Oct 22 2007, Telegraaf newspaper, ROTTERDAM, The Netherlands.
Said ex-Pres. De Klerk to the Dutch journalist: "South Africa is not a democracy either - in a living democracy one never knows in advance which party has won."
He made the comment at a gala fund-raiser in Rotterdam for the charity KidsRights on Saturday-night, of which he is the patron.
KidsRights raises funds to help Aids orphans worldwide, including in South Africa. De Klerk is a patron of the charity.
The evening's fund-raising auction among the Dutch elite was interrupted so that the overjoyed former SA president could watch the live-TV celebratory scenes after the Springbok rugby team's phenomenal victory over England that night.
De Klerk was actually talking about the new democratic movement which has just been launched by former Russian president Michael Gorbatsjov when he made the comment about South Africa.
He was quoted as saying: "Russia needs a living democracy, and that's a democracy in which one does not know in advance which party is going to win. Such a (living) democracy also does not exist in South Africa,' he said.
His comments were quoted in the popular Stan Huygens column on page 4 of De Telegraaf newspaper on 22 October.
link to page:
http://telegraaf-i.telegraaf.nl/daily/2007/10/22/TE/TE_2S_20071022_4/pagina.php
The evening's auction -- attended by the creme de la creme of the wealthiest Dutch captains of industry and trade -- raised a whopping one-million Euros in just a few hours of bidding.
"We can do so much with this money,' said jubilant KidsRights' founder Marc Dullaert, Dutch tv-producer and CEO of D&D Media Groups.
. "Every Euro is worth three times as much in South Africa. And this money will go 100% 'to support the Aids-orphans in South Africa -- no creaming off the top for expenses such as other charities are doing,' he said.
"Some of our other sponsors actually pay all the running costs for KidsRights so that 100% of our donations go directly to the kids.'
The Dutch-based KidsRights -- not to be confused with the discredited ChildRight group in SA -- also maintains a very open information policy, which is required by Dutch charity foundations.
Give no more money to ChildRight warns the Dutch Central Fundraising Bureau:
http://weeswaakzaam.punt.nl/index.php?r=1&id=410402&tbl_archief=0
Their 2006 statement by their accountant shows that many Dutch artists also donated their talents with free concerts. One of the charities supported is Nkosi's Haven, run by Gail Johnson -- whose highly-publicised adoption of the Aids-infected child Nkosi even drew the ire of president Thabo Mbeki.
Nkosi was near-death when Gail adopted him legally because his AIDS-infected mom could not care for him. The bright youngster lived a happy life on antiretrovirals until the age of 12 -- and his personality shone brightly at his frequent public appearances.
The little boy also famously accosted president Mbeki at a highly-publicised international conference about his anti-AIDS policies, clearly angering Mbeki.
link:
http://www.nkosishaven.co.za/
Nkosi Johnson link
http://www.kidsrights.info/indexfull2_home.php?action=&lang=en&id=723&category=1585
2006 Annual Statement of KidsRights charity:
http://www.kidsrights.info/doc/StichtingKidsrightsDef.jaarrekening2006.pdf
Source URL: http://telegraaf-i.telegraaf.nl/daily/2007/10/22/TE/TE_2S_20071022_4/pagina.php
Tuesday, 23 October 2007
Former President FW de Klerk: South Africa is NOT a democracy
Date Posted: Monday 22-Oct-2007
2007: Book: Black South Africans are worse off under ANC Rule - Township violence returns!!
Date Posted: Monday 22-Oct-2007
[Adriana sent me this nice piece. Well, its "Disaster Capitalism" being it is being implemented by Socialists and Communists - that's why. I hope the CIA learns its lesson from this. Don't hand the country over to Marxist TERRORISTS and expect them to run a proper Capitalist Pro-Western society!! Jan]
WHY ARE VIOLENT SA TOWNSHIP PROTESTS BACK?
'Black South Africans are much worse off under ANC-rule than they ever were during apartheid... ' - Naomi Klein in "The Shock Doctrine: The Rise of Disaster Capitalism'...
After over a decade of ANC-rule under Thabo Mbeki, conditions for black people in SA are today so much worse than they ever were under apartheid that black communities all across the country's townships again have returned to the streets to protest -- waging violence-driven campaigns, this time against their own black regime. They are protesting against their dismal living conditions and also the drastic lack of civil liberties being endured under the Mbeki-regime.
Far-left Canadian journalist Naomi Klein noted these shocking living conditions of black South Africans under the Mbeki-regime -- describing them in her latest book "The Shock Doctrine: The Rise of Disaster Capitalism". Klein provides the following list of how living conditions for SA blacks have gotten worse:
o Four-million people now live on less than $1 a day (doubled since apartheid);
o 48% of the people now are unemployed; it was 28% under apartheid;
o only 5,000 of 35-million+ black South Africans earn over $60,000 a year;
the ANC government has built 1.8 million (ramshackle, tiny) new homes while two-million South Africans have lost theirs;
o Some 1-m blacks were evicted from farms by new black farmers;
o the shack dweller population grew by 50%,
o in 2006, one-quarter of the entire SA population lives in shacks without running water or electricity.
o the TB/AIDS infection rate is soaring past 20% -- and the Mbeki government denies the severity of the twin killer-epidemics;
o The average life expectancy for everyone is at 48 years; it hovered around 62 years during apartheid;
o 40% of all SA schools have no electricity;
o 25% of all the 46-million people in SA have no clean wate
o 60% of all the people have inadequate sanitation; 40% have no telephones.
http://www.amazon.com/Shock-Doctrine-Rise-Disaster-Capitalism/dp/0805079831
Posted By: Jan
AfricanCrisis Webmaster
Author of: Government by Deception
Wednesday, 17 October 2007
Hitting a child may cost R300
Pieter du Toit, Beeld
Cape Town - R300 for a clip on the ear.
That's what parents will have to cough up if they're prosecuted under the provisions for corporal punishment in the proposed Children's Act and if they are given the option of a fine.
The National Prosecuting Authority (NPA) on Tuesday told the parliamentary Social Welfare Services portfolio committee that unless clause 139 of the Children's Act was changed, "any minor smack on the buttocks or rap over the knuckles" would be illegal and punishable by law.
"It means that the NPA would be obliged to subject each and every complaint filed by children against their parents to the legal process," said Advocate Rodney de Kock, the Director of Public Prosecutions in the Western Cape.
"A decision on whether sufficient pain has been inflicted (for the complaint to qualify) does not lie with the NPA. The act will stipulate that each smack or clip is an offence and should be treated as such."
The new law stipulates that absolutely no form of corporal punishment is legal and a child may not be punished in a way that is "cruel, inhuman or degrading".
The act also negates the defence of physical punishment as "a reasonable form of discipline" as contained in the existing Child Care Act.
Cheryllyn Dudley of the ACDP asked if it was not possible to refer in the legislation to "reasonable forms of corporal punishment".
Committee chairperson Advocate Mike Masutha of the ANC informed her that the law made provision for training in alternative disciplinary methods.
Both Dudley and Hilda Weber of the DA wanted to know precisely what options were available to a hiding and disciplining that was seen as "degrading".
"The Education Department can provide that answer," Masutha said.
Cape Town - R300 for a clip on the ear.
That's what parents will have to cough up if they're prosecuted under the provisions for corporal punishment in the proposed Children's Act and if they are given the option of a fine.
The National Prosecuting Authority (NPA) on Tuesday told the parliamentary Social Welfare Services portfolio committee that unless clause 139 of the Children's Act was changed, "any minor smack on the buttocks or rap over the knuckles" would be illegal and punishable by law.
"It means that the NPA would be obliged to subject each and every complaint filed by children against their parents to the legal process," said Advocate Rodney de Kock, the Director of Public Prosecutions in the Western Cape.
"A decision on whether sufficient pain has been inflicted (for the complaint to qualify) does not lie with the NPA. The act will stipulate that each smack or clip is an offence and should be treated as such."
The new law stipulates that absolutely no form of corporal punishment is legal and a child may not be punished in a way that is "cruel, inhuman or degrading".
The act also negates the defence of physical punishment as "a reasonable form of discipline" as contained in the existing Child Care Act.
Cheryllyn Dudley of the ACDP asked if it was not possible to refer in the legislation to "reasonable forms of corporal punishment".
Committee chairperson Advocate Mike Masutha of the ANC informed her that the law made provision for training in alternative disciplinary methods.
Both Dudley and Hilda Weber of the DA wanted to know precisely what options were available to a hiding and disciplining that was seen as "degrading".
"The Education Department can provide that answer," Masutha said.
'Teachers have no control'
Eduan Roos, Beeld
Shocked pupils and teachers from Forest High School, in Forest Hill in the southern part of Johannesburg, had to receive counselling after finding the body of Simon Mbele, 19, who was stabbed to death on the sports field by another pupil on Monday.
Mbele was involved in a fight with a Grade 8 boy at the school about 07:30. He was stabbed four times in the neck.
Kim Atkinson, 17, a pupil, said she had just arrived at school to get notes for the exams which started on Tuesday when she saw a large group of pupils running to the sports field.
Knives brought to school
"I asked them what was happening and they shouted: "Somebody is dead". When we arrived we noticed a number of emergency workers and realised it was Simon."
Police spokesperson captain Schalk Bornman said pupils noticed the two boys having an argument at a building on the sports field.
"They saw the 14-year-old boy running away and went to see what had happened. They found the boy's body. He was stabbed in the neck four times with a sharp object."
Nick Dollman, spokesperson for Netcare 911 emergency service, said the boy was found dead in a ditch at the building. According to Atkinson and her friend, Amanda Hicks, 17, there were fist fights nearly every day at the school.
"Teachers have no control over the children. The only thing that will help is if corporal punishment is brought back," said Atkinson.
"Children bring knives to school and jump over the fences to bunk whenever they feel like it. And that is not only the case here, we know about other schools where it is a lot worse."
Apparently the deputy principal at this school was seriously assaulted by a pupil a couple of months ago.
Mark Petersen, the principle, could not be reached for comment, but he had told 702 Talk Radio on Monday that it was "an isolated incident".
"It's the first incident of violence that I know about," Petersen told 702. "Some of the pupils and teachers have received counselling and we will continue doing so."
Pupils jumped over the fence and left the school while police members were still combing the murder scene.
Panyaza Lesufi, spokesperson for Angie Matshekgo, Gauteng MEC for education, said a top level investigation had been launched into the incident.
"The boys apparently argued over money. We are shocked by the murder and have already spoken to several role players, among them the MEC for community safety (Firoz Cachalia)," said Lesufi.
He said Mbele's parents also received counselling at length.
"Security at schools is not the responsibility of the education department," he said.
"Schools are part of the bigger community and crime and violence occur everywhere every day."
Shocked pupils and teachers from Forest High School, in Forest Hill in the southern part of Johannesburg, had to receive counselling after finding the body of Simon Mbele, 19, who was stabbed to death on the sports field by another pupil on Monday.
Mbele was involved in a fight with a Grade 8 boy at the school about 07:30. He was stabbed four times in the neck.
Kim Atkinson, 17, a pupil, said she had just arrived at school to get notes for the exams which started on Tuesday when she saw a large group of pupils running to the sports field.
Knives brought to school
"I asked them what was happening and they shouted: "Somebody is dead". When we arrived we noticed a number of emergency workers and realised it was Simon."
Police spokesperson captain Schalk Bornman said pupils noticed the two boys having an argument at a building on the sports field.
"They saw the 14-year-old boy running away and went to see what had happened. They found the boy's body. He was stabbed in the neck four times with a sharp object."
Nick Dollman, spokesperson for Netcare 911 emergency service, said the boy was found dead in a ditch at the building. According to Atkinson and her friend, Amanda Hicks, 17, there were fist fights nearly every day at the school.
"Teachers have no control over the children. The only thing that will help is if corporal punishment is brought back," said Atkinson.
"Children bring knives to school and jump over the fences to bunk whenever they feel like it. And that is not only the case here, we know about other schools where it is a lot worse."
Apparently the deputy principal at this school was seriously assaulted by a pupil a couple of months ago.
Mark Petersen, the principle, could not be reached for comment, but he had told 702 Talk Radio on Monday that it was "an isolated incident".
"It's the first incident of violence that I know about," Petersen told 702. "Some of the pupils and teachers have received counselling and we will continue doing so."
Pupils jumped over the fence and left the school while police members were still combing the murder scene.
Panyaza Lesufi, spokesperson for Angie Matshekgo, Gauteng MEC for education, said a top level investigation had been launched into the incident.
"The boys apparently argued over money. We are shocked by the murder and have already spoken to several role players, among them the MEC for community safety (Firoz Cachalia)," said Lesufi.
He said Mbele's parents also received counselling at length.
"Security at schools is not the responsibility of the education department," he said.
"Schools are part of the bigger community and crime and violence occur everywhere every day."
Monday, 15 October 2007
PAP members fear for safety
Officials from the South Africa-based Pan African Parliament (PAP) on Wednesday expressed fears for their safety after a number of members fell victim to violent attacks.
"There have been several incidents of robbery at gunpoint and threats to members and staff," PAP president Gertrude Mongella told a media briefing ahead of Monday's resumption of work at the parliament, which sits twice a year.
"At least three members have had their cars stolen. They are fearful about their security in its South African headquarters," she added.
Senior PAP official Merumba Werunga added: "More than 10 members of the PAP have been attacked in their hotels and guest houses while attending plenary or committee meetings."
he latest incident had happened overnight when a staff member was robbed at gunpoint in his home which was cleaned out, Werunga added.
The continental body, an African Union agency yet to acquire legislative powers, is scheduled to begin its eighth session on Monday at its headquarters in Midrand, situated between Pretoria and Johannesburg.
Mongella said there was no evidence that members were being specifically targeted and there was no intention to move the parliament from South Africa, where around 50 people are murdered every day.
"We are going to stay and work with the South African government to ensure our members and staff are secure."
As well as voicing safety fears, Mongella said the PAP was struggling financially as a result of shortfalls in promised finances, leading to the cancellation of a planned recent mission to Zimbabwe.
"We are given such a small amount of money that cannot sustain the expensive environment of South Africa," she said.
The PAP, which began without a budget in 2004, was promised $5-million (€3.7-million) in 2005, but got only $3-million from the AU, its mother body.
Mongella, a Tanzanian MP, said the parliament received $9-million in total last year despite having budgeted for $11.9-million.
"There have been several incidents of robbery at gunpoint and threats to members and staff," PAP president Gertrude Mongella told a media briefing ahead of Monday's resumption of work at the parliament, which sits twice a year.
"At least three members have had their cars stolen. They are fearful about their security in its South African headquarters," she added.
Senior PAP official Merumba Werunga added: "More than 10 members of the PAP have been attacked in their hotels and guest houses while attending plenary or committee meetings."
he latest incident had happened overnight when a staff member was robbed at gunpoint in his home which was cleaned out, Werunga added.
The continental body, an African Union agency yet to acquire legislative powers, is scheduled to begin its eighth session on Monday at its headquarters in Midrand, situated between Pretoria and Johannesburg.
Mongella said there was no evidence that members were being specifically targeted and there was no intention to move the parliament from South Africa, where around 50 people are murdered every day.
"We are going to stay and work with the South African government to ensure our members and staff are secure."
As well as voicing safety fears, Mongella said the PAP was struggling financially as a result of shortfalls in promised finances, leading to the cancellation of a planned recent mission to Zimbabwe.
"We are given such a small amount of money that cannot sustain the expensive environment of South Africa," she said.
The PAP, which began without a budget in 2004, was promised $5-million (€3.7-million) in 2005, but got only $3-million from the AU, its mother body.
Mongella, a Tanzanian MP, said the parliament received $9-million in total last year despite having budgeted for $11.9-million.
SA is 'rotting like a fish, from the head on down' - warns IFP leader Buthelezi
Date Posted: Monday 15-Oct-2007
The Afrikaans media reports Mangosuthu Buthelezi's keynote address at the annual Inkatha Freedom party conference in Ulundi, in which he warned that South Africa was 'heading for paralysis' under a 'paralysed ruling party'; that the country in fact is "like a fish, rotting from the head on down..."
The country is in fact being plunged into a deep constitutional crisis, warned Buthelezi.
Beeld journalist Dries Liebenberg describes the frail-looking Buthelezi's speech as deeply sombre and pessimistic about the country's future.
South Africa, said Buthelezi, 'is a fish which is rotting from its head on down".
He said the president 's interference in the justice department's attempts to arrest (Interpol president and) national police chief Jackie Selebi by firing the man who was heading the investigation, 'goes so much deeper than fighting crime.
"The highest political authority of the land has thus undermined the building blocks of the constitutional supremacy of our justice system," he warned.
"The Constitution is thus being trampled upon by those who are supposed to protect it."
Buthelezi thus also added his criticism to those of other opposition leaders who warned of a looming Constitutional crisis in South Africa.
Buthelezi said this crisis is however not 'just limited to law and order. We have a paralysed government which is suffer under a paralysed ruling party in a country which is heading for paralysis," he warned.
more of this speech on:
LINK
http://www.news24.com/Beeld/Suid-Afrika/0,,3-975_2202013,00.html
The Afrikaans media reports Mangosuthu Buthelezi's keynote address at the annual Inkatha Freedom party conference in Ulundi, in which he warned that South Africa was 'heading for paralysis' under a 'paralysed ruling party'; that the country in fact is "like a fish, rotting from the head on down..."
The country is in fact being plunged into a deep constitutional crisis, warned Buthelezi.
Beeld journalist Dries Liebenberg describes the frail-looking Buthelezi's speech as deeply sombre and pessimistic about the country's future.
South Africa, said Buthelezi, 'is a fish which is rotting from its head on down".
He said the president 's interference in the justice department's attempts to arrest (Interpol president and) national police chief Jackie Selebi by firing the man who was heading the investigation, 'goes so much deeper than fighting crime.
"The highest political authority of the land has thus undermined the building blocks of the constitutional supremacy of our justice system," he warned.
"The Constitution is thus being trampled upon by those who are supposed to protect it."
Buthelezi thus also added his criticism to those of other opposition leaders who warned of a looming Constitutional crisis in South Africa.
Buthelezi said this crisis is however not 'just limited to law and order. We have a paralysed government which is suffer under a paralysed ruling party in a country which is heading for paralysis," he warned.
more of this speech on:
LINK
http://www.news24.com/Beeld/Suid-Afrika/0,,3-975_2202013,00.html
Monday, 30 July 2007
Why, the Beloved Country?
South Africa has squandered its moral authority by embracing tyrants and despots.
By By James Kirchick
July 29, 2007
In early may, just a month before the Hamas takeover of the Gaza Strip, South African Minister of Intelligence Ronnie Kasrils paid a visit to Ismail Haniyeh, the Hamas leader and erstwhile Palestinian Authority prime minister. Kasrils praised Hamas, which has been designated by the United States as a terrorist organization, and invited Haniyeh to visit South Africa. Several months earlier, Kasrils did similar PR work on behalf of Hezbollah, another U.S.-designated terrorist group.
South Africa's chumminess with these two well-known terror organizations may come as a shock to Americans, for whom South Africa probably conjures up fuzzy images of Nelson Mandela, Oprah Winfrey opening up a luxurious school for disadvantaged girls and the heroic triumph of democracy and justice over racism. But it shouldn't. It is part and parcel of a broader and troubling trend in South African foreign policy, one that cozies up to tyrants and is increasingly hostile to the West -- even at the cost of its self-proclaimed principles of human rights and political freedom.
So why haven't you heard more about it? Why has post-apartheid South Africa's easy relationship with dictatorships been downplayed by the media for years? That oversight seems to reflect a disinclination to report bad news about the African National Congress -- Mandela's party, which led the fight against apartheid -- and especially any news that might be perceived as tarnishing the popular and comforting narrative surrounding the country's triumphant emergence from apartheid.
Even as South Africa moves slowly into the anti-Western camp, few outsiders are willing to criticize the ANC, partly out of a misguided sense of solidarity and partly because the party cloaks itself in a shroud of moral absolutism that not so subtly implicates its critics as racists, Western stooges or apologists for apartheid. (To cite only one of many examples, in February, the ANC government attacked the British Broadcasting Corp. for supposedly alleging that "Africans are less than human, or, at least, genetically inferior" in a documentary about out-of-control crime in Johannesburg.)
But scurrilous accusations shouldn't be allowed to deter reasonable criticism. And just because the ANC's current leaders were once imprisoned by white racists does not render them immune from censure today.
The reality is that, among democratic countries, none has been more supportive of Iran's nuclear ambitions than South Africa. While the United States and its European allies fret over what to do about the nuclear program of this rogue, theocratic state, South Africa's ambassador to the United Nations, displaying remarkable credulity, declared last year: "We will
defend the right of countries to have nuclear technology for peaceful uses. For instance, Iran." In March, after assuming a temporary two-year seat on the Security Council, South Africa attempted to gut a resolution sanctioning Iran for defying demands that it freeze uranium enrichment. (Although after the attempt failed, South Africa joined the rest of the council in passing a unanimous resolution.)
South Africa has also wasted its opportunity to stand as a clarion voice for human rights at the U.N. On the Security Council, it has regularly sided with Russia and China -- the two powerful, veto-wielding nations that are consistent obstacles to the defense of liberty. In its first substantive vote on the council, South Africa sided with those two states against a nonbinding resolution condemning the human rights abuses of the Myanmar military junta. Archbishop Desmond Tutu admitted that the vote was "a betrayal of our own noble past."
Last week, the South African ambassador to the U.N. warned that any talk of sanctions against Sudan for its actions in Darfur would be "totally unacceptable." How can the ANC, with a straight face, call sanctions against a genocidal regime totally unacceptable when it demanded complete and utter isolation of the white apartheid government in Pretoria?
Rounding out South Africa's disgraceful foreign policy is its stance toward Zimbabwe, where President Robert Mugabe is inflicting what some have referred to as a "silent genocide" against his own people through starvation and the manipulation of food aid. Instead of threatening sanctions or even lightly criticizing his regime, South Africa has kept Mugabe afloat through vast economic aid and, in 2005, strengthened an already dubious military alliance between the two governments. To the ANC, Mugabe is a hero who defeated white colonialism, and even though his reign is worse than the white government he overthrew, the ANC puts its stubborn principle of liberation camaraderie ahead of common humanity.
Why would the ANC, which came to power with such worldwide respect and goodwill, be willing to squander its moral authority so easily? A large part of the explanation rests with Mandela himself. Although he is regarded as perhaps the most inspirational figure in the world, the fact is that throughout his life, Mandela has praised an unseemly crew of dictators -- including Fidel Castro ("Long live Comrade Fidel Castro!" he said in 1991), Moammar Kadafi (whom he visited in 1997 in defiance of American objections) and Yasser Arafat ("a comrade in arms") -- for their support of the ANC while it was in exile. And he has remained quiet about Mugabe even though a strong rebuke might influence current African leaders to do the same, and Mandela's reticence is a stain on his otherwise illustrious legacy.
The roots of the ANC's willingness to overlook totalitarianism go back to its historic hostility toward the West, which solidified during the apartheid years, when it was the Soviet Union that supplied the ANC and the United States, Britain and Israel were unwilling to cut ties to the white government in Pretoria. Regardless of what happened many years ago, previous policies by the U.S. and other Western countries toward South Africa cannot possibly justify the ANC's current friendliness toward Hamas, Hezbollah, Mugabe, Khartoum and Tehran.
Yet the ANC refuses to change. Today, it still governs not by itself but as part of a "tripartite alliance" with the country's trade union coalition and the South African Communist Party. It's no surprise, then, that in a recent weekly letter from South African President Thabo Mbeki recounting an ANC delegation trip to Vietnam, he spoke, even all these years later, of "the U.S. war of aggression against the Vietnamese people" and lauded the communist dictatorship's "struggle for freedom and national independence." Mbeki and his ANC colleagues see South Africa as having inherited an "anti-imperialist" intellectual tradition heroically opposed to the Western democracies.
With the fall of apartheid, a window of opportunity emerged in which South Africa could have come to the fore as an unrivaled advocate for human rights around the world. Given its own struggle against injustice, the ANC is right to regard itself as having a special duty to stand with the innocent against authoritarianism, terrorism and privation. Regretfully, it appears that South Africa -- at least under the rule of the massively popular ANC -- has decided to cast its lot with the likes of Robert Mugabe, the mullahs in Iran and the terrorists of Hamas and Hezbollah.
James Kirchick is assistant to the editor in chief of the New Republic.
Source
By By James Kirchick
July 29, 2007
In early may, just a month before the Hamas takeover of the Gaza Strip, South African Minister of Intelligence Ronnie Kasrils paid a visit to Ismail Haniyeh, the Hamas leader and erstwhile Palestinian Authority prime minister. Kasrils praised Hamas, which has been designated by the United States as a terrorist organization, and invited Haniyeh to visit South Africa. Several months earlier, Kasrils did similar PR work on behalf of Hezbollah, another U.S.-designated terrorist group.
South Africa's chumminess with these two well-known terror organizations may come as a shock to Americans, for whom South Africa probably conjures up fuzzy images of Nelson Mandela, Oprah Winfrey opening up a luxurious school for disadvantaged girls and the heroic triumph of democracy and justice over racism. But it shouldn't. It is part and parcel of a broader and troubling trend in South African foreign policy, one that cozies up to tyrants and is increasingly hostile to the West -- even at the cost of its self-proclaimed principles of human rights and political freedom.
So why haven't you heard more about it? Why has post-apartheid South Africa's easy relationship with dictatorships been downplayed by the media for years? That oversight seems to reflect a disinclination to report bad news about the African National Congress -- Mandela's party, which led the fight against apartheid -- and especially any news that might be perceived as tarnishing the popular and comforting narrative surrounding the country's triumphant emergence from apartheid.
Even as South Africa moves slowly into the anti-Western camp, few outsiders are willing to criticize the ANC, partly out of a misguided sense of solidarity and partly because the party cloaks itself in a shroud of moral absolutism that not so subtly implicates its critics as racists, Western stooges or apologists for apartheid. (To cite only one of many examples, in February, the ANC government attacked the British Broadcasting Corp. for supposedly alleging that "Africans are less than human, or, at least, genetically inferior" in a documentary about out-of-control crime in Johannesburg.)
But scurrilous accusations shouldn't be allowed to deter reasonable criticism. And just because the ANC's current leaders were once imprisoned by white racists does not render them immune from censure today.
The reality is that, among democratic countries, none has been more supportive of Iran's nuclear ambitions than South Africa. While the United States and its European allies fret over what to do about the nuclear program of this rogue, theocratic state, South Africa's ambassador to the United Nations, displaying remarkable credulity, declared last year: "We will
defend the right of countries to have nuclear technology for peaceful uses. For instance, Iran." In March, after assuming a temporary two-year seat on the Security Council, South Africa attempted to gut a resolution sanctioning Iran for defying demands that it freeze uranium enrichment. (Although after the attempt failed, South Africa joined the rest of the council in passing a unanimous resolution.)
South Africa has also wasted its opportunity to stand as a clarion voice for human rights at the U.N. On the Security Council, it has regularly sided with Russia and China -- the two powerful, veto-wielding nations that are consistent obstacles to the defense of liberty. In its first substantive vote on the council, South Africa sided with those two states against a nonbinding resolution condemning the human rights abuses of the Myanmar military junta. Archbishop Desmond Tutu admitted that the vote was "a betrayal of our own noble past."
Last week, the South African ambassador to the U.N. warned that any talk of sanctions against Sudan for its actions in Darfur would be "totally unacceptable." How can the ANC, with a straight face, call sanctions against a genocidal regime totally unacceptable when it demanded complete and utter isolation of the white apartheid government in Pretoria?
Rounding out South Africa's disgraceful foreign policy is its stance toward Zimbabwe, where President Robert Mugabe is inflicting what some have referred to as a "silent genocide" against his own people through starvation and the manipulation of food aid. Instead of threatening sanctions or even lightly criticizing his regime, South Africa has kept Mugabe afloat through vast economic aid and, in 2005, strengthened an already dubious military alliance between the two governments. To the ANC, Mugabe is a hero who defeated white colonialism, and even though his reign is worse than the white government he overthrew, the ANC puts its stubborn principle of liberation camaraderie ahead of common humanity.
Why would the ANC, which came to power with such worldwide respect and goodwill, be willing to squander its moral authority so easily? A large part of the explanation rests with Mandela himself. Although he is regarded as perhaps the most inspirational figure in the world, the fact is that throughout his life, Mandela has praised an unseemly crew of dictators -- including Fidel Castro ("Long live Comrade Fidel Castro!" he said in 1991), Moammar Kadafi (whom he visited in 1997 in defiance of American objections) and Yasser Arafat ("a comrade in arms") -- for their support of the ANC while it was in exile. And he has remained quiet about Mugabe even though a strong rebuke might influence current African leaders to do the same, and Mandela's reticence is a stain on his otherwise illustrious legacy.
The roots of the ANC's willingness to overlook totalitarianism go back to its historic hostility toward the West, which solidified during the apartheid years, when it was the Soviet Union that supplied the ANC and the United States, Britain and Israel were unwilling to cut ties to the white government in Pretoria. Regardless of what happened many years ago, previous policies by the U.S. and other Western countries toward South Africa cannot possibly justify the ANC's current friendliness toward Hamas, Hezbollah, Mugabe, Khartoum and Tehran.
Yet the ANC refuses to change. Today, it still governs not by itself but as part of a "tripartite alliance" with the country's trade union coalition and the South African Communist Party. It's no surprise, then, that in a recent weekly letter from South African President Thabo Mbeki recounting an ANC delegation trip to Vietnam, he spoke, even all these years later, of "the U.S. war of aggression against the Vietnamese people" and lauded the communist dictatorship's "struggle for freedom and national independence." Mbeki and his ANC colleagues see South Africa as having inherited an "anti-imperialist" intellectual tradition heroically opposed to the Western democracies.
With the fall of apartheid, a window of opportunity emerged in which South Africa could have come to the fore as an unrivaled advocate for human rights around the world. Given its own struggle against injustice, the ANC is right to regard itself as having a special duty to stand with the innocent against authoritarianism, terrorism and privation. Regretfully, it appears that South Africa -- at least under the rule of the massively popular ANC -- has decided to cast its lot with the likes of Robert Mugabe, the mullahs in Iran and the terrorists of Hamas and Hezbollah.
James Kirchick is assistant to the editor in chief of the New Republic.
Source
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)
