Tiago de Oliveira

South Africa's Exchange Control Regulations of 1961 are rules from the apartheid era. Since then, the US, the UK, France, Spain, Finland, Taiwan, Singapore and many more countries have abolished their exchange controls and prospered. Nelson Mandela explicitly envisioned a South Africa without exchange control regulations. As president, in his 1996 State of the Nation Address, he declared: "In order to improve the investment climate, our monetary authorities are reviewing, on an on-going basis, the timing and pace of lifting existing exchange controls. For us, it is not a matter of whether, but of when, these controls will be phased out." That was thirty years ago. Former Reserve Bank Governor, the late Tito Mboweni, said in 2005, “For all intents and purposes exchange controls have become purposeless." Even Dr Gerhard de Kock, who served as Governor of the South African Reserve Bank during the late apartheid era, said exchange controls "keep more money out than in and work when you don’t need it, and not when you do.” VALR will always abide by the law. And we will work with the regulators to find a framework that works for South Africa. But my sincere wish would be for South Africa to be emancipated from these regulations that were meant for a previous age.

A whole generation of South Africans would be shocked to read this, especially when they look at where the country is today. Before 1994, South Africa built capabilities that few countries in the world could claim. It developed nuclear weapons, a rocket programme, large-scale synthetic fuel production, a globally respected defence industry, and medical breakthroughs that made world history. At the southern tip of Africa, one country achieved all of this before the Cold War had even ended. Today, Africa is often spoken about as if it is still waiting to industrialise, still dependent, still trying to build what others already mastered long ago. That is what makes this history so striking. While South Africa was enriching uranium at Pelindaba, testing rockets at Overberg, producing fuel from coal at Secunda, and carrying out the world’s first human heart transplant at Groote Schuur, much of the rest of Africa was being pulled in a very different direction. Instead of industrial self-reliance, many newly independent states were sold ideology. Instead of building durable technical capacity, they were pushed toward socialist models that too often ended in weak institutions, dependency, and collapse. The pattern repeated itself across the continent. South Africa, by contrast, built real strategic capability under sanctions and international pressure. It developed its own uranium enrichment process, built six nuclear weapons, and then voluntarily dismantled them before the democratic transition, opening its programme to international inspection. No other nuclear state has done that in the same way. It also built a serious rocket programme. Vehicles in the RSA series were designed and tested, and the country came close to having its own orbital launch capability. That programme was not simply paused. It was dismantled. Sasol achieved something equally remarkable: turning coal into fuel on a huge scale. When South Africa could not secure enough oil, it used chemistry and engineering to produce its own supply. That was not theory. It was functioning industrial independence. The defence sector was another pillar of that capability. South Africa designed and produced advanced artillery, armoured vehicles, aircraft projects, and attack helicopters. Some of these systems went on to influence military designs far beyond its borders. Then there was medicine. In 1967, Christiaan Barnard and his team performed the world’s first successful human heart transplant in Cape Town. That was not an isolated achievement. It reflected a wider culture of scientific and medical excellence. So the uncomfortable question is this: if all of this is documented, why is so little of it widely remembered? The answer may be that it does not fit neatly into the version of history most people are taught. Pre-1994 South Africa is rightly remembered for apartheid and injustice, but that is not the whole story. It was also the most technologically advanced state Africa had produced, and acknowledging that forces people to confront how much capability existed, and how much has since been lost. South Africa did not inherit these achievements. It built them under pressure, under sanctions, and largely on its own. That is not nostalgia. It is history. And the fact that so many people barely know it happened says a great deal about how history is told.

I have had death threats for talking about the political situation in South Africa so I will keep this post simple. Look into it. Do this today. It is a warning to everybody in the west.

So the Pope met with David Axelrod last week. David Axelrod. Obama's campaign architect. A man who is not Catholic, has never met a pope before, and whose entire career has been engineering political narratives for the American left. And then, by pure coincidence, the Pope immediately started lobbing shots at the Trump administration, and three US Cardinals popped up on 60 Minutes doing the same thing. All organically, I'm sure. I'm a practicing Catholic. I need you to understand that part. But in my opinion, Trump has all the right to lash out at him. Maybe you'll disagree, but in the end, Trump talks like Trump. Water is wet. I'm talking about MY Church being run like a DNC satellite office but with a golden throne. This is the same Vatican that watched governments padlock churches during COVID and said nothing. That let Biden take communion while funding abortion and said nothing. That fired Bishop Strickland for defending actual Church doctrine. That removed Bishop Fernández in Puerto Rico for defending religious exemptions THE CATECHISM ITSELF supports. But somehow Trump is the threat to human dignity. Pope Francis was bad. Leo has turned out to be worse. Francis at least was vague about his politics. Leo went and hired the consulting firm. The man has ignored the slaughter of Christians across Nigeria, the Sahel, India, Syria, Bangladesh, Pakistan. Hundreds of believers murdered, churches burned, pastors kidnapped. His response? Platitudes about dialogue. OF COURSE he won't even name who's doing the killing. But he'll fly across continents to make interfaith gestures the week after his people coordinated a media hit on a sitting US president. The weaponization of belief is obvious. You get the Pope to pick a fight with Trump, and suddenly millions of conservative Catholics have to choose between their faith and their vote.

NASA pilot Victor Glover CLAPS back after being asked what it means to be the first black man to visit the moon: “It’s the story of humanity, not black history, not women’s history, but that it becomes human history.” “I also HOPE we are pushing the other direction that one day we don’t have to talk about these first. That one day, this is just—and listen to this—that this is the human history.”