/ 6 February 2009

No room for intolerance

‘They in fact control [America]. No matter which government comes into power, whether Republican or Democratic, whether Barack Obama or George Bush. The control of America, just like the control of most Western countries, is in the hands of Jewish money and if Jewish money controls their country then you cannot expect anything else.”

Without much fanfare Deputy Foreign Affairs Minister Fatima Hajaig made her entry into high politics last year, replacing Aziz Pahad. Nobody noticed or knew much about the low-lying MP appointed by President Kgalema Motlanthe.

That was until January, when Hajaig made a speech at a solidarity rally with the people of Gaza, uttering the crudely anti-Semitic sentiments she believes.

Clearly, she’s unsuited to a job that demands nimble diplomatic skills, but she’s got off this week with a half-hearted apology and a slap on the wrist. We fire nobody, leading to a culture of deep intolerance and impunity. Mix that in with the rise of political intolerance (again) and we have a dangerous cocktail in an election year.

One person has been killed and three shot and wounded in KwaZulu-Natal in the past fortnight as old factionalism raises its ugly head. Our politicians need the tolerance of priests and the negotiating skill of Kofi Annan to ensure the killing fields are not reignited. But a new generation is spoiling for a fight. To wit, the youth league leader Julius Malema: “We will campaign even in his [Inkatha Freedom Party leader Mangosuthu Buthelezi’s] backyard or his house and recruit his children to join the ANC. KwaZulu-Natal is the home of the ANC.”

To which Malema’s counterpart in the IFP youth brigade, Thulasizwe Buthelezi, replied: “If the ANC provokes us then they must expect a reaction. We promise Malema and the ANC that our reaction will not be mild.”

Cultural, religious and political tolerance were all hard-won gains of the democratic era. Lives were lost to enshrine tolerance in a democratic South Africa. Respect for tolerance is not an event or an empty statement but a life-long commitment that takes hard work. If our politicians will not practise it then we must demand it.

Unlikely Africa
It is an old refrain, the United States of Africa. Marcus Garvey, Kwame Nkrumah and the former Guinean leader Sekou Toure are some of its more prominent balladeers. More recently the song has been taken up by the Libyan autocrat Moammar Gadaffi, who has turned from pan-Arabism to pan-Africanism as it has become clearer to him that he will never wield real influence in the Middle East.

“Brother leader” is frustrated by the reasoned objections of Kenya, South Africa and other countries that believe a gradual approach, starting with regional integration, is the only feasible way to bring the countries of the continent closer together. Gadaffi, it is clear, imagines himself lording it over the entire continent as a kind of super-president.

As if 40 years of uninterrupted dictatorship in Libya weren’t enough, this week’s African Union summit gave us some further clues to the kind of leadership this would entail.

After his election as AU president he was escorted by several men who claimed to be the traditional kings of Africa and who proclaimed Gadaffi the “king of kings”. It would be funny if it wasn’t farcical. Can we really expect Gadaffi to preach the message of democratic rule and good governance?

The summit’s overriding agenda involved changing the AU Commission into the AU Authority, with Gadaffi taking over the chairmanship. This at a time when Guinea’s soldiers have trashed that country’s Constitution, Madagascar is in the grip of violence and the Democratic Republic of Congo and its neighbours continue to exchange vectors of instability.

As several leaders at the summit pointed out, this unified Africa would just be another layer of bureaucracy on a continent not famous for its efficiency.

The example of Zimbabwe is instructive. It took the Southern African Development Community (one of the more effective regional blocs) eight years to deal with the meltdown in that country. An alphabet soup of overlapping arrangements still ties countries to one another and their former colonists in higgledy-piggledy proliferation. It is ludicrous to insist on continental integration when the regional blocs are barely functional.

There are, of course, many sensible things that can be done to speed integration. Rationalise and strengthen regional bodies such as the SADC, the Common Market for Eastern and Southern Africa and the Economic Community of West African States; liberalise trade and the movement of people; and show real continental leadership on governance.

That is an agenda that will take decades, but it has a better chance of delivering meaningful integration than Gadaffi’s hollow fantasy.