Principles, not Policies

South African foreign policy, if, in fact, there is such a thing, appears to be solely aimed at paying back those countries that assisted the ANC to come to power. Medical students, unable to qualify for South African medical schools, are sent, at huge taxpayer-funded expense, to Cuba and Russia, to study medicine in the outdated institutions there, in a foreign language, after which they return to South Africa to work on the poor in the clinics and hospitals, The Government regularly makes huge cash remittances to the Cuban Government, in addition to the portion of the Cuban doctors salaries withheld from them and remitted to the Government, presumably as a form of reward for the indentured labour. Israel is frequently criticized for reacting to Palestinian rocket attacks, without any censure against the Palestinian terrorist leadership, which has been instrumental in maintaining Israeli hostility by means of frequent terror attacks, threats of invasion and repeated demands for the destruction of Israel. The continued support of Robert Mugabe’s dictatorship in Zimbabwe and his lunatic social and economic policies, disguised under Thabo Mbeki’s “quiet diplomacy’ while tens of thousands of Zimbabweans flooded into South Africa in search of a means to earn a living, and further tens of thousands were brutalized and starved in their homeland in order for the dictator to remain in power has never been explained in truthful terms, although the direct cost to South African taxpayers is substantial. The maintenance of “peacekeeping forces”, although paid for directly to the Zuma family in preferential access to mines and mineral deposits, has achieved nothing for the citizens of the DRC and other similar economic catastrophes masquerading under the name of “democracies”, while keeping despotic, exploitative and corrupt leaders in power in those countries well beyond their sell-by dates. The clear love affair with Vladimir Putin by the ANC brooks no comment about his invasion of Crimea, shooting down of a civilian passenger aircraft, poisoning with a banned chemical warfare agent of a supposed “enemy” in Salisbury, England, contrary even to the Russia-loving Trump White House. His clear attempt to bribe a South African President to hand over its entire nuclear activity to Russia for twenty years, renewable, has never been scrutinized by the ANC Government. The ANC Government strongly supports Nicolas Maduro in Venezuela, citing his policies as a model for South Africa, notwithstanding an inflation rate of a million per cent per annum, and a population exodus of tens of thousands each day, in search of food and work. They love the Venezuelans oppressors of the Venezuelan people so much that a South Africa diplomat was constrained to promise that South Africa would go to war with the United States in support of its friend! Where were the oppressed people in that decision?

And so it goes.

Even the so-called ‘”new broom” Ramaphosa has demonstrated in unmistakable terms his deep love for China, disregarding the fact that an entire Muslim population has been relocated to re-education camps (shades of the Soviet era Gulags!), and his respect for Mao-style Communist teachings, disregarding the fact that those very teachings and policies resulted in the death of between forty and sixty million Chinese!

And so it goes, on and on, seemingly without end.

Why is this so?

It seems that the primary reason is that the ANC has no principles that it is willing to lay out for public comment. It does not have a principle such as “We will stand up for the poor and oppressed.” It cannot say that Israel is sometimes justified in its actions without losing its appeal to the terrorist nations of the world, even at the risk of alienating its biggest trading partners. It is clear: in the mind of the ANC, Israel is always wrong and the Palestinians are always right, even though this blinkered belief removes South Africa’s credibility in the mind of any thinking person. The ANC is always willing to stand up for its BRICS partners, although every one of them is guilty of gross human rights abuses, defective economic policies and crass dictatorship. Remember how Zuma held up Lula da Silva as a shining example of a President, shortly before he was put behind bars for corruption? Not a word on the shining example since that happened. Notice how the SABC, a supposedly independent bringer of the news has studiously avoided any item of news referring to the Russian GRU killings of its citizens on British soil, using a universally banned chemical warfare agent that it was not supposed to have? And this was not the first time that Putin felt free to commit a gross transgression of a universal law to which it is a party. There are many simple principles that can be stated by the Government, to be evaluated by its citizens and approved as a yardstick by which to measure its actions, to which to demand that the Ministers and diplomats subscribe, so that each action is measured and rational, so that the world knows where we stand.

It is not much to ask that a Government abandon the principle of flying by the seat of its pants, shooting from the hip. That is the failing which will pull Donald Trump, and his country, down from the lofty pinnacle they claim to be theirs by right. It is the failing that will make South Africa, once again, the polecat of the world.