Why South Africa deserves a yellow card
By Catherine Philp, diplomatic correspondent of The Times (THE TIMES, 16/12/08):
Few experiences are more frustrating than seeing misery unfold before you as you stand helplessly by. Few provoke a stronger urge to cry: “Something must be done!” Add a cartoon baddie with a creepy Hitler tache, the ruination of a beautiful land and a televisually awful cholera outbreak and the cries for action get shriller still: “Send in the troops!”
The ruination of Zimbabwe provokes - in Britain, at least - many more such calls than most of the other miseries unfolding in Africa. Ghastly, intractable problems such as Congo and Darfur…
Miriam Makeba en el Soweto italiano
Por Roberto Saviano, escritor italiano y autor de Gomorra. © 2008 Roberto Saviano. Publicado con autorización de la agencia literaria Roberto Santachiara. Traducción de News Clips (EL PAÍS, 20/11/08):
“¿Qué es el blues?”, se pregunta el escritor afroamericano Ralph Allison. Es lo que los negros tienen como sustituto de la libertad.
Al enterarme de la muerte de Miriam Makeba [el 10 de noviembre en Nápoles, tras un concierto contra la Camorra], me vino de inmediato a la mente esta frase. Mamá África fue lo que durante muchos años tuvieron los surafricanos en lugar de la libertad: su voz. En 1963 llevó su testimonio…
A Healthy Schism in South Africa
By Tony Leon, a member of the South African Parliament who served as leader of the opposition from 1999 to 2007. He is a visiting fellow at the Cato Institute’s Center for Global Liberty and Prosperity (THE WASHINGTON POST, 23/10/08):
In 1990, when Nelson Mandela was released after 27 years’ imprisonment in South Africa, he noted in his first speech to a waiting world: “I am a loyal and disciplined member of the African National Congress. I am therefore in full agreement with all of its objectives, strategies and tactics.” His iconic status helped sustain the ANC over the next decade and…
A troubling succession
By Peter Preston (THE GUARDIAN, 22/09/08):
Democracy involves much more than throwing the old (white) rascals out. Democracy depends on what comes next - on the growth of a settled system that means governments can change amid constitutional calm. India long ago reached that point. Compare and contrast Zimbabwe. And, meanwhile, fear for South Africa.
The ousting of Thabo Mbeki isn’t some sudden convulsion. He was on his way out anyway. But the manner of his dispatch is altogether more menacing. A president made to pay for dirty dealing? It can be made to sound like some heroic African Watergate. But there’s nothing…
Our quiet complicity
By Zakes Mda, a South African writer and the author of Cion (THE GUARDIAN, 21/06/08):
In Johannesburg, Robert Mugabe was given a rousing welcome by Africans from across the continent. As he addressed the 2002 World Summit on Sustainable Development, we ululated and sang his praises, and after his brief speech we gave him a standing ovation. He spoke of the wonderful work he had achieved in Zimbabwe with his “agrarian reforms” in a country where 70% of prime land had been owned by just 4,000 white farmers.
Here was an African leader who was prepared to redress the injustices of the…
The Despots’ Democracy
By Michael Gerson (THE WASHINGTON POST, 28/05/08):
“Things on the ground,” e-mailed a friend from a groaning Zimbabwe, “are absolutely shocking — systematic violence, abductions, brutal murders. Hundreds of activists hospitalized, indeed starting to go possibly into the thousands.” The military, he says, is “going village by village with lists of MDC [Movement for Democratic Change] activists, identifying them and then either abducting them or beating them to a pulp, leaving them for dead.”
In late April, about the time this e-mail was written, President Thabo Mbeki of South Africa — Zimbabwe’s influential neighbor — addressed a four-page letter to President Bush. Rather than…
A Nuclear Site Is Breached
By Micah Zenko, a research associate in the project on Managing the Atom at Harvard University’s Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs. The views expressed here are solely those of the author (THE WASHINGTON POST, 20/12/07):
An underreported attack on a South African nuclear facility last month demonstrates the high risk of theft of nuclear materials by terrorists or criminals. Such a crime could have grave national security implications for the United States or any of the dozens of countries where nuclear materials are held in various states of security.
Shortly after midnight on Nov. 8, four armed men broke into…
Zuma’s victory may trigger the break-up of the ANC
By William Gumede (THE GUARDIAN, 19/12/07):
Jacob Zuma, the Teflon politician of South Africa, has performed one of the most stunning comebacks in the country’s history. Despite having been sacked by Thabo Mbeki in 2005 for alleged corruption, remaining the target of an ongoing corruption investigation, and having faced accusations of rape, he yesterday swept to the leadership of the ruling African National Congress, defeating the incumbent, President Mbeki.Zuma’s challenge is to keep the deeply divided ANC together, while delivering on his promises to a disparate and expectant support base. As if this were not enough, he will have to convince South…
Is this man the new Mugabe?
By Richard Dowden (THE TIMES, 18/12/07):
From the outside it looks as if South Africa’s miracle is over. Jacob Zuma, the former Deputy President who was charged with rape and may soon be charged with corruption, is about to become President of the African National Congress and is likely to be the next president of South Africa. Thirteen years after the peaceful handover of power, the rainbow nation is threatened with a very nasty storm.
Here we go, say some. Here comes another Mugabe, a typical African dictator who will wreck his country. They point to the corruption charges and the rape trial…
South Africa Grows Up
By Mark Gevisser, the author, most recently, of Thabo Mbeki: The Dream Deferred (THE NEW YORK TIMES, 12/12/07):
This weekend, 5,000 delegates of South Africa’s ruling African National Congress will gather in the dusty northern town of Polokwane to elect their next leader. They are faced with the choice of two bitter rivals who were once, as successors to Nelson Mandela, the closest of allies: the incumbent president, Thabo Mbeki, and his former deputy, Jacob Zuma.
Mr. Mbeki is constitutionally precluded from serving again when his term ends in 2009, but if he were to win the party leadership, he could select his own…
Passing the colonial buck
By Simon Tisdall (THE GUARDIAN, 15/08/07):
South African president Thabo Mbeki’s attempt to blame Britain for Zimbabwe’s problems may convince fellow leaders at the Southern African Development Community’s summit in Lusaka this week. But it is unlikely to bring a peaceful resolution of the country’s crisis any closer - and is certain to deepen misgivings about perceived anti-western tendencies in South Africa’s international outlook.
The SADC asked Mr Mbeki to mediate between Zimbabwean president Robert Mugabe’s Zanu-PF party and the opposition Movement for Democratic Change after a brutal crackdown on government critics, including the beating of the MDC leader Morgan Tsvangirai, caused international repulsion earlier…
Apartheid-era atrocities cannot be blamed on De Klerk
By Dave Steward, executive director of the FW de Klerk Foundation and director-general in the office of President FW de Klerk and secretary of the cabinet from 1992 -1994 (THE GUARDIAN, 14/08/07):
Chris McGreal reports that the death of “five sleeping teenage boys” who “were shot by a military hit squad days before FW de Klerk received his Nobel peace prize” have returned to haunt the former South African president, who has consistently denied knowledge of “assassinations, bombings and torture against the regime’s opponents” (Apartheid-era murder of sleeping teenagers returns to haunt De Klerk, August 6).De Klerk did authorise the attack.…
A Useful Rebuke on Rights
By Jim Hoagland (THE WASHINGTON POST, 28/01/07):
When Desmond Tutu speaks out about morality in politics and foreign policy, his nation and the rest of the world should listen. By criticizing the government he helped bring into being, the South African Nobel laureate raises in his own distinctive fashion some of the key issues of our time.
Tutu, along with Nelson Mandela, has been instrumental in guiding South Africa’s peaceful and democratic transition from the tyranny of a white minority to black majority rule. Over four decades, Tutu has established a reputation for integrity, wisdom and fairness that has few equals on the…
South Africa’s bitter harvest
By William Rees-Mogg (THE TIMES, 11/09/06):
THERE ARE two ways of looking at the historic problems of land ownership. One is the traditional way of seeking justice for the original owners, often through land reform. This often has its own problems, since it is sometimes impossible to establish who were the original owners; there may be several competing claims. The alternative is to give preference to those who will use the land to produce the most food, most efficiently.
In Africa, the historic approach is favoured by the black majority who often believe that their tribal lands were stolen by white farmers. The…
Deadly Quackery
By John Moore, a professor of microbiology and immunology at Cornell University and Nicoli Nattrass, the director of the AIDS and Society Research Unit at the University of Cape Town (THE NEW YORK TIMES, 04/06/06):
H.I.V. causes AIDS. This is not a controversial claim but an established fact, based on more than 20 years of solid science. It is as certain as the descent of humans from apes and the falling of dropped objects to the ground.
So why reiterate the obvious? Because lately, a bizarre theory has gained ground — one that claims that H.I.V. is harmless, and that the antiretroviral…
A Scream of South Africa’s Pain
By Nora Kenworthy, he works with an independent organization that provides psychosocial support to HIV-positive mothers in South Africa (THE WASHINGTON POST, 19/03/06):
One night last month, just past midnight, in a small South African rural town outside Johannesburg, I awoke suddenly to the realization that five young men had entered my room through a window to rob the guesthouse in which I was staying. In an instant they had two pistols pressed against my forehead in the dark, their faces close to mine, whispering in butchered English to shut up.
After a year spent providing field-based and administrative assistance to an…
¿Desquite o reconciliación?
Por Desmond Tutu, premio Nobel de la Paz (LA VANGUARDIA, 05/03/06):
En Sudáfrica, y de hecho en todo el mundo, nos educamos creyendo estrictamente en la justicia como desquite. Con la alarmante alza de crímenes violentos, violaciones y abusos infantiles, hay frecuentes llamadas a reinstituir la pena capital, las cuales tienen un amplio respaldo público. Misericordiosamente, la Corte Constitucional de Sudáfrica ha determinado que la pena de muerte (que los sudafricanos eliminaron al mismo tiempo que fueron liberados del apartheid) es inconstitucional.
Es lamentable que en algunos lugares del mundo parezca que los hombres y mujeres no han podido ir más allá…
Los tristes y peligrosos fanáticos & Soul City
I. Los tristes y peligrosos fanáticos y II. Soul City. John Carlin (EL PAIS, 08/03).
El caso de Suráfrica
El caso de Suráfrica. Madeleine Fullard, historiadora surafricana, trabajó como investigadora para la Comisión para la Verdad y la Reconciliación durante seis años (EL PAIS, 15/06/03).
