The Despots' Democracy

Michael Gerson - washingtonpost.com wants to create a new catagory of rogue state, a rogue democracy. He makes a case for South Africa to be included. By his criteria, the US under Bush, Israel, and quite a few other countries belong on that list. Somehow, I don't think Gerson had that in mind.

"Things on the ground," e-mailed a friend from a groaning Zimbabwe, "are absolutely shocking -- systematic violence, abductions, brutal murders. Hundreds of activists hospitalized, indeed starting to go possibly into the thousands." The military, he says, is "going village by village with lists of MDC [Movement for Democratic Change] activists, identifying them and then either abducting them or beating them to a pulp, leaving them for dead."


In late April, about the time this e-mail was written, President Thabo Mbeki of South Africa -- Zimbabwe's influential neighbor -- addressed a four-page letter to President Bush. Rather than coordinating strategy to end Zimbabwe's nightmare, Mbeki criticized the United States, in a text packed with exclamation points, for taking sides against President Robert Mugabe's government and disrespecting the views of the Zimbabwean people. "He said it was not our business," recalls one American official, and "to butt out, that Africa belongs to him." Adds another official, "Mbeki lost it; it was outrageous."


It is also not an aberration. South Africa has actively blocked United Nations discussions about human rights abuses in Zimbabwe -- and in Belarus, Cuba, North Korea and Uzbekistan. South Africa was the only real democracy to vote against a resolution demanding that the Burmese junta stop ethnic cleansing and free jailed dissident Aung San Suu Kyi. When Iranian nuclear proliferation was debated in the Security Council, South Africa dragged out discussions and demanded watered-down language in the resolution. South Africa opposed a resolution condemning rape and attacks on civilians in Darfur -- and rolled out the red carpet for a visit from Sudan's genocidal leader. In the General Assembly, South Africa fought against a resolution condemning the use of rape as a weapon of war because the resolution was not sufficiently anti-American.