South Africa’s United Nations vote on Burma earlier this month is not an anomaly in its human rights record under the Mbeki presidency, Democratic Alliance (DA) leader Tony Leon said on Friday.
”It is consistent with a larger pattern in which South Africa, through its deeds, if not words, eschews human rights issues and shores up undemocratic regimes worldwide,” he said in his weekly online newsletter.
”Our foreign policy, if we separate actual resolutions from occasional professions in favour of democracy and human rights, appears to be a fitful but sustained apologia for some of the world’s most odious authoritarian regimes.”
In the UN Security Council vote, South Africa aligned itself with Russia and China to block a United States-led resolution aimed at condemning human rights abuses in Myanmar.
Leon said other ”tawdry dictatorships” South Africa has consistently supported are Iran, Libya, Haiti and Zimbabwe, all of them Third World countries.
”Given our pre-eminence in Africa, and the pressing developmental needs of our economy in a globalised world, South Africa simply cannot afford to further damage our international standing by sidelining the values we have come to characterise in favour of tyrants who share one common denominator: their non-Western locality,” he said.
Despite being a constitutional democracy boasting fundamental individual freedoms and the principles of good governance, South Africa has yet to project these values consistently abroad.
Under Mbeki’s leadership, the government has moved away from Nelson Mandela’s 1993 commitment to a foreign policy inspired by democracy and the protection of human rights.
”Due to our obsession with ensuring the unity of the developing world, we have in many senses lost our moral compass,” Leon said. — Sapa