the sounds and traditions of the global Black diaspora. First, here’s the weekly roundup.Weekly roundupView image in fullscreenRacist texts after Trump’s win | Black people across the US have reported receiving racist messages telling them they have been selected to “pick cotton” and need to report to “the nearest plantation” in the aftermath of Trump’s election win. The president-elect’s campaign has denied any association with them.Big oil payouts in Guyana | Hundreds of thousands of Guyanese citizens at home and abroad will receive a payout of GY$100,000, as the country attempts to redistribute its oil wealth, Natricia Duncan reports. Since Guyana began crude oil extraction in late 2019, its economy has enjoyed incredible growth.Buz Stop Boys sweep Ghana’s streets | A group of young professionals and tradespeople are “driving a new wave of civic responsibility in Ghana” cleaning and sweeping away rubbish in Greater Accra, as well as clearing gutters and cutting overgrown grass. The collective hopes to inspire environmental consciousness and investment in proper methods of waste disposal.A toast to Abidjan cocktail week | Ivory Coast’s drinks festival, founded by the doctor turned mixologist Alexandre Quest Bede and “Afrofoodie” blogger Yasmine Fofana, is encouraging Africans to embrace their roots. Eromo Egbejule reports that “due in part to colonial-era stigmatisation and bans, local gins and other alcoholic drinks have long been seen as unsafe [and] inferior”.London Rastafarian HQ revived | A new exhibition will tell the story of the temple at St Agnes Place in London, which became a focal point for Rastafarian religion after a takeover in 1972. As Lanre Bakare reports, Echoes Within These Walls hopes to “dispel myths about the religion, which continues to be a big influence in popular culture”.In depth: A cultural odysseyView image in fullscreenWhen Juls conceptualised the album Peace & Love, he envisioned a cultural odyssey that drew on Black traditions, sounds and instruments around the world. Much of the album was made in Jamaica and Ghana, where he would create beats on his mother’s balcony in Esiama, or rent a beach house in Kokrobite so he could hear the ocean. But to finish it off sonically, Juls headed to Brazil in the summer of 2023, where he added further details to his tracks. “On the album we’ve got a song called Saint Tropez, which has elements of amapiano and highlife, but then there’s some triangle sounds that I got from Brazil. There’s a mix of different sounds I’m hearing as I’m going on these trips.”These trips were also an opportunity for Juls to enrich himself culturally. In Jamaica, he visited Bob Marley’s Tuff Gong Studio in Kingston, where he made beats. “I was just connecting with a lot of people who are deep in reggae music history. We spoke a lot to the Marley family, and we spoke to Bob Marley’s engineer. It was a real music journey. I got to meet Augustus Pablo’s son – we went to his record store and bought some vinyls as well.”In Salvador, home to Brazil’s largest Black community, he was reminded of Yoruba culture – “they still practise a lot of rituals over there”. He made similar observations in Jamaica: “When you go to the Accompong [Maroon] village, they practise a lot of the Ashanti rituals from Ghana. So there’s a lot of similarities between parts of the Caribbean, Latin America and Africa that I found interesting.”Juls was also struck by the use of instruments in the places he visited and how similar percussive sounds were transformed in new contexts. A staple of Afro-Brazilian music is the agogô, a bell with origins in Yoruba and Edo traditions. “But we don’t call it that in Ghana, we call it Gan Gan,” Juls says. Where Ghanaians use the kpanlogo drum, Brazilians may use the atabaque.For Juls, the Black diaspora’s use of drums gave him an opportunity to “play with all of these sounds” and provide a deeper layer of meaning to his music. On the opening track of his album, Leap of Faith, featuring the British artist Wretch 32, Nyabinghi drums are played, “these drums are used by Jamaicans and Ghanaians as a form of communication, celebrating their ancestors and showing praise. And they were also used to communicate in the village back in the day. In the beginning of the song there’s a guy from my father’s home town, Jamestown, who says: ‘Everybody gather around and listen’.”‘I like to bring people together’View image in fullscreenJuls is considered a maestro of Afrobeats, evidenced by the long list of artists who bring him on as a collaborator, but his curiosity stretches far beyond whatever limited perception people have of the genre, as he explores the interconnectedness of the diaspora. He loves mixing African and Brazilian music in his sets. He recounts performing in São Paulo, where the Brazilians were pleasantly surprised by his extensive knowledge of their genres.That passionate embrace of similarities and differences is something he literally wears around his neck. He shows me his chain, which he tells me is “an Adinkra symbol called Funtunfunefu Denkyemfunefu, which means unity and diversity. And that’s just something that I live by – I just like to bring everybody together from different tribes.” But in African music, there has at times been backlash over incorporations of different genres into a broader Afrobeats sound – there have especially been concerns around Nigerian artists “appropriating” amapiano music, which is native to South Africa.But for Juls, this melting pot of African genres can be embraced so long as what is produced is always in dialogue with its originators. “I’ve tapped into amapiano quite a few times but I always make sure I’m doing it with a South African artist or producer,” he says. “There’s a song on my album called Muntuwam, which has an element of amapiano, and on there I have Nkosazana’s Daughter. She listened to the song and loved it, which made me feel great because that’s coming from a South African who’s deep into that sound. It means you’re on the right path.”Juls also sees this as something that charts the progression of Afrobeats from its birth in the early 2000s DJ sets – “data, internet, structure”. There’s an ability to authentically tap into genres around the world, from fújì to highlife and kwaito to soukous, because you’re able to readily access information about this music. Afrobeats is thus less a coherent genre and more a label used for convenience. “If you really want to tap into the proper sound, you have to travel to these countries specifically, and do even deeper research.”skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionThis curiosity is evidently booming for Black artists. He cites Asake’s collaboration with the Afro-Brazilian singer-songwriter Ludmilla – Whine (one of my most played tracks from Lungu Boy) and even Tyler, the Creator’s sampling of the Zamrock band Ngozi Family on NOID from his latest album, Chromakopia, as some of his favourite recent Black Atlantic link-ups.It’s clear Juls is ready for his sound to enter a new chapter, bringing the Black diaspora with him. “The first 10 years have been about putting people in a good mood; the next 10 years, I’m trying to make people dance.”What we’re intoView image in fullscreen

      I can’t tell you how many times I’ve played Tyla’s Push 2 Start music video – that song! That choreography! Her performance at the MTV EMAs on Sunday was electrifying. Jason

      One of the advantages of living on the African continent is all the African content on streaming platforms. This week, the most watched movie on Netflix is the South African Umjolo – the Gone Girl. It is tagged as “Steamy. Quirky. Dramedy”. I’ve heard enough. Nesrine

      I’m obsessed with Toyo Tastes, a British-Nigerian food blogger and cook who makes everything from plantain and efo riro croquettes to gizdodo vol-au-vents. Jason

      I am a tragic cyclist, in that I love it but am not gifted at it. (And all the kit puts me off.) There may also be a cultural element – which is why I’m excited to dig into my copy of New Black Cyclones – Racism, Representation and Revolutions of Power in Cycling by Marlon Lee Moncrieffe. What a title. Nesrine
      Black catalogueView image in fullscreenAbi Morocco Photos, the Lagos photography studio operated by husband-and-wife John and Funmilayo Abe, captured portraits of Nigerians from the 1970s to 2006. A new exhibition at Autograph in London focuses on the studio’s formative decade in the 1970s, showcasing Lagos street-style and the characters who made up the every day hustle and bustle of the city.Signal boostLast week we wrote about how Nigerians have responded to Kemi Badenoch’s rise to the top of the Conservative party in the UK. Here, a reader offers their response:“I’ve always maintained that people who expect Kemi Badenoch to be different don’t understand anything about her background. Her education and exposure would also have imbued her with a certain amount of intellectual superiority.“As a fellow Nigerian who also spent her formative years in an upper middle class family steeped in academia, nothing about her surprises me. I just wish we would all stop identifying with people simply because they are black/African/Nigerian etc. She is her own person and this so-called achievement has no bearing whatsoever on the issues faced by black and brown people in the UK.” Kan Frances-Benedict in Kent, UKTap inDo you have any thoughts or responses to this week’s newsletter? Share your feedback by replying to this, or emailing us on thelongwave@theguardian.com and we may include your response in a future issue. More