Totalitarian talk shop: Zuma should deny North Korean delegation entry
In light of North Korea's unprovoked artillery assault against the South Korean island of Yeonpyeong, the Democratic Alliance (DA) believes that it is unacceptable that the South African government will be hosting representatives from the youth league of the North's tyrannical regime, as part of ANC Youth League's R370-million totalitarian talk shop.
Yesterday, the DA Youth revealed documents showing that the National Youth Development Agency requested over R5-million in funding for this event from the Western Cape provincial government - implying that a total of as much as R50-million may have been requested from provincial governments. This is over and above the R29-million allocated from the Presidency's budget.
These funding allocations, we have argued, are completely unjustifiable and unprincipled. This is especially so given the pressing needs of the country's youth, particularly those from impoverished communities.
The interests of young South Africans will best be served by practical proposals that seek to improve the economic position of the youth, not the hosting of a multimillion totalitarian talk shop. However, in light of the events of the past day on the Korean peninsula, the Zuma administration's decision to host an event that is closely tied to a sabre-rattling North Korea, still further compromises our hosting of this event.
We will, after all, be hosting delegates from the youth wing of the North Korean Workers' Party, and this is an event with close ties to Pyongyang - indeed, it has been hosted in Pyongyang recently.
Human Rights Watch describes the current state of human rights in North Korea as thus:
"Despite lip-service to human rights in the constitution, human rights conditions in North Korea remain dire. There is no organized political opposition, free media, functioning civil society, or religious freedom. Arbitrary arrest, detention, and torture and ill-treatment of detainees, and lack of due process remain serious issues. North Korea operates detention facilities including those popularly known as "political prison camps" where hundreds of thousands of its citizens - including children - are enslaved in deplorable conditions for various anti-state offenses. Collective punishment is the norm for such crimes. Periodically, the government publicly executes citizens for stealing state property, hoarding food, and other "anti-socialist" crimes."
The South African government cannot be hosting delegates of the North Korean Workers' Party, without tacitly endorsing the North. At this sensitive time, the Zuma administration should be revoking entry clearance.
They have done so in the past - albeit on spurious grounds, as was the case with the Dalai Lama. Here is a clear-cut instance in which we ought not to be accepting a compromised foreign delegation, and the Zuma administration ought to act as a matter of urgency, before accepting an official delegation from the official governing party of a country that has just zealously attacked another nation.
The youth festival scandal has exposed the NYDA for what it really is - a playpen for ANC Youth League cadres, that indulges the League's desire to fund political manoeuvering and self-enrichment with state resources. In the style of President Zuma, whose administration's questionable foreign policy has seen it side with some of the world's worst human rights abusers, Andile Lungisa and his NYDA cronies appear to have similarly adopted a range of radical regimes as models of human rights and youth development.
Statement issued by Athol Trollip MP, Democratic Alliance Parliamentary Leader, November 24 2010
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