On a bright Tuesday afternoon, 20 October, the peaceful False Bay settlement of Fish Hoek became the setting for more than just a scenic lunch by the water. At The Galley Restaurant, a familiar kind of warmth filled the room as the members of the Sonskynhoekie Senior Citizens’ Club from Blanco, George, gathered around tables laden with food and conversation. This was not their first time away from home, but it was a meal with special meaning, one arranged and partly sponsored by a woman whose heart belonged to their community. Micheline Fortuin, a family historian from Crawford, had helped…

Imagine a country where the enemy does not arrive in tanks or send bombers into the night sky, but instead slips quietly into smartphones, news feeds, group chats, social media timelines, and eventually, into the way people vote. That is the world Britain now lives in, and according to Fiona Hill, a former White House adviser and one of the West’s most experienced security experts, the United Kingdom is dangerously unprepared for it. Hill appeared before Parliament’s joint committee on national security strategy, a cross-party body of MPs and peers, and delivered a blunt warning: the UK has become a…