The New Killing Fields
The new horizon, with all its promises for the future has somehow failed to materialize. It started out so well, with the whole world looking on, helping South Africa to celebrate the end of Apartheid, lionizing Nelson Mandela and Bishop Desmond Tutu as the conscience of the Continent, and the forerunners of a brave new Africa.So what happened? The Truth and Reconciliation Commission heard all those dark tales of atrocities and misery. It gave voice to the oppressed and the oppressors. Everyone wept, had compassion for those who suffered, and agreed to forgive. Wounds healed, more or less. Less, it would appear.
South Africa today has become the most violent country in the world. Although there has emerged a burgeoning black middle class, those at the bottom remain there. Unemployed, unvalued, destitute, without hope. And breeding resentment and hostility toward everyone else.
Whatever happened to all that brave resolve to usher in a new, fair world of opportunities for all?
That shining beacon of hope for the rest of Africa is looking fairly tarnished of late. It hasn't at all helped that Thabo Mbeki refused to recognize that the plague of AIDS was not truly a malicious malady let loose on Africa by Whites, nor that a medical-pharmacological protocol was required to combat it.
His soon-to-be successor's dim understanding of the connection between AIDS eradication and the predatory practises of black males does no credit to the regime, either. But that the government, despite all its promises on land-sharing, and providing employment opportunities for all its constituents has failed so spectacularly has been no great help.
Perhaps the worst moral lapse is the government's failure to denounce their neighbour-state leaders who have failed their country's needs and those of their populations in an even more deliberate and miserable manner than their own.
In supporting murderous dictators like Robert Mugabe and Omar el-Bashir, South Africa has aided Zimbabwe's and Sudan's leaders and their humanity-averse agendas, and deserted their peoples to misery, deprivation, loss of hope and death.
The Africa of today remains as fragmented, dysfunctional and tragic as it ever was - despite the hope and the real strides forward made in countries like Kenya, itself now facing a collapse of democracy and hope.
South Africa's reputation as a place of refuge had refugees from Malawi, Nigeria, the Democratic Republic of Congo, Somalia and Zimbabwe seek comfort there.
The formula of 42% South Africans employed, with the remainder jobless and desperate, the millions housed in shacks bereft of basic amenities; the indigent, the homeless, battered by rising food prices and shortages of basics, have ensured bitterness against their fate - and directed at the even more powerless and fragile among them - refugees.
Brutally murderous Xenophobia blooms where hope has faded.
Labels: Realities, Troublespots, World Crises
posted by Pieface @ Thursday, May 22, 2008
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