Human rights are not fundamental for President Thabo Mbeki, but flexible depending on the political interests and allegiances of the ANC, says Democratic Alliance (DA) leader Tony Leon.
In a Human Rights Day speech prepared for delivery in Bushbuckridge, Limpopo, the DA leader launched a sustained attack on Mbeki, saying ”again and again” Mbeki ”sides with oppressors like Saddam Hussein and Mugabe against their people”.
Last month, according to Leon, Parade magazine in the United States published a list of ”The World’s Ten Worst Dictators”.
Two of these were Robert Mugabe of Zimbabwe (number four on the list), and King Mswati III of Swaziland (number ten). The ANC had on occasion, spoken out against abuses of human rights and democracy in Swaziland. But it refused to do so with Zimbabwe.
”In fact, President Mbeki has become Robert Mugabe’s best friend, his foremost ally, and his strongest defender. For President Mbeki, human rights are not fundamental. They are flexible, depending on the political interests and allegiances of the ANC,” Leon said.
Two other dictators on this list, according to Leon, were Fidel Castro of Cuba and Teodoro Obiang Nguema of Equatorial Guinea — ”both of whom are good friends of the ANC and its leaders”.
The ANC had said nothing about gross abuses of human rights in these countries, nor about the rights abuses of former Haitian President Jean-Bertrand Aristide.
”The ANC government picks and chooses which human rights abuses it condemns and which it condones, depending on its ideology and political interests. Again and again, President Mbeki sides with oppressors like Saddam Hussein and Robert Mugabe against their people.”
At home the government had failed to honour some of the rights enshrined in the Constitution, Leon said. He visited the town of Bochum two weeks ago and observed that at the Desmod Park Housing Project there were ”no houses at all”.
”There is only a pile of bricks, cement, door frames, toilet pans and roof sheets. The government delivered the materials but did not bother to build anything with them. They are just lying there, a year later, on the ground. Already the cement has been ruined by the rain,” he complained.
Meanwhile, the people of the community were still living in shacks.
”They are still waiting for the government to build the houses that it promised them. They are still waiting for their constitutional right to housing to be fulfilled.”
This, Leon said, was the story of human rights in South Africa.
”The building materials are there, in the pages of our Constitution. But the houses have not yet been built. We have rights on paper, but not in practice.”
He cited Cambridge township in East London where people lived in ”poverty and squalor” and Bushbuckridge where people were still waiting to receive the houses they were promised and where 10 000 jobs had been lost between 1996 and 2001, as further examples of how the socioeconomic rights of the people had not been fulfilled.
Last month, said Leon, the SA Human Rights Commission inspected the Tintswalo hospital, which served almost one million people in the region.
The Human Rights Commissioners found the conditions at the hospital to be ”shocking”.
”It is because of the neglect and mismanagement of the ANC government that Tintswalo hospital does not have the proper staff and facilities that it needs,” Leon declared.
Turning to crime, Leon said the ANC government had clearly failed to protect the rights of ordinary people and victims of crime. The government had also admitted it had ”lost” R15-billion over the past decade meant to be spent on social development.
”The state simply lacks the capacity to uphold the socioeconomic rights of the people. We cannot let the bricks of Bochum lie in the sun and rot in the rain. We cannot let the people of Bushbuckridge wait another decade to see a real change in their lives.”
Leon concluded with his party’s election slogan: ”We must act today. We must vote DA. Because South Africa deserves better.” ‒ Sapa