Sad about South Africa

It was really sad to see the news about Brett Goldin the star of the Crazy Monkey show regularly featured on MTV. He was found face down with a bullet in his head alongside his friend who had met the same fate. So sad, cruel and completely unnecessary. The same thing happens everyday, in fact somebody has been murdered whilst I write this post and yet we stand by and do nothing! Is it the role of the citizen or the role of the elected government to look after the citizen. Can we do anything? How many more Brett Goldin’s will die in the next year. Talented, young, productive lives wasted just because he lives in South Africa, where life is really cheap! And the ANC government tells me that I am a traitor for leaving. I am a traitor for temporarily leaving a country that doesn’t really want me around, a country that stands by and allows the persecution of its own people from within!

Picked this up over at The Fishbowl. Remarkable how our country’s government stumbles from one disaster to the next. I just can’t deal with how stupid, ignorant and downright useless the ANC government portrays itself to the rest of the world: Aids, Zimbabawe, Zuma, the list is bloody endless. Below is a section of an article written in an Israeli newspaper about the recent visit by Hamas to South Africa. It’s an acerbically stunning piece which leaves you with one word to say at the end of it …….TOUCHE!

Thus Israel is asking of South Africa, “What is there to discuss with Hamas?” What can South Africa deliver that the infinitely more powerful and influential Vladimir Putin could not? Informed Israelis may well question what South Africa hopes to achieve in talking to such a party when its own policy of “quiet diplomacy” toward the Mugabe regime has yielded nothing but embarrassment for Pretoria and further suffering for millions of Zimbabweans.

Indeed there is a strong sentiment of dismissiveness and irritation in Israel at this middle-ranking country on the tip of Africa, with a governing party strongly affiliated to the PLO, “poking its nose in” where it is not wanted. For sceptics, South Africa’s naivete and arrogance may have the unintended consequence of conferring recognition of Hamas’ policies and positions toward Israel. South African watchers may also point to President Mbeki’s own pretensions toward global statesmanship as the key to his personal involvement in facilitating dialogue between Palestinians and Israel.

South Africa can teach Israel and Palestine nothing. It has no experience in territorial, religious, or fundamentalist struggles. For South Africans, suicide bombers are a TV image, not a daily threat. It cannot mediate, cajole, nor persuade. It has neither the leverage, nor the political repertoire, to influence the deep and stark realities of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. With all his charisma and credibility as a figure of reconciliation, not even Nelson Mandela could make the desert of Israeli- Palestinian relations bloom.

South Africa is not viewed as an impartial (or even honest) broker by Israel and may even be viewed as a useful idiot by Palestinians. But what South Africa can do and has every legitimate right to do, is to share its story and to provide the protagonists a space for dialogue. Whilst South Africans generally understand far too little about Israeli history, fears and suffering, nor indeed about your particular struggle for identity, emerging from our past, we do have a degree of domestic success in conflict resolution, reconciliation, reconstruction and nation-building. Surely these are some of the issues that go to the very heart of the challenges that confront Israel today?