Duncan du Bois. News24.com
Pietermaritzburg - Foreign Minister Nkosazana Dlamini-Zuma's defence of
Cuba's undemocratic government during the recent high-profile visit paid to the
island by President Mbeki and members of his cabinet has raised the question as
to whether Dlamini-Zuma's denigration of democracy was merely an "aberration".
Sadly, the signs are that it was not.
For a country that is struggling to attract foreign investment and whose
growth is way short of what is needed to address its critical unemployment
problems, hobnobbing with Castro in Cuba is not merely senseless. Within the
global context of free trade and privatisation it is madness.
The only reason for the visit appears to concern the strengthening of ties
between Cuba's Marxist dictatorship and the ANC. The fact that the ANC's
secretary-general, Kgalema Molanthe, accompanied the delegation to Cuba
reinforces this contention.
Cuba is a land in retro
Dirt-poor Cuba on whose back its dictator Fidel Castro has ridden since 1959
and become a billionaire in the process, is hardly the place to inspire all the
great renaissance talk Mbeki regularly spouts. Trapped in an arrested state of
development by Marxism, in the context of the global village Cuba is a land in
retro.
How does this visit assist the nation-building Mbeki says is being retarded
by the "two nations" legacy of apartheid? The majority of taxpayers
who, incidentally, do not support the ANC, have never given Mbeki a mandate to
go overseas at their expense to indulge in down-memory-lane caucuses with old
comrades.
But the friends people keep say much about their own character. No doubt
exhilarated by the one-party atmosphere in Havana, Foreign Minister Dlamini-Zuma
threw caution to the wind and defended Castro's totalitarian regime.
How she could do this when South Africa, as the head of the Non-Aligned
Movement, chairman of the Commonwealth and SADC, is supposed to be committed to
representative democracy and human rights, cannot be excused as an aberration.
It is unconscionable and should have been instantly reproved. But the fact that
Dlamini-Zuma's outrageous statement stands unrevised, speaks volumes.
What it says is already evident in various forums and levels of government
right here in South Africa.
The paranoid response of Mbeki to DA criticisms of his stance on Zimbabwe is
a case in point. Instead of constructively explaining his position, on March 23
Mbeki launched a 2 000-word attack on the DA and the white community in ANC
Today. At no point did he deal with the specifics of DA criticisms but as Tony
Leon has put it, "discoursed on Martians and wrestled with imaginary racial
demons".
Mbeki out of touch with sentiments
Yet a poll published in Business Day on March 16 showed that only 10% of
respondents supported Mbeki's policy towards Zimbabwe; 46% thought he was being
too soft and 43% had no opinion. In other words, Mbeki is out of touch with
broad South African sentiments.
The deportation of journalists and a Christian minister, the summary removal
of the Chief Justice, Anthony Gubbay, the bombing of an independent newspaper
and the on-going slaying and intimidation of opposition members simply get the
silent treatment from the ANC government. All Foreign Minister Dlamini-Zuma says
is: "Where Zimbabwe is wrong, we will say so but we will say it in a way
that encourages good neighbourliness." There you have it: Mad Bob Disease
is legit.
By this, so-called transformation is exposed for what it really is: the
cynical disregard of political diversity coupled with increasing centralisation
and domination.
On March 18, the Sunday Times reported that Eastern Cape Premier Makhenkesi
Stofile had urged the government to strip the provinces of their powers. The
implications of his suggestion are revolutionary, to say nothing of his
motivation.
In the Metro councils the aggrandisement of power and the entrenchment of
comrades is occurring with the same destructive consequences as a locust swarm
in a mealie field.
Officials of the pale, male variety are being subjected to a deliberate
campaign of obstruction, procrastination, frustration and contempt. At meetings
of standing committees, their expertise is doubted and disputed. Their reports
are somehow never explicit enough or sufficiently encompassing. Their priorities
are re-prioritised with no regard for deadlines.
Leninist decree
The results of this are inevitable: early retirement, resignation,
emigration. Right under our noses the old Leninist decree is being implemented:
"a society must be ended before it can be mended".
The Eastern Cape, Mpumalanga and Northern Province provide the stark proof
of the success of this plan: once the inherited order has been milked and
plundered, ruin is all that remains. But in true Marxist-Leninist fashion when
all (except the party elite) are equal in poverty, the attainment of liberation
will, no doubt, be proclaimed.
Although in ruin and repression, the regimes of Cuba and Zimbabwe,
nonetheless, enjoy the full support of the ANC government. That reality cannot
have escaped the notice of the World Bank and international investment brokers
and assessors like Standard and Poor. Which is why liberation from want and
corruption is unlikely to be part of Mbeki's legacy.
A Durban Metro ward councillor, Duncan du Bois is a political analyst. -
Natal Witness | 