madlodlombe

Yup, in Africa China built and bugged (allegedly - China and the AU denied) the headquarters of the African Union in Addis Ababa: https://www.theguardian.com/world/2018/jan/30/china-african-...

Not so secretive, in recent history VASTech (based in Stellenbosch's Technopark) were known to be supplying Gadaffi's Libya with telephone surveillance tech. [0]

Didn't know about the precursor tech being developed in Stellenbosch as well, do you have any sources on that? I'd be interested to see who was involved.

Agreed on the intel community generally being in a grey area as far as the law is concerned, it's a struggle enough keeping them impartial and not meddling in domestic affairs - talking about JZ being head of the ANC's intelligence in exile brings back memories of his ultimate succession of Thabo Mbeki and former spy chief Billy Masetlha's role in that.

[0] https://mg.co.za/article/2011-09-02-sa-firm-helped-gaddafi-s...

on linux opencv uses ffmpeg to videos iirc, i needed to install the gstreamer ffmpeg plugin (gst-libav on arch) and then it handled whatever format i threw at it (including mp4), although i used the python bindings if that makes any difference