April 18 to 25 2008

Mbeki’s Zim delusion

No crisis in Zimbabwe? What a delusional assessment. What can the people of Zimbabwe hope for when the South African President, Thabo Mbeki, comes up with such a response when we all know it is patently untrue?

It’s had the positive effect of putting Zimbabwe back in the headlines in Britain tonight (April 11), but it also shows that the most influential country in Southern Africa has a policy that will never do right by the people of Zimbabwe. Political commentators in the United Kingdom are suggesting that Pretoria is propping up an illegal regime (where have we seen this before?). This can hardly be a good thing for the image of South Africa.

We can only hope that there won’t be a bland statement coming out of Lusaka this week. If there is, the agony of Zimbabweans will continue and not only will it be harder for them to recover from such a disastrous response but the leaders of Southern Africa will find their reputation in tatters.

There is one light on the horizon — the ANC’s response differs markedly from the South African government’s. Zimbabweans, though, can’t wait another year for a new government in South Africa to bring about a policy that takes action against the illegal regime. It has to happen now. — RP Frame, Eastbourne, UK

Mbeki should be ashamed of himself.

A country with astronomical inflation, where elections are consistently gerrymandered, where election results are deliberately withheld — and Mbeki claims there is no crisis. The word disingenuous comes to mind — if one is being polite.

Mbeki has frittered away the moral standing that Nelson Mandela bestowed on the South African government by supporting his ‘freedom fighter” friends when they turn criminal. If the president of Zimbabwe’s name had been Smith, I’d bet a million Zimbabwe dollars Mbeki would have opened his mouth a bit wider.

Of course a million Zimbabwe dollars is worth as much as Mugabe’s honesty.

President Mbeki: it’s time for you to go. — P Winquist, Auckland, New Zealand

After reading your article on the frustration of the international community by the lack of response on the part of the South African government in helping the plight of ­Zimbabwe’s people, as an ex-­Zimbabwe resident, I join the ranks of many who watch in amazement as nothing is done.

I have heard that Mbeki’s wife and Mugabe’s wife are cousins. Is this true, and if so, is this perhaps the reason our president refuses to use his ­substantial influence to help the people of ­Zimbabwe? — Frustrated African and Zim lover

As the Zimbabwe situation moves from crisis to catastrophe, another side is emerging that constitutes a direct threat to all South Africans.

It is quite obvious, especially after Mbeki’s Alice-in-Wonderland visit to Mugabe en route to Lusaka, that Mbeki has no intention of intervening in Mugabe’s attempted coup d’etat. Mbeki has finally sacrificed South Africa’s leadership role in the Southern African Development Community, its influence in the Commonwealth and its aspirations in the United Nations Security Council.

Mbeki has convinced African and Western leaders that he is not a man to be trusted.

There is no doubt that Mugabe’s days are numbered. At this stage he is stuffing ballot boxes to be ‘recounted”. It’s only a matter of who is going to remove him and how.

When Mugabe goes, where will the new Zimbabwean leadership look for assistance and moral support in Southern Africa? They know it is useless to look to Mbeki. He is thoroughly discredited and his presidential days are also numbered.

Watch this space and turn your heads towards Ian Khama, the newly elected president of Botswana. While the ANC is trying to sort out who, one day, might make a decent South African president, the rest of the world will be looking to Botswana, not South Africa, as the emerging powerhouse in this part of the world. — Keith Fisher, Centurion

Your journalists should analyse the results of the election more closely and they will see that the opposition vote was split in two. Many rural Zimbabweans would not differentiate MDC (Morgan) Tsvangirai and MDC (Arthur) Mutambura, they would just vote MDC, meaning a split.

If you add the votes of both MDC candidates in each area you would see that Zanu-PF had a far greater defeat than the results show. I wonder whether the split was part of a government strategy to win the election, which hasn’t worked because Zanu-PF is so unpopular. — Patrick Johnson, via email

With atrocities developing in Zimbabwe while the world looks on, you have to ask: what are the permanent members of the UN Security Council doing? I believe that when Mugabe told his security forces to stop Morgan Tsvangirai’s legal team from entering the high court to attempt to restore democracy in Zimbabwe on Saturday it showed every country worldwide that Mugabe is intent on never giving up the presidency until he breathes his last breath.

It is clear that the honourable president of South Africa has no influence over Mugabe and that the world’s governments should act before Zimbabwe has nothing left to feed the millions of people that Mugabe is starving every day. As a brother of the Commonwealth Gordon Brown should take the lead and stop this incarceration. If Brown hasn’t got the will to act, then why can’t Russia or China?

Their huge influence over the region would almost certainly bring their leaders the increased popularity they are seeking at a time when both leaders are under attack from human rights observers in their own countries. A new Zimbabwe. A new beginning. Now is the time. — Adrien Bray, Bedfordshire, UK

When Zambian President Levy Mwanawasa initiated the sensible step of calling this summit, Bright Matonga, Zimbabwe’s Deputy Information Minister, confirmed that Mugabe would be present, saying: ‘If there is an SADC meeting of heads of state, then obviously he will attend.” Now, without explanation, Mugabe has not.

He long ago abrogated his responsibility to serving the basic needs of his people and now he decides not to attend a summit of his peers, a summit at which Zimbab­we’s future is the main agenda item.

Mugabe was once a revolutionary hero, but he can best serve his people now by voluntarily stepping aside so that Tsvangirai and others can begin to restore fiscal stability while providing more food, healthcare and education to people in this once-­blossoming nation that has for too long seen its future prospects evaporate thanks to Mugabe’s self-interest, cronyism and reign of terror. — William E Cooper, distinguished university professor and president emeritus, University of Richmond

Why doesn’t the SANDF use some of its expensive, new ill-gotten weaponry to nudge Bob and his generals out of the way? Not only would this be doing everyone a favour, but it would also be a way of exonerating all those implicated in the arms scandal — who could complain of corruption if it is put to such good use?

Imagine: state-of-the-art warships deployed on Lake Kariba to restore justice and rule-of-law to Zimbabwe.

Mbeki could leave office in a blaze of glory! — Rick Random, Grahamstown

Bob Mbeki versus Thabo Mugabe — Is this what we have come to? — Mark Fysh, Pretoria farmer

Beware the new boors

Have the boors ousted the democrats of the ruling party? Boors despise economists and educationists. Accounting officers, managers and auditors are threats. They hate intellectuals and journalists.

For boors are united in their desire for power, possessions and status. Their social solidarity, their boisterous anger is built on their feeling of being dispossessed, by history and privileged contemporaries.

That inferiority complex can be transmuted into creative energy, a push for self-education, self-discipline and cooperative social behaviour, as observed among ­people in democracies in other parts of the world.

That sense of self-pitying entitlement can, on the other hand, be exploded into violence by boor leaders, who work up the envy of the poor but do not have the skills to deliver on what they promise.

So boors in charge like to play it both ways. Remember that photo of Jackie Selebi at Polokwane with his commissioner of police cap at a jaunty angle while the rest of him was dressed like a Mamelodi taxi driver?

We have seen boors make a mess of South Africa before, only then they were known as colonial thugs or boers. Now black boors in suits are making a mess at the top of numerous government departments, at Eskom, the Land Bank, SAA and the police.

Boor leaders come in all shapes. Eugene Terre’Blanche, Jimmy Kruger and Idi Amin were stupid boors. Stalin, Mao and Ceausescu were cunning boors. They tricked left-wing intellectuals into disguising their totalitarian trajectories with pious egalitarian ideologies. Unlike dithering democrats, boors are skilled at gaining and holding on to power.

Criticise the boors in charge and you’ll get punished. They are touchy and insecure. Try to make personal contact and they will back away, for fear, perhaps, of revealing their inadequacies or being seen to associate with the enemy class. They are that small-minded and spiritually mean.

What can a writer do but warn of the damage that boors in charge can cause to a country? Democrats of every colour, class and ethnic background in South Africa beware; beware the rule of the boor. — Chris Zithulele Mann, Grahamstown

Stop pointing fingers
Cosmas Desmond (April 11) follows John Pilger in finding individuals and institutions to blame for the appalling social circumstances that the majority of South Africans still live in, despite nearly 15 years of democracy.

When David Bullard pointed out the futility of this culture of blame, with its associated culture of entitlement, he was fired by the Sunday Times for ‘racism”. Resorting to racism as an argument to suppress free speech is retrogressive in the extreme. Addressing the reality of life in South Africa is not racist.

As a white South African who graduated from university in 1988, I am expected not only to pay 70% of my income in tax, VAT, levies and rates, but must also apologise for having benefited from apartheid by owning a house, a car and earning enough to eat. I was given the opportunities to attend a good school and a good university, but had to work very hard to graduate successfully.

After graduating I worked long hours per week on working holidays overseas. I chose to return to the ailing state health sector, where equity targeting hamstrings service delivery and vital equipment takes up to five years to purchase, as an appropriate BEE company has to be found. The harsh reality in South Africa is nobody gets anything for nothing.

Previously colonised nations in Asia have shown what can be achieved by application and hard work. South Africans need to stop blaming and start working. — Eric Hodgson, Bluff

Uninformed

In ‘BHP says it does not get the cheapest power” (April 4), Maredi Mogodi, spokesperson for BHP, says ‘the view was uninformed”, so I challenge BHP to put data in the ­public domain.

Specifically, I would be interested in the gross consumption in MW by individual smelters and the price paid to Eskom for the electricity by month for the past two years.

Of course, the first response will be that this is privileged information, to which I say: BHP knows it doesn’t get the cheapest power, how does it know that if it doesn’t have access to other companies’ privileged information?

Until the data is available the public can make any claims because BHP is withholding the information that we require to have ‘informed views”. — Roland Elferink, via email

In brief

Isn’t it strange that books based on Africa’s self-destruction and human suffering tend to be bestsellers? Is it possible to tell African stories without including human suffering? I am tired of reading about pain and plundering. — Lucas Ntyintyane, Cresta

Part of the healing of our nation should include a review of political parties and their credibility. I propose a new addition to the departments of social sciences in our universities — politico-therapy. This will focus on the reclamation of our integrity by enabling us to vote with good conscience in future, if at all. —Reverend Dr Trevor J Ruthenberg, Mafikeng Methodist Church

Identity is a people’s source of meaning and experience. South Africans need to consider an educational process that addresses the mindsets of people, their fears and envies. People need to be exposed to one another to exploit the positive values of the different cultures for the benefit of one another. We are still living in islands caged by the segregation laws of the past. — Obe Phillips, Kimberley

Meant to be an icon of universal brotherhood, the Olympic torch race has become a symbol of China’s human rights shame. When bidding for the right to host the games, China made a pledge to improve her human rights record. This promise has unfortunately been broken. — G Lishman, Bedfordview