Zimpapers Logo

Barack Obama

AFRICA, Africa, Africa! The motherland whose fecundity is beyond measure. Celebrated author Chinua Achebe – artists never die – wrote an interesting handbook, which he aptly titled, “The trouble with Nigeria”, which might very well be “The trouble with Africa”.
I’m still trying to get to the bottom of what President Jacob Zuma (JZ) said last week when he was quoted “out of context” saying, “We can’t think like Africans in Africa generally. We are in Johannesburg. This is Johannesburg,” he said.

“It is not some national road in Malawi. No.”
Maybe he was referring to what Achebe had observed about Nigeria.
The disparaging remarks stirred a hornet’s nest.
In no time, his office was apologising and telling everyone that these were remarks that the media cited out of context. Very convenient, I guess.

Emissaries were sent to Malawi President Joyce Banda (JB) to convey JZ’s sincere apologies. This was after JB’s foreign ministry had summoned South Africa’s ambassador to Malawi to explain what JZ meant by saying that the tollgates were not meant for “some national road in Malawi. No.”

I won’t even go into that national road in Malawi affair lest you think that I’m stretching things too far, serve to say that this small nation was empowered by international law to tell the bigger power that national road or no national road, it could still call the shots.
Much in keeping with the English adage, “if Mohammed won’t come to the mountain, the mountain must come to Mohammed.”

In the past three weeks there has also been a lot of diplomatic summoning, and in all cases, apart from the Malawi/South Africa affair, it was this or that United States ambassador being summoned by minions to explain its country’s actions in the on-going espionage saga.
When all was said and done it became a diplomatic affair between JZ and JB.

But Mr President, Malawi is not Africa. Your remark was an unfortunate example in the stereotyping of African thinking: “We can’t think like Africans in Africa generally.” One billion people were lumped together in this statement, but only Malawi got an apology. How fortunate! Maybe it pays to complain.

These are nothing but flippant thoughts as I try to come to grips with the goings-on in our southern neighbour.
As Shakespeare says in his tragicomedy Macbeth, “Fair is foul and foul is fair; hover through the fog and filthy air”. That’s how best I can sum it up.

How could an ANC stalwart like Cde Tokyo Sexwale, a successful businessman in his own right and former detainee at that infamous Robben Island together with Nelson Mandela, Govan Mbeki, Walter Sisulu, Mac Maharaj and a whole lot others be detained at JFK International Airport in New York because the United States has not removed his name from its terrorist watch list?

Which century is the US living in that a useless and obsolete list is still being used to persecute South African citizens?
For goodness’ sake, the ANC is Africa’s oldest liberation movement that celebrated 100 years of existence this year, never mind that it attained democratic rule after everyone else on the continent.

But, to imagine that in 2013, the ANC, also South Africa’s ruling party and probably one of the United States’ major trading partners on the continent is still treated the same way they were treated by their apartheid oppressors, is unthinkable. What it means is that what was obtaining during the apartheid era when the ANC was banned has not changed a bit.

One act of insult on an ANC member is an insult on the whole organisation, including Mandela himself.
Nelson Mandela walked out of 27 years of incarceration from Robben Island on February 11, 1990; went on to become South Africa’s first democratically elected president in 1994.

But surprise, surprise: the anti-apartheid icon travelled in and out of the United States from 1990 until 2008 wearing a “terrorist” tag around his neck, that same tag that is used on Al-Qaeda, Al-Shabaab, the Taliban and other groups that are on the United States’ terrorist watch list.

Former US Secretary of State Condoleeza Rice summed it up when in 2008, she bemoaned, “It is frankly a rather embarrassing matter that I still have to waive in my own counterparts – the foreign minister of South Africa, not to mention the great leader, Nelson Mandela. I really do hope that we can remove these restrictions on the ANC. This is a country with which we now have excellent relations – South Africa.”
What irony that the person they said was a “great leader” still needed all this paperwork before travelling into the US? Chairman of the House Committee on Foreign Affairs Howard Berman had to introduce a Bill in 2008, just before Mandela celebrated his 90th birthday and he also said it was shameful that the ANC was still being treated like some rogue element “based solely on its designation as a terrorist organisation by the old apartheid South African regime.”

Mandela is 95 years old now, and we have seen how the who-is-who in successive US administrations, Hollywood and the Fortune 500 business executives appropriate that greatness to best advantage, but still treat his comrades-in-arms as terrorists. In July, President Obama was in South Africa and waws on and on  about Mandela’s greatness.

By association, this also makes Mandela a terrorist, for he continues to be the face of the ANC.
This means that he might carry this tag to his grave because the United States still has a watch list of terrorists from among the ANC membership.

Apart from Mandela who required a special Congressional Bill, it has never been clear how many ANC members are on that list; who has been removed from the list and who has remained, and what criteria is used to have the list the way it is.

Of course, the ANC should be mad about this, but to what end?
Wasn’t this supposed to be the first issue the ANC dealt with soon after it was unbanned in 1990, or maybe after the first democratic elections in 1994?

Why did they allow Mandela to be demeaned in such a manner, when the same people heaped praises on him?
The initiative to remove Mandela from that list and the whole of the ANC should have been a clarion call to action not only for South Africans, but all the liberation movements and the Organisation of African Union/African Union.

Liberation movements in particular because they were all seen as terrorist organisations bent on taking the colonisers’ ill-gotten properties in the former colonies. Maybe we become too comfortable with the praise singing.

I read part of what the ANC said: “This affront on the rights and dignity of Comrade Tokyo Sexwale necessitates an unconditional apology to him and the people of South Africa from the US administration.”

Of course, it’s easy to do that in diplomacy, just like JB accepted the apology, but what happens when a similar incident occurs? Demand another unconditional apology?

Just like the illegal sanctions imposed on Zimbabwe more than a decade ago, why is this terror watch list on the ANC still around?
American citizens enjoy unfettered freedom when they come to South Africa, including access to Mandela. Why shouldn’t this be reciprocated?

What sort of friendship is that if it creates that much mistrust and also gives the impression that the other party is getting more because of who they think they are? Why should we also end up not trusting other actions, well meaning though they might be?

But of course, I’m thinking like an African in Africa, generally.