In a time of recession, countries have less choice about the foreign states with which they build partnerships. When it comes to building strategic ties, their potential financial worth to South Africa cannot be left out of the equation.
But in South Africa’s frantic scramble to become Angola’s best friend and head off contenders such as China, it seems that this is the overriding consideration.
President Jacob Zuma set off this week to visit the country whose oil wealth has made it the new beacon of economic prosperity in Africa. South Africa hopes to reap the benefits of Angola’s massive infrastructure programmes with government contracts for South African businesses and a slice of Angola’s vast oil resources, which will reduce South Africa’s dependency on the unstable Middle East.
This is Zuma’s first state visit. For a president who has vowed to spend more time at home and is picking his international engagements with great care, his choice of destination is an important statement.
The ruling MPLA’s historical links with the ANC partly underpin the renewed vigour with which South Africa is pursuing improved relations with Angola, but both countries know that a strategic partnership can be of great benefit.
However, there is a rogue elephant in the room. A Human Rights Watch report has found that 38 people arrested by Angolan military in the Cabinda enclave between September 2007 and March 2009 were subjected to ”torture and cruel or inhumane treatment in military custody and been denied due process rights as well as a fair trial”. The detainees were suspected of being part of a separatist movement with which a peace accord was signed in 2006. Eduardo dos Santos’s government has also imposed tough restrictions on the free flow of information and has jailed a dissident journalist.
The South African government’s response is to turn a blind eye, insisting, as Trade and Industry Minister Rob Davis told the Mail & Guardian in an interview, the African peer review mechanism should left to deal with the matter.
This is a cop-out, which makes a mockery of statements by Maite Nkoana-Mashabane, the international cooperation and relations minister, that the state visit is about deepening democracy in the region as a whole.
As with other international issues, South Africa is missing an opportunity to show moral leadership and to show that we also care about the freedoms that the ANC fought for, in some cases on Angolan soil.
Are we letting our desperation for oil security and the opportunity to further enrich a few business people taint our dealings in the region?
The Zuma government got off to a good start in the foreign-policy arena. Support for the release of Aung San Suu Kyi and tough words for President Robert Mugabe in Zimbabwe raised hopes of a real commitment to the promotion of human rights.
But we must balance our economic needs in the time of recession with our human-rights commitments. Ignoring Angola’s treatment of its own people may erode the moral standing South Africa is trying to claw back on other issues.
Racing to conclusions
If Caster Semenya, the remarkable new 800m world champion, had thought that making herself appear more girly might have stopped the gender controversy before it started, it would have been a simple thing to do.
With more and more camera-conscious track stars glamming up for the start, with lip gloss, enough gold jewellery to outshine the medals, and even false eyelashes (ask 100m finalist Carmelita Jeter), all she had to do was take beauty tips from her peers in Berlin.
The fact that Semenya felt that no such embellishments were necessary shows that in her own mind the question of her sex is crystal clear: she’s a woman who needs to prove nothing beyond winning the race, which she did in breathtaking style to the strains of tragically muted celebration.
But it also shows what a delicate situation this is. No one is accusing the unworldly teenager from Polokwane of trying to ”pass” as a woman. Yet questions have been asked and it is well within the rules of international athletics to interrogate them.
The IAAF’s first public response was sensitively put. ”It’s a medical issue. It’s not an issue of cheating,” said a spokesperson. ”We’re more concerned for the person not to make this something, which is humiliating for her —”
Which is more than can be said for a range of South African responses thus far. Furious counter accusations of everything from ”imperialism” to ”jealousy” to ”suspicious timing” have been flung the IAAF’s way.
To date, Athletics South Africa will not say whether it has run gender verification tests on Semenya. It has denied being asked by the IAAF three weeks before the Berlin world championships to run tests on the athlete, who ran so fast at the African junior championships that she became an overnight name in the global athletics community.
If Semenya has been let down, it is by the professionals whose job it is to look after her career — from her trainers and managers to Athletics South Africa. Even Semenya’s coach says that she has often been mistaken for a man. They could not have failed to see this coming. But they have failed miserably in not settling the issue by taking the appropriate steps before it blew up into the traumatic controversy it is now.