The ANC has an almost instinctive liking for rogue regimes that plunder, break international norms and oppress or even kill their people. The more repressive, the more likable, it would seem.
President Cyril Ramaphosa will this week be schmoozing with the elite at the World Economic Forum in Davos, trying to entice them to invest their hard-earned cash in our fast-disappearing economy.
Maybe he’ll be more candid with them about the darkening gloom here than he’s been with his fellow citizens. Because so far, here, it’s been stage 6 blackouts be damned. It’s beneath his province.
Maybe stage 8, which looks a distinct possibility, could just about coax him to come scampering back home to once again sit in his office twiddling his thumbs with a characteristic smirk on his face.
After all, he’s the sort who’d giggle at a bereavement. You hit him in the face and he’ll probably apologise for hurting your fist.
But last week he hardly had a word for his fellow invitees to this confab. I guess talking about captains of industry, the so-called white monopoly capitalists, is not the smartest thing to do at an ANC event.
It’s like waving a red rag at a bull. Until the comrades resolve this contradiction, this hypocrisy, we aren’t going anywhere very fast.
However, in his longish January 8 speech (pity those poor trees!) Ramaphosa found the time to call for international sanctions to be lifted against Venezuela, Cuba, Syria, Iran and, of course, Zimbabwe. Our love affair with autocrats and gangster states continues apace.
I’m surprised he left out Afghanistan. They fit the bill, don’t they? It’s perhaps understandable, though.
After all, it’s the Taliban from KwaZulu-Natal who gave him a torrid time at the ANC conference, with Jacob Zuma, their mullah, provocatively raining on his parade.
Interestingly, he said nothing about the most contentious issue of the time, Ukraine or Vladimir Putin. Discretion, I suppose, is the better part of valour.
Contrary to what Ramaphosa says, the absolute economic disaster in Zimbabwe was not caused by sanctions but by Robert Mugabe’s ruinous derangement
But we continue to needlessly expend our international currency by championing the causes of countries whose values are completely at odds with what we claim to stand for.
Maybe sanctions against Cuba should be lifted, but why should it be our moral obligation to keep banging on about the subject? Isn’t Cuba big enough to paddle its own canoe?
Imagine someone without a job, no food for the children, sitting in the dark (load-shedding) and listening to the president sounding off about Cuba and every other issue under the sun except their own predicament. They’d be correct to conclude the man was not only detached from reality but also a bit bonkers.
We’re quick to tell others how they should order their affairs when we can hardly run a tap in our own backyard. Deeds speak louder than words. Be a good example — not by shouting from a pedestal but by doing a better job of running your own country.
I suspect there aren’t many people in this country who can point out Venezuela on the map. What Venezuela has in common with Cuba, apart from the fact that they’re both in Latin America, is the fact that it is anti-US, and so we side with it. Which goes down well with the base. We bat for such regimes without any mention, not even an acknowledgment, of the atrocities they commit against their own people.
Ramaphosa wants the repressive Bashar al-Assad regime in Syria to be relieved from international sanctions, but he says nothing about the more than 600,000 people killed so far in the Syrian civil war.
In Iran, protests sparked by the death in detention of Mahsa Amini in September — detained by the morality police for not wearing her hijab correctly — have already left an estimated 300 people dead.
But no, Ramaphosa wants the adorable mullahs running this nirvana to be cushioned from international opprobrium. The world must simply avert its gaze.
In fact, as Ramaphosa was speaking, two men — Mohammad Mehdi Karami, a karate champion, and Sayed Mohammad Hosseini, a factory worker — were being sentenced to hang for the heinous crime of protesting peacefully against the regime. That, I suppose, is a minor inconvenience that can be sacrificed on the altar of international solidarity.
Ramaphosa says South Africa’s foreign policy is premised on multilateralism and respect for international law, which are key to achieving global stability. I guess that’s why we’re cheering on Putin’s wholesale slaughter in Ukraine.
But it’s on Zimbabwe that Ramaphosa veers from propaganda to outright fibs. The thing about Zimbabwe is that it’s not some faraway place people know little about. It’s right next door, and what happens there directly affects this country.
In fact, Zimbabwe is not some quaint or arcane foreign policy issue. It has a huge impact on our domestic politics in a way that no other country has.
Contrary to what Ramaphosa says, the absolute economic disaster in Zimbabwe was not caused by sanctions but by Robert Mugabe’s ruinous derangement — economic policies that had no bearing on reality, the seizure of productive farms and other businesses that were then generously given to members of the ruling Zanu-PF.
Instead of reining Mugabe in, South Africa humoured him, protected him and cheered him on. He would not have survived that long without South Africa’s backing.
This country is therefore partly to blame for the ruin Zimbabwe has become. Mugabe is gone but his Gestapo tactics are still in place under Emmerson Mnangagwa — and South Africa remains the gift that keeps on giving.
A template of what to do already exists, if from an unlikely source. With Ian Smith reluctant to negotiate, John Vorster, prodded by the Americans, gave him an ultimatum: either you negotiate or I close the border.
It’s time to be tough on Zimbabwe.
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