It seems we, the people of South Africa, lack an emotion. We lack it to such a degree that the absence of it in our hearts is distilled and purified in the halls of our nations power, the Union Buildings, the Parliament, the party National Committee and the halls of academia. We lack shame. We seem to have inherited the most seemingly benign of Apartheid’s crimes, which in fact is deeply malignant - namely the absence of shame when doing little or nothing to correct the wrongs that surround us.
In the stern words of Barack Obama’s inauguration speech I was reminded that America, and often only America, seems to hold itself up to a higher standard, and is willing to translate its founding principles into action. America has, does and will always fail to a certain degree in its quest to export its ideas and beliefs on a sometimes willing and sometimes unwilling global public. But America feels shame when it doesn’t act, and Americans, such as Susan Rice the new US Ambassador to the United Nations, look at America’s failures, such as inaction in Rwanda and swear: Never Again!
However South Africa is not America. Indeed we are not only lesser because we haven’t been blessed with such resources and diversity; one could argue we have been offered much by providence. Rather South Africa is lesser in the college of nations because we have no shame. We have no shame for our internal failings, and clearly we have no shame for our international ones. We stand beside a dying child, the nation of Zimbabwe and we are impotent and complicit in its self-destruction - handing the switch blade to a man sworn to cut his own heart out lest he feel love.
We are a shameful nation. A nation the world didn’t forget when we struggled under our self-made shame and cruel injustice. Now we forget everything we asked the world to remember when thinking of us. We were a plaintiff in the world’s court who once justice was found, have walked away never to give any heed to others who might plead there case for justice, and to whom we could give assistance.
South Africa’s leaders, and therefore its people’s, failure to act in Zimbabwe is a manifestation of the inability to empathise, and thus feel shame for doing nothing that is endemic in all tiers of our society. It would appear South Africans only believe in human rights and justice for themselves, and in fact it goes further than desiring it for the whole nation, South Africans are selfish enough, best exemplified in the Dear Leader, Jacob Zuma, to want a different set of rights and liberties per person.
Would it be too much to say South Africa may be the first libertarian state? How often I have dwelt on the fact, that as a white South African there is very little government for me, and what is worse there is even less for the poor, and mostly black masses of the population. The influence of government in our nation has shrunk, as it has collapsed in a morass of self-promotion and internal theft of the common purse.
Some cynics may see this as the inevitable decline of our civilization, a common descent to African failure, but I believe they are wrong. South Africa needs to rebuild its sense of shame when it does wrong, when it sides with despots and cruel regimes in the corridors of international diplomacy, and realise its moral bankruptcy in protecting a cruel despotic neighbour, to whom we should be strangling through the cessation of energy and food to him and his regime.
South Africa, and South Africans, should bring Robert Mugabe to heel. Our inability and refusal to act speaks to our light possession of the freedoms, rights and justice we claim to entrench in our common statement of purpose: the Constitution. We are not a pacifist nation, we retain an army for self-defence. We are the mightiest economy in Africa, with resources of labour and treasure incomparable on the continent. It is in our strategic interest to bring peace and prosperity to our neighbours so that we may trade with them and share in a common era of African prosperity.
No nation on earth would doubt South Africa’s commitment to soft power, especially in a time when some may have seen hard power to be the path of resolution. But now, even as the United States seeks diplomatic resolution to its security concerns, South Africans should think of the proverb favoured by Teddy Roosevelt; speak softly and carry a big stick.
The truth is, the mere threat of military action in Zimbabwe would bring Mugabe and his general’s to their knees - where they belong, begging for the mercy and amnesty which tragically should be granted under a balanced foreign policy from Pretoria. Let them go, and live in Europe with their ill gotten riches, to live their lives until time takes its justice on them, and let the people of Southern Africa join together in the task of rebuilding our neighbours home, which has been washed away with the flood we could have protected them from.
Until we feel shame, we cannot act. We must see the cruelty and inhuman nature of our inaction, and we as a country must recognise our responsibilities to our neighbours.
Until shame is rediscovered, we are a shamefully people, our eyes covered with scales, unable to see our own corruption.
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Filed under: Africa, Commentary, Corruption, Crime, Decision Theory, Diplomacy, Government, Ideas, Obama, Politics, Zimbabwe, Zuma, ethics by Andrew la Grange
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