South Africa's Betrayal

Postapartheid Pretoria has become the free world's leading coddler of dictators.

Last September, not long after the Israeli-Hezbollah war, South Africa's minister of intelligence, Ronnie Kasrils, praised the Islamist group committed to Israel's destruction. The Iran News Agency, albeit prone to exaggeration, reported that Mr. Kasrils "lauded [the] great victories of the Lebanese Hezbollah against the Zionist forces" and "stressed that the successful Lebanese resistance proved the vulnerability of the Israeli army." The comment received no attention in the South African media; nor, for that matter, did the international press seem particularly interested. And yet, the scandalous comment occurred immediately after the South African government had warmly received the visiting Iranian foreign minister and expressed support for Iran's campaign for uranium enrichment--in spite of the passing of a United Nations Security Council deadline that same week regarding the suspension of Iran's nuclear program.

This stance toward Iran is cause for concern on its own. Unfortunately, it is also illustrative of a much broader and more chilling trend in South Africa's postapartheid foreign policy: one that cozies up to tyrants, and is increasingly orientated against the West--even at the cost of its self-proclaimed principles of human rights and political freedom.

There was & is a lot of resistance to the names changes. Pretoria was named after the Boer equivalent of George Washington: named Andries Pretorius. There are many people of all races who are in favour of keeping the name Pretoria. On April 19 2007 a group of Boers renamed Nelson Mandela drive in Pretoria to General de la Rey avenue.

Read more at: southafricasucks.blogspot.com/2007/04/boers-with-balls-repossessing-our.html

General Koos de la Rey was a famous Boer General during the second Anglo-Boer War. There is a great Afrikaans music video (which is up on Youtube) about him by Bok van Blerk aka Louis Pepler. I have read reports about young Boers trowing street signs into the river as a protest against the renaming of streets & the overt marginalization of their culture & past.

My wife was raised in South Africa. I’ve been there twice. Many of my in-laws live there and they keep us appraised of what they think.

The South Africa that I saw last year had a positive attitude and vibrancy that was missing when I went there in 1996. I have never seen so many beautiful black women in my entire life. Even out in the townships, there was many new businesses, lots of construction, and a scattering of homes that looked like an American suburban house.

The difference between South Africa and the rest of the continent is the makeup of the population. There are lots of people there who aren’t African, and that includes more than just the descendents of the Dutch and English. There are lots of Indians and Pakistanis, Chinese, Europeans, and the offspring of mixed-race parents. South Africa has the same kind of illegal immigrant problem that we have for the same reason that we have - it’s a much better economy than its neighbors.

What about Mugabe? I asked this question point blank to an Afrikaner man at the campsite next to us while we were on holiday. First, he (and none of the other Afrikaners I talked with) had a speck of “white guilt.” He expressed enormous pride in the country’s infrastructure and progress. Then he looked at me with a narrowed eyes and said, “If it happens, we’re ready for it.” Another Mugabe would precipitate a war in South Africa that would be bloody and protracted, and people there seem to be weary of any more fighting.

What about the blacks? I talked with lots of them, too. All of them expressed admiration for America, telling me that they believed America was a golden land for blacks, citing Oprah and millionaire rock stars. Most wanted to emigrate here. There was a lot of tribal loyalty and intertribal antagonism, which meant that lots of blacks (especially the Zulus in KwaZulu-Natal) saw the ANC government as a kleptocracy run by the Sotho and Xhosa. In other words, the blacks are not a monolith.

It’s true that South Africa is at a crossroads 13 years after the apartheid. Talking with South Africans made me realize that 13 years after the Constitution was approved were some really harsh years in American history, too - the fights between the Federalists and Anti-federalists, the Alien and Sedition Acts, the chaos on the western frontier. So I can see the possibility of a positive outcome in South Africa.

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