Our odd stance on the Middle East

Wyndham Hartley of the Weekend Post has a brilliant article commenting on why there there has been no word on the oppression and hardship on our doorstep in Zimbabwe. Hartley suggests that South Africa is guilty of fog horn diplomacy. Articles like this in the South African media are extremely rare - so be sure to read the whole thing.

The United Nations Africa grouping held a conference in Cape Town last week to discuss the situation. The problem was that the title of the conference was something about the inalienable rights of the Palestinians. That for a start meant that whatever issues the Israelis might want to discuss there were not - because they were effectively excluded from discussions.

Sure, it is easy to say that Israel are the aggressors, the invaders, the occupiers. But, as is so often pointed out in discussions of South Africa's miracle transition, a solution is not possible without both sides going to the table. It is why the ANC took great political risks to sit down and talk with the enemy. Risks because its fractious constituency might not have enjoyed the prospect of negotiating with their oppressors - better to defeat them in battle.

It was into this Middle East melee that the South African government strode this week, hoping for cast-iron recommendations that could be presented to the African Union summit in a few weeks. Mbeki also quite rightly said there was no possible solution to the Middle East problem if Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat was not part of it. (yawn...-ed)

The conference closed with an impassioned speech by deputy foreign minister Aziz Pahad. It was clear where his sympathies lay - with Palestine.

It is true that the Israelis have a lot to answer for. It is also true that South Africa has a right to express an opinion and to use its influence to try and help forge a resolution. Absolutely correct, but it is what might be termed fog horn diplomacy.

And it is being applied to a problem and a region that is very far from South Africa and not even on the African continent. It was in profoundly sharp contrast to the way in which South Africa has reacted to the situation in Zimbabwe, or indeed other desperate conflicts on the African continent.

Make no mistake I am not saying the situation in Zimbabwe is the same as in the Middle East. But there are similarities, not the least of them being the systematic abuse of human rights by the government of President Robert Mugabe. Mugabe listens to no-one. His thugs do what they think is necessary. And all the while the world is told that the reports of abuse are a figment of the imagination, the fevered imaginations of the imperialists in Britain and the US.

Like Robert Mugabe telling an international television news service recently that they are expecting a bumper crop from the reallocated farms this year.This when desperate aid agencies are begging for more food to feed the starving population and warning that no such bumper crop is on its way. Footage showing the shambles which is the farms have often been screened. It is simply all lies. But somehow this is OK. Senior people in the South African government are privately scathing about Mugabe, He was not really a friend of the ANC in exile.

But when push comes to shove Africans close ranks. Regardless, it seems of what an individual may or may not have done.

This solidarity issue goes even further. The presidential jet is sent all the way to Jamaica to fetch Jean Bertrande Arts-tide, the former leader of Haiti, costing millions. He is part of the African diaspora.

When he arrives in SA our president himself is there to greet him and a whole host of African diplomats. They were apparently phoned up and invited. Show solidarity was the code.

Aristide might have been elected to power but the poll was deeply suspect. He certainly used some highly controversial and brutal means to try and keep his political opponents under control.

As apartheid SA learned, such things do not work and now he is a deposed exile living off the fat of the land. Our land.

Why fog horns for Israel and quiet diplomacy for Zimbabwe and a hero's reception for Aristide? Please, I seriously want to believe it is more nuanced than simply being an African thing.