Richard Wilkinson

“The fortunate position that I am in is that I am allowed to say things that are true even if they are unpopular or politically incorrect or likely to be howled down by some group or other.” Douglas Murray (@DouglasKMurray)

I think Mashaba stood for JHB mayor for no other reason than to be able to use every possible platform it avails him, to attack Zille. Rarely have I seen someone so sidetracked by conspiracy and rage. Meanwhile, on planet earth, Dada Morero is JHB mayor. No rage. Never mentioned.

@wilkinsoncape A specialist in failure with a burning hatred inside him.

Truly one of the most destructive and dangerous people in South Africa.

One of the most dangerous politicians in this country. He will do anything to stay in power.

Every elderly, corrupt and buffonish dictator on the continent started out as a fresh faced and bright eyed "revolutionary" lecturing the world about the "evils of democracy and a market economy" and "building Pan-Africanism". It always ends the exact same way...

South Africa banned television for fifty years. Now it is debating whether to allow Starlink. In 1926, Baird demonstrated television in London. South Africa was rich enough to adopt it within a decade. It waited until 1976. The reason was not technological backwardness. It was political fear, the ruling elite could not stomach a medium that carried foreign ideas into South African homes. The people who paid the highest price had no say. Black South Africans were denied a window onto the world for a generation. They missed the civil rights movement, decolonisation across Africa and the moon landing which was broadcast to 600 million people. Today the arguments against Starlink are more sophisticated. But the underlying logic is familiar: a new technology threatens to expose South Africans to information that cannot be controlled. The people who will pay are millions in rural areas who lack reliable internet. How many times does a country need to learn the same lesson? Read the full article here: open.substack.com/pub/johanfouri…

Microsoft's stock just had its worst quarter since the 2008 financial crisis. Down 23%. Worse than every other Mag 7 name. And this screenshot explains why. Nadella started personally PM-ing Copilot in December. Told engineers the Outlook and Gmail integrations "for the most part don't really work." Held weekly grilling sessions with 100 senior engineers. Reshuffled Mustafa Suleyman out of consumer Copilot. Brought in a former Snap exec to run the whole thing. Then reorganized the entire AI division again two weeks ago. Four months of CEO-level intervention, and the AI still can't add a table to a Word document. Microsoft charges $30/user/month for this. 446 million M365 seats. 15 million have converted after two years. 3.3%. Of those, only 35.8% actively use it. That's ~5.4 million people paying $360/year for an AI that opens a browser tab when you ask it to edit the file you're in. Copilot's paid subscriber share dropped from 18.8% to 11.5% in six months. Gemini passed it. Their fix? A $99/user/month E7 tier in May. Same broken product, 65% more expensive, sold to the CIO who will never personally ask Copilot to insert a table. Yesterday the stock popped because Microsoft's $13.8B in OpenAI turned into a $135B stake. A 10x return on paper. The market celebrated. But that gain is an accounting event. The product you ship to 446 million users is the business. Meanwhile, Anthropic went from $61B to $380B in under a year. $19B in annualized revenue. 120+ features shipped in 90 days. Claude writes directly into your document, your codebase, your spreadsheet. The dollars flowing out of Microsoft's market cap are flowing into companies where the AI actually modifies the file.

I remember Sizwe Mpofu Walsh doing a podcast fawning over this dictator. 🤣🤣🤣

Frankly also surprised at former Business Day editor @SongezoZibi who is also thrown a bone with one of his guys getting an MEC post too and then agrees with Dunga as finance MEC in Gauteng. But hey. What can one say. #Gauteng is on the UP!

Dear Premier of Gauteng @Lesufi what qualifies Mr Dunga who is a failed EFF mayco member for finance in Ekhurhuleni, to suddenly be an MEC for Finance overseeing a budget of R179bn?

Special Agent uGogoZille has done it again!! 🤣🤣🤣 She went fishing at the public swimming pool in Windsor. Pain loading! 🤣🤣

You’re all talking about Helen Zille. She succeeded. She won. That’s it.

These #EFF types. Dunga on TV going on about representing the poor. Why was he removed as finance MEC at Ekhurhuleni? And premier @Lesufi Couldn't pass a budget so sells out the ANC even further. Shame man. Gauteng is a mess.

The only conclusion one can draw is that Lesufi et al want to clean out the Gauteng public purse before they get toppled.

Rise Mzansi, Action SA, BOSA, GOOD will all merge with the ANC at some point in their lifecycle.

The Douglasdale pothole that went viral after @HelenZille4Jozi was filmed swimming — has burst again. This isn’t new. It’s the same pipe, the same spot, the same failure — for 3 years. How many times must residents deal with the same collapse before it’s fixed properly? Joburg doesn’t need temporary repairs. It needs infrastructure that actually lasts. #Zille4Mayor #BelieveInJoburg

What Lesufi doesnt realise is that the vast majority of ANC voters in Gauteng are moderates who absolutely detest the idea of the ANC working with the EFF. They hate it and will immediately begin looking for new options. An excellent gift to the opposition.

Rahm Emanuel on how and why the Democrats have "lost the plot." Our members-only episode with Rahm Emanuel is available now on Substack.

I did not think this was real, but he really said it.

Western civilization is awesome, actually