The Daily News is to be commended for its forthright and honest editorial (November 23) on the culpability of presidents of South Africa in condoning and failing to act against the brutal despotism of Robert Mugabe.
Verse 8 of Psalm 12 illustrates this sorry and sordid situation accurately: “The wicked strut freely about when what is vile is honoured by men.”
If Thabo Mbeki’s much vaunted “African Renaissance” had had a shred of credibility,he would have acted firmly against Mugabe’s electoral theft and destruction of Zimbabwe’s economy. But he did nothing. As for Jacob Zuma, given his insatiable desire for enrichment, it might be said that he was too busy thus engaged to threaten Mugabe, who, in any case was doing what Zuma was doing – enriching himself at the expense of Zimbabwe.
But the hypocrisy of those two ANC presidents goes further. Loud in proclaiming the Freedom Charter as their holy writ, by failing to act decisively against the despot Mugabe, they violated the Freedom Charter’s commitment to liberty and independence for African peoples.
The irony of Mugabe’s fall from power and the growing groundswell of discontent with the ANC, is that a new era has begun: that of liberation from those who claimed to be liberators.
Sent into The Daily News and published, 25 November 2017.
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