Sometimes politicians should just shut up. They are often guilty of making a bad situation worse. Allowing Sudan’s President Al-Bashir to leave SA against a High Court ruling demanding his arrest is bad enough; making excuses for deliberately thumbing their nose at the Judiciary, was just plain lawless. Renowned for her political gaffes, Jesse Duarte, put her foot into it yet again when she said: "It's unfortunate that we actually had to disobey a judge’s order to comply with an international obligation that we have." Pitting a constitutional injunction against a political obligation, arbitrarily created to save the ANC’s despotic ally, is tantamount to saying that because Oscar Pistorius is an Olympian he need not go to jail for committing culpable homicide. Duarte not only encourages a serious breach of the rule of law, but also a deep disrespect of the Constitution. Signatory to the Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court was of no consequence to the ANC; they might as well have been signatories to Vlakplaas.
The international obligation, Duarte speaks of, is a political one designed particularly to compel authorities to desist from arresting sitting heads of state on our soil for crimes they might have committed no matter how serious. In the same breath she claims that their refusal to arrest Sudan’s head of state was not to undermine the serious human rights violations that happened in Darfur. Yet by allowing Al-Bashir to leave against the Judge’s orders was indeed a violation of the rule of law and a regrettable act of disrespect to the victims, especially women, of the genocide perpetrated against their brothers and sisters in the south who were largely Christian and non-Arab. The charges of genocide include mass rapes against women, starvation of mothers and their children, the pillaging of villages and the dislocation of over a million South Sudanese, not to speak of the massacres of around 400 000 people.
The same dereliction of duty to try and criminally charge Robert Mugabe for the Matabele massacre in 1983 is the reason he still reigns supreme in Zimbabwe, the result of which has caused almost half of the Zimbabwean population leaving the country.
A renowned women’s rights activist, and senior ANC Women’s Leaguer, Ms Duarte’s utterances support a man who should be tried before the world’s courts and be allowed to rot in jail for depopulating Darfur of its women. Her excuses elevate Africa’s political rulers way above and beyond the rule of law, as the ANC is wont to do. She claims that the ANC had a duty to abide by the ironically named AU’s Peace and Security Council members’ obligation to defer charges against Al-Bashir for a year. This is the extent to which loyalty to the world’s dictators is shamelessly interwoven into the culture of entitlement. It is this continental solidarity that propels SA’s interference in the uprisings of nations against their authoritarian and ruthless regimes. From Equatorial Guinea, the Central African Republic, Nigeria, Kenya, the Democratic Republic of the Congo, to Zimbabwe, amongst others. And it is this continental esprit de corps that inspires South Africa’s strong antediluvian Marxist-Leninist foreign policy machinations whose leitmotif is becoming increasingly obvious.
The demand for collective action against colonial and imperial forces of decades before still haunts the ANC and their revolutionary vanguard allies, who still make decisions on behalf of the proletariat regardless of the routes followed to ensure that those despots stay in power. But such power is short-lived
Duarte, you more than anyone knows that you are supporting a culture of impunity that is already inscribed into the DNA of many rulers on the continent.
Judging from the comments of readers (the people) to media reports of this unholy saga, two deserve repeating:
“When a government - once lauded by the world as having a marvellous (sic) Constitution - then decides to disobey the very rule of that law, then you KNOW that country is headed straight for the same kind of dictator-ruled impoverished sh!tholes that characterise so many of the states to the north of us. Once the ANC starts taking the law into their own hands, who is there to stop them taking anything they want from you? The 3.5 million people who pay 95% of ALL South African taxes need to stage a tax revolt, THEN we'd see the ANC running around like headless chickens. No social grants, no S-Class Mercs, no designer dresses...perish the thought.”
Another:
“…[But] Jessie the bottom line is that the government broke the law and therefore as a democracy HAS to - (i) charge whoever made the decision to let Al-Bashir go free, and (ii) resign as a government and call a fresh general election.
For the last ten years … this government has sided with every despot or murderous oppressive regime … and has worked hard to discredit anything or anybody with integrity.”
Now that is a constitutional crisis worth having!
Rhoda Kadalie
