18 Apr 2008 Washington Post Gets Conservative Concerns About the ANC 20 Years Late, and Almost Too Late Altogether

From David Almasi:

An unsigned house editorial in the April 15 Washington Post is very concerned about post-election unrest in Zimbabwe, where, it seems, President Robert Mugabe is willing to do whatever it takes to remain in power despite indications he lost the popular vote. The twist is that the Post is laying the blame for Mugabe’s ability to remain relevant at the feet of South African President Thabo Mbeki.

And they aren’t that happy with Mbeki’s foreign policy elsewhere, to boot. My, my.

Mbeki is the former president of the African National Congress (ANC), the current South African ruling party that was a terrorist organization mere decades ago. It was the political entity that benefited from the American anti-apartheid protests of the 1980s. Mbeki took over the presidency after Nelson Mandela’s retirement.

When I was involved in the South Africa protests of that bygone era, we warned that the ANC was not the moral equivalent of our own Founding Fathers. Mandela, for instance, was a co-founder of the ANC’s militant Umkhonto we Sizwe wing. Mbeki was a member. We warned about the ANC’s ties and kinship with radical groups and governments across the globe, but we were told we were crazy (and worse).

Now, with the ANC firmly entrenched and South Africa serving on the U.N. Security Council and other U.N. bodies, the chickens are really coming home to roost. In its editorial, Post editors lament:

Since that country began serving a term on the U.N. Security Council last year, the government of President Thabo Mbeki has consistently allied itself with the world’s rogue states and against the Western democracies. It has defended Iran’s nuclear program and resisted sanctions against it; shielded Sudan and Burma from the sort of pressure the United Nations once directed at the apartheid regime; and enthusiastically supported one-sided condemnations of Israel by the U.N. Human Rights Council…

Every Western democratic government has condemned Mr. Mugabe’s maneuvering, and even many Africans have appeared to lose patience with the 84-year-old strongman. That he remains in office is due mainly to Mr. Mbeki, who has used South Africa’s considerable influence and prestige to bolster Mr. Mugabe.

Mbeki is crisscrossing Africa to continue to prop up Mugabe. I don’t think I could have written it better than the Post editors have, except I and other conservatives could have told you this would happen 20 years ago.

The one thing the world has in its favor is that the old breed typified by Mbeki is dying out. Democracy has held together. Other, younger ANC leaders are already distancing themselves from Mbeki, including his successor in the ANC and the presidency. Mbeki, like the apartheid government he once fought, is becoming isolated in the world as well as in his own country.

But it’s a shame, for the people of Zimbabwe in particular, that the world had to suffer his leadership even one day.

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