President Thabo Mbeki has been ill-advised to link celebrations of South Africa’s first decade of democracy with festivities marking Haiti’s bicentennial of independence from France, said senior European diplomats in Pretoria.
”Frankly, it is unworthy of a country that represents such hope to the international community to be so closely associated with one that has been such a disappointment,” one ambassador said. ”We understand the emotional link with what was the first independent black state in the world. We also understand the African desire to seek closer contact with the diaspora.
”But Haitian President Jean-Bertrand Aristide, who enjoyed such close support from us, has been a great disappointment. Perhaps South Africa’s gift of R10-million to Haiti to help the celebrations would have sufficed.”
Haiti has had a troubled history since being put under the Spanish flag by Christopher Columbus in 1492. France got a piece of the island two centuries later and filled it with 500 000 African slaves to produce the sugar, rum, coffee and cotton that made it a money-spinner.
The slaves finally drove off the French in 1803 after an 18-year liberation war.
The slaving nations shunned the emergent republic until France recognised it in 1838 at a cost of 90-million gold francs – a debt that took Haiti until 1947 to pay off.
Aristide, a former Catholic priest, was first elected president in 1990 ending 30 years of dictatorial rule by Papa Doc Duvalier and his son Baby Doc. Aristide was deposed in a coup and had to be restored to power by United States troops in 1994. However, he has failed to deliver on the democratic reforms expected of him.
”Killings, violent attacks and threats – committeed by political partisans and armed, politically motivated groups – are of growing concern, as are violations committed by security forces in responding to political violence,” Amnesty International said in a report in October last year. ”In addition, attacks on freedom of expression continue.”
In 2001 Human Rights Watch said ”government passivity in the face of intimidation and violence by supporters of the Fanmi Lavalas party raised serious human rights concerns.”
Fanmi Lavalas, the party of Aristide, ”employed fraud to boost its electoral gains and win near total control over the Parliament,” the organisation said.
South Africa cannot claim any significant economic interest in Haiti. Its exports there last year more than doubled 2000 to reach a mere R3-million.
