Let’s get something straight on the mercenary mess. The (alleged) bad guys are in Chikurubi prison in Zimbabwe and in Equatorial Guinea, not in the Union Buildings in Pretoria.
In the concern, the cacophony and the clamour of the past fortnight, the government is now being blamed for the 70 South Africans holed up in Zimbabwe and the seven in Equatorial Guinea.
This loses sight of the facts: mercenary activity has kept post-colonial Africa unstable and prevented its growth. Muzzling the dogs of war is essential for the continent’s well-being and when governments share intelligence regarding the murky movements of the soldiers of fortune, that is a good thing.
This is what South African, Zimbabwean and Equatorial Guinean intelligence did, thereby netting the alleged coup-plotters. For this the government is being branded for having blood on its hands (should the men be executed) and being as guilty as the mercenaries. It is nonsense.
Of course times must be tough and traumatic for the families concerned — and that is the fault of the men. There are 782 South Africans in jails across the world and their families are suffering.
The men have been jailed for an alleged attempt to topple Equatorial Guinea’s President, Teodoro Obiang Nguema. The death penalty has not been abolished in Equatorial Guinea (where Zimbabwe wants to send the men) so their lawyers want them sent back to South Africa to face charges under the anti-mercenary laws in place here instead.
Though the men claim they were on their way to guard a mine in the Democratic Republic of Congo, at least one of the men being held in Equatorial Guinea has appeared on TV confessing to the coup plot and giving details of how it was to unfold.
What should happen? The temptation is, of course, to say that those who run with dogs should not cry like puppies.
If they know the risks of less democratic nations in Africa, why choose such a high-risk occupation? But, commitment to principles is often tested by scumbags: murderers test our commitment to a life without the death penalty; the mercenaries are testing the government’s commitment to the rights of citizens.
The South African Constitution enjoins the government to ensure that no citizens are extradited to countries where they might face the death penalty, and this commitment alone means that concern for citizens must trump the continental imperative to make and keep Africa peaceful, as unpalatable as that choice may be.
As citizens they need access to the consular services that governments must extend to their citizens in trouble abroad.
Let South Africa also use its powers to ensure that its citizens do not face the death penalty and that their trials are fair — but in making that call, let’s not lose sight of the facts.
The vuvuzela nation
Once in a while something happens to break through the barricades of race, class and culture that history has erected between South Africans. Like the sun through heavy overcast, it provides a tantalising glimpse of the harmony of wills that, at some level, we all long for. Typically, it produces extravagant displays of intimacy between strangers, joy, even tears.
Nelson Mandela’s donning of the green and gold at the final of the 1995 Rugby World Cup was one such unifying moment. So was South Africa’s victory in the contest to host the 2010 Football World Cup. The latter had the additional potent symbolism of trumpeting South Africa’s, indeed Africa’s, full membership of the global family.
Our back page this week carries a moving image, shot at Vodaworld in Johannesburg immediately after the bid announcement, of a beaming white child waving the South African flag, hoisted aloft by black revellers. White and black, men and women, young and old, rich and poor also joined each other in an outpouring of national joy at Newtown’s Mary Fitzgerald Square and at Church Square and the Union Buildings in Pretoria. What was striking about the bid event in Zurich, when Fifa president Sepp Blatter drew the winner from his magic envelope, was the sheer variety of South Africans in attendance. Jubilant black Cabinet ministers, bid officials and football administrators rubbed shoulders with Anglo American’s Michael Spicer, tax lawyer Michael Katz and former apartheid president FW de Klerk. The lobby group that led the South African delegation included South Africans as diverse as former True Love editor Khanyi Dhlomo, Transnet boss Maria Ramos and former Leeds United striker Philemon Masinga.
Like revolutionary zeal and the first dizzying access of romantic love, such moments inevitably pass. But they should remain with us as an ideal. Amid all the inherited conflicts that beset our society, it is salutary to remember that we are all citizens of one country and one world.