The millennium began full of contagious hope and fierce ambition. Not coincidentally, South Africa had a government which knew right from wrong. As the darling of the West the country had five jewels in its crown.
- Nelson Mandela
- A constitution second to none
- A legacy of 1st world infrastructure
- High-voltage vitality
- A nation at peace with itself
Today, outbreaks of rebellion, looting and burning signal a rock bottom after more than a decade of freefall. The elect failed to build a working state. They could not keep a dynamo economy ticking over. They weren’t even able to put one proper meal a day within the reach of hungry millions. Soup kitchens are run by charities, churches and individuals with a heart.
They struggle to feed the minions of bloated comrades – they like endearments, old communists in suits. In their whispering limos and guarded mansions they’d hardly be human if they felt for the destitute. Debauchers and plunderers, the elect took one generation to devour a legacy meant to uplift the people who voted them into power.
Here is a lesson that goes beyond yet another African country gone to the bad; actually, a lesson and a warning. An elite that keeps bad company ruins it for the entire nation. I have made this point often enough.
A recent public statement graphically illustrates the perverted, if not depraved, modality of rulers who revile the good and embrace the bad. The communiqué let it be known that the government of SA was,
“Appalled at the African Union granting Israel observer status in a year in which the oppressed people of Palestine were hounded by destructive bombardments and continued illegal settlements of their land.”
To give Israel (which has good relations with 46 African states) a seat at AU assemblies was “unjust and unwarranted.”
The bold lies are not the point. South Africa being the lone objector on the continent is also not the point. Rather it is the state of mind seemingly oblivious to the bedlam of allies and foes that a government has clung to over time.
I mean, consider some allies of the ruling ANC. They are the most rigid opponents of making peace with the Jews. The Muslim Brotherhood aka, Hamas is a close ally. So are Iran and North Korea. What binds this axis of evil together is the dream of one day wiping Israel off the map.
Oh but…the ruling party may object. Surely Nelson Mandela told the West, your enemies don’t have to be our enemies. He also said, “Our attitude toward any country is determined by the attitude of that country toward our struggle.”
For sure Mandela said it. And Zionists squirmed in their seats; they knew that Israel had traded with the Apartheid regime. Yet – the icon had stood foursquare behind Israel. Indeed he was openly sympathetic to Zionism. Mandela saw it as a movement for freedom and self-determination. No doubt about it, he took the two state delusion to heart. He also took the suicide bombing of Israelis to task. When his words caused a furore, in his party and the Muslim community, the proud figure was made to recant.
One has to wonder: did the ruling party stop to think if Mandela thought his principle out fully? After all, the cruellest regime on earth gave succour to the anti-Apartheid movement. Would Mandela have turned a blind eye to North Korea running a criminal hub at the embassy in Pretoria? With friends like these, ran a recent headline, who needs enemies? https://www.thesouthafrican.com/news/latest-news-north-korea-south-africa-pretoria-embassy-criminals
North Korea’s record is considered to have no contemporary parallel. In a 1,400-page report a UN panel described its methods as resembling Nazi methods, of which a sprinkling are:
- Public executions of Christians for as little as giving out bibles.
- Resettlement of whole families for punishment.
- Babies born with defects are immediately put to death.
- The disabled are rounded up and sent to special camps.
- The right to food, health, shelter, work, freedom of movement and liberty depend on bribing state officials.
- Drafting girls as young as 14 years into prostitution teams.
- Women suspected of being impregnated by Chinese men are subjected to abortion, or their babies born alive are put to death.
- Alive premature babies are sometimes killed but more commonly discarded into a bucket or box and buried. They may live several days in the container.
- There are some 323 sites where public executions take place for “anti-state” activities
- According to the testimony of a former camp guard, children fought over who got to eat a kernel of corn retrieved from cow dung.
- Political prisoners perform slave labour with primitive tools. Prisoners are constantly on the brink of starvation. An estimated 40% die from malnutrition. Others are crippled from work accidents, frostbite or torture.
“Our attitude toward any country is determined by the attitude of that country toward our struggle.”
Towards North Korea the ANC to this day keeps to the Mandela dictum.
But his fervid support for Israel? This the ANC does not keep.
About Jews Paul Johnson writes in the Epilogue to ‘A History of the Jews’:
“One way of summing up 4,000 years of Jewish history is to ask ourselves, what would have happened to the human race if Abraham had not been a man of great sagacity or if he had stayed in Ur and kept his higher notions to himself, and no specific Jewish people had come into being. …
"To them we owe the idea of equality before the law; of the sanctity of life and the dignity of the person; of the individual conscience and so of personal redemption; of the collective conscience and so of social responsibility; …and many other items constituting the basic moral furniture.”
If the government of SA understands moral furniture, it would be the looted sort.
Steve Apfel is an economist and costing specialist, but most of all a prolific author of fiction and non-fiction. His blog, ‘Balaam’s curse’ https://enemiesofzion.wordpress.com/ is followed mainly in Europe, America, Canada, S. Africa, Israel, Scandinavia and Australasia.