Desmund Tutu: Wishing Obama would Channel Bush on Africa

In a remarkable article published in yesterday's New York Times, Desmund Tutu, human rights legend and anti-apartheid luminary, publicly wonders why Obama is derelict on his pledges to Africa and the continent's struggle against the AIDS crisis. During the 2008 election, Obama's ties to Kenya were played ad nauseum, as if they somehow accentuated his already stunted credentials. The great irony that liberals can't seem to grasp, is that President Bush was the most Africa oriented President to every occupy the White House. Other legacies aside, that seems to be set in stone for the foreseeable future. When you've pissed off Desmond Tutu, and you can claim black African heritage and are the former poster-child for post-modern liberalism, you know you've lost some serious luster.

Blood letting in the "Rainbow Nation"

Eugene Terreblance, South Africa's vile neo-fascist and white supremacist made famous by his fringe political activity and theatrical antics as the leader of the separatist AWB (Afrikaner Resistance League), was murdered on his farm last week. While he won't be missed by any stretch of the imagination, his murder seems to have been racially motivated and it jolted South Africa into acknowledging the growing trend of race based violence against white farmers. Since this conflict of whites being victimized by blacks doesn't play to the traditional notion of victim and perpetrator in the liberal paradigm, this awful and tragic trend hasn't been getting the attention it merits. Despite the legacy of institutional segregation that benefited South Africa's native white minority during the second half of the 20th century, some of the challenges for South African society moving forwarding include avoiding the Zimbabwe effect of deliberately destroying civic institutions, eroding democratic standards, ethnically cleansing whites; while also continuing to foster a civil-society that values all racial and ethnic groups, but realizes how precarious the situation can be for the key minorities. Post-colonial Africa seems to have it out for minority groups. One need look no farther than Rwanda, Uganda, Kenya, Zimbabwe, and Nigeria to name a few places. Since South Africa transitioned into majority rule in 1994, over 3,000 white farmers have been murdered by blacks. There are other internal crime statistics that are alarming, and it is no secret that South Africa has a plethora of issues it needs to tend to to continue to break the norm and survive as a non-basket case African nation, yet given the extreme sensibilities, the economic repercussions, and the tragic cycle of violence that has claimed so many other African societies, Jacob Zuma and the ANC need to step up and lock horns with this problem.

Some of the best analysis and  insight on the matter can be found here at an excellent blog called Cauthen's Commentary. (Full disclosure, the werewolf was a student of Cauthen's during his undergraduate years at Emory University) Here is a great excerpt offering in-depth analysis of the issue and how music has played a role in the ethnic violence.

"The death of Eugene Terreblanche has trained the world’s attention on the state of race relations in the so-called “Rainbow Nation” of South Africa as well as on a recent ruling of that country’s high court in Johannesburg. Terreblanche – founder of the neo-fascist and khaki-clad paramilitary organization, the Afrikaner Resistance League (known by its Afrikaans acronym, the AWB) – was until recently perhaps South Africa’s most vociferous and violent white separatist who agitated for a racially-exclusive homeland for the Afrikaner ethnic minority. Yet, the news reports of the past few days have focused less on his notorious career and more on his being the latest statistic; indeed, according to the BBC, more than three thousand white farmers have been killed since the inauguration of the new, multiracial South Africa in 1994. Although Terreblanche’s murder does not seem to be politically motivated, but, rather the action of disgruntled farm workers who claim that he cheated them, some of his cohorts in the AWB insist that his demise was the inevitable result of an anti-apartheid anthem and its repetitive lyric of “shoot the Boer.” The historic and controversial ditty had been recently revived and appropriated as a theme song of sorts by the fiery president of the ANC Youth League Julius Malema.  And, after Malema belted out the song at a political rally last month a high court judge, who is white, ruled that its lyrics were unconstitutional as they incited violence against whites and cautioned Malema against any further performances. The ruling ANC was quite dismayed over the verdict as it regards the song as cultural icon of the liberation struggle and sought to have the judge’s decision reversed in a higher court.

Although to some the claim that Terreblanche’s murder was incited by the song may appear far-fetched, in ethnically-riven societies, the catalytic agency of chauvinistic and provocative music to foment individual and collective acts of violence cannot be underestimated. In the lead-up to the genocide in Rwanda in 1994, the Hutu Power regime regularly broadcast songs on the radio which dehumanized the Tutses and justified their extermination. In this regard, I am particularly reminded of a song by Hutu pop composer Simon Bikindi with a similarly repetitive lyric – that of “I hate these Hutus.” In it, Bikindi was not slamming the rival Tutsi but those fellow Hutus whom he regarded as not being sufficiently anti-Tutsi. And, of course, large numbers of moderate Hutus were murdered alongside the Tutses by hard-line Hutus. Bikindi was ultimately indicted by the International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda on the grounds that he utilized his music to incite genocide – although he was eventually convicted on a different charge."

Jacob Zuma: Barbarian Extraordinaire

Will Heaven over at the The Daily Telegraph penned a great article regarding Jacob Zuma, the current president of South Africa. The article speaks truth-to-power about what a putrid schmuck Zuma is on all levels. At his very best, Zuma is ignorant firebrand who was active in the ANC's militant struggle to usurp apartheid. At his worst he is a retrogressive, rapist, thug, and hard-line left-wing nut-job who can't even claim to have finished high school. South Africa is in the very best of hands. Beyond being a decent political manipulator, he has shown no aptitude for anything noteworthy. The werewolf was in South Africa when the oh-so classy Zuma was on trial for raping the HIV positive lady, and having claimed that his post-rape shower negated his chances of contracting the virus. What a guy. (If it wasn't so real, it'd actually be amusing) The werewolf gave a little paw-pump when he thought Zuma had been effectively sidelined. Alas, it was premature. Here are some highlights from Mr. Heaven's article:

"Well, as Graham Boynton writes in today’s Telegraph, Zuma’s has faced a host of criminal charges during his career in the ANC: fraud, racketeering, corruption, and tax evasion to name but a few. He has so far escaped conviction, but in one of the most revealing episodes of his career so far, he was accused of raping an HIV-positive family friend in 2006.

Zuma, as has so often been the case, was acquitted. But during the trial he infamously admitted to having “showered” after unprotected sex with the woman because this “would minimise the risk of contracting the disease.” He knew the woman was HIV positive, but told the court that while he normally used condoms, he did not have one available on the night of the incident. As one Aids campaigner said at the time, “statements like that can throw years of hard work down the drain.”

A year before his rape trial, Jacob Zuma was head of the National Aids Council and South Africa’s Moral Regeneration Campaign. Is it surprising, then, that with a brute like this in charge, some six million South Africans are infected with HIV/Aids today? Zuma has even invoked traditional African culture as an excuse for not using condoms. A ludicrous idea on the face of it, but when you consider that an estimated 800,000 South Africans died of Aids in 2008, the true horror of Zuma’s influence begins to hit home." 


Zuma is a shining example of one of Africa's largest hurdles to prosperity and decency. The lack of a stable and respectable ruling class. As long as African democracy, autocracy, and governments elevate brutal thugs who ride the cresting waves of anti-western drivel, celebrate ignorance, and promote discredited economic management, Africa will stumble around like a blind drunk at an open bar, continuously being unable to be taken seriously. That in turn will retard efforts to address the public health, economic development, and global integration concerns that plague Africa. At this point, it is up to Africans to help themselves. Yet, with titanic buffoons like Zuma representing the best of African democracy, Africa will be riding the global short-bus for many moons to come.

Who Killed Apartheid?

Reason has a great interview with South African journalist and former ANC activist turned critic, Howard Barrell. For anyone with a passing interest in South Africa, revolutions, reform, and the politics of liberation it is a must read. There is too much content to dissect in a single post. However, there are a few items that jumped at the werewolf worth mentioning.

The interview focuses on debating the efficacy of the armed component of the ANC struggle versus the more passive protest oriented civil struggles in toppling the white-minority regime in South Africa. It also touches on the insecurities and corruption of the ANC via its communist ties and the implications of that for South Africa's current government. It does a great job of framing the ANC resistance in the context of other revolutionary movements, like those in Vietnam, Cuba, Guinea-Bissau, and China. Really good stuff.

However, as a student of the aforementioned subjects, follower of international relations, and amateur Africanist; the werewolf thinks that fascinating discussions like this obscure what really caused Apartheid to collapse. The root of Apartheid's demise can be found in the crumbling of the Berlin Wall and the end of the Cold War. As long as South Africa's Apartheid regime provided a credible bulwark against communist expansion on the African continent (and it most certainly did), the West unconditionally tolerated it existence. When the specter of global communist evaporated, so did the patience the West had for South Africa's hard-line segregation. Forty years of deliberate attempts by communist insurgents and labor strikes certainly impaired South Africa's economy and degraded its reputation, but never proved a credible vehicle to bringing the regime down. It's not a desire to oversimplify(for the sake of brevity this post is exceedingly general), it's just a an example wanting to glorify a movement and give credit where little credit is due. As the article suggests, the ANC had a credible vehicle to move into power via its popular electoral support with the black masses making it the logical negotiating partner for the then ruling National Party to engage once elections had been mandated. However, one only need examine the extreme violence between the Zulu based Inkatha Freedom Party and the Xhosa centric ANC during South Africa's first universal election. Black/white violence wasn't a major factor as South Africa transitioned into a democratic society. It was black-on-black violence that sadly marked the occasion.

The werewolf feels that there is a tension in wanting to glorify the ANC and give it credit, despite how when examined; the timing, facts, and legacies of how history unfolded provide a contrast that challenge these assumptions. While the werewolf could read articles like this one until he was blue-in-the face. They provide more insight into failed insurgencies and the limits of violence against entrenched powers, more than a tale of legitimate liberation and political transformation. While conducting the post-mortum to best understand the anatomy of the transitional miracle that is South Africa, the best indicators are in the macro-trends that defined that era.

Paradise lost. Was it ever found?

Although these tensions have been brewing for sometime, the fallout from Zimbabwe's disintegration under Mugabe is starting to take a visible toll on the internal workings of neighboring states in the region, especially South Africa. While South Africa's miraculous transition from Apartheid to majority-rule in 1994 is both commendable and impressive on multiple levels, the blind faith invested in the ruling ANC, and the rose-colored glasses frequently applied to the future of South African society in a democratic era have missed the mark, far and wide. The ANC's lack of resolve on isolating and undermining the Mugabe regime have sown the seeds for the aforementioned story, along with the chronic mismanagement of expectations of their internal constituencies. Africa and its few progress minded leaders need to embrace the fact the yesterday's "liberation" heroes have evolved into today's despots, mass-murders, villains, and are a tumor on tomorrow's aspirations.