Funny how a lot of people are commenting on the decision by President Nelson Mandela, himself a victim of gross human rights abuses and a former political prisoner, to give diplomatic recognition to Beijing, which has such a poor record ‘ especially as regards dissent.
Now suddenly the ANC is being seen to be putting ‘economics’ above ‘politics’ ‘ whatever that means.
Also interesting is that South Africa was the largest country to have failed to recognise Beijing until recently. Note what that says about the ‘developed’ world ‘ which has long ignored human rights in deference to business.
A further amusing point is that the last showdown over ‘principle’ between the West and China was complaints by the United States that the Chinese authorities were doing too little to protect US recording companies against piracy in China. Apparently this is more important than the vaguely-alluded-to human rights issues China could be trying to deal with. South Africa, by the way, is next on the piracy complaint list. It seems the police and courts just don’t understand their true mission, all because of some little distractions like violent crime and corruption. ‘ Alex Welte, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania