Sticks and Stones
This leads me to a point I often make on Rebunk and elsewhere: Whither South Africa? How can one of the most despotic regimes in the world, in the smallest state in the southern hemisphere, be operating unchecked hard on the South African border? (Granted, like all top ten lists, this is pretty subjective. But let’s face it – a country and its leader is not going to be up for consideration if they have a sterling record of treating their people well. It is not as if Switzerland and Canada ended up #11 and 12 on this list and just missed the cut.)
There seem to be two answers that might explain South Africa's voluminous silence, one of which I have covered at other times in other contexts and one that has been on my mind a bit lately as I wrestle with ideas of the colonial legacy for my Modern Africa class. The first of these relates to Mbeki’s sometimes-misplaced pan-African ideal in which consensus among African leaders, however fictive, is preferred over coercion, however necessary. The second possibility might seem a bit odd, but I am beginning to wonder if it is not nonetheless true: South Africa, even a decade after the fall of the Apartheid monolith, is still circumscribed in the policies it can pursue toward its neighbors.
It is difficult to overstate the instability South Africa wreaked during the apartheid era and especially during the years of the Hidden Hand, Third Force, and Total Strategy of the 1980s. Namibia, Botswana, Rhodesia/Zimbabwe, Mozambique, tiny Lesotho and tinier Swaziland all felt the deleterious effects of South Africa’s misplaced policies. So too did noncontiguous lands to the North, most notably Angola, Malawi, and Zambia. No people outside of South Africa were happier about the end of apartheid than those who lived in the “frontline states,” and yet that does not mean that they fully trust South Africa now, especially with Mandela off playing the role of respected elder statesman and Thabo Mbeki running the show in Pretoria, Cape Town and Johannesburg. This might just be a case of the sins of the paternalist coming back to haunt the patronized. For despite the transformation of government, South Africa can ill afford to come across as a bully to its neighbors who are more than willing to pull out the Colonialism card (pace Mugabe) whether warranted or not. One can assume that Mbeki has no interest in defending himself against being the same old South African wine in new skins.
This is a problem. But it would be an even greater problem if Mbeki and his successors let Mswati and Mugabe get away with it. Better to be called names that do not apply now and rectify some of the glaring problems in southern Africa than to allow this sort of nonsense to take hold and prevent South Africa from acting when it must, or worse, to create a situation in which South Africa must act. One of the problems with the claims of colonialism, especially in the years immediately following liberation is that it carried with it more than a kernel of truth so that African leaders could plunder from and abuse their people with impunity just by crying “colonialism.” South Africa can nip this in the bud now, though. The last thing Mbeki and his ANC deserves to be tainted with, whatever flaws in governance they reveal, is that they somehow resemble P.W. Botha and his crude and ruthless Nats. Better to do the right thing in the short term and run the risk of a thug like Mswati calling you names than to cower In fear of being called those names so that the perception becomes a reality.