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Thoughts on South Africa, Zimbabwe, Israel and Palestine

By Patricia Lee Sharpe

I was mostly on retreat last week, which is why I wasn’t posting, but only as a commuter, so I was able to sneak a look at two PBS programs that turned out to be entirely consistent with what I was doing during the daytime.  I saw the Masterpiece Contemporary presentation of Endgame, an utterly compelling docu-drama about the secret negotiations that preceded the  official negotiations for the end of apartheid in South Africa and a Bill Moyers interview with South African jurist Richard Goldstone, who led the UN commission of inquiry into human rights abuses by Israel and by Hamas last year.  These are the thoughts that emerged.   They begin with Zimbabwe.... 

Banes of Zimbabwe

Robert Mugabe, I suspect, calculated that a power-sharing agreement with Morgan Tsvangirai would placate the West and bring in the big bucks he needs to provide food and rudimentary survival services to a population he has ravaged and terrorized.  Dutifully, his new prime minister set out on a begging trip, hoping to convince prospective donors that the shotgun marriage was cozy and legit.  When the would-be saviors, U.S. and European, saw through the ruse and refused to cough up enough to suit the white-baiting octogenarian president, Mugabe seems to have lost interest in the PR value of minimal cooperation with Tsvangirai, who is now more or less on strike.  So Mugabe has resumed his well-honed harangue: all of Zimbabwe’s current miseries can be traced to colonialism, even if Zimbabwe was in terrific economic shape when the British left in 1980.

Meanwhile, starving, sick, miserable and thoroughly desperate refugees finally began streaming into South Africa from neighboring Zimbabwe.  The result: murderous local mobs pushing back from South African townships whose residents have not prospered as they had hoped in the years since apartheid gave way to majority rule.  Their cry: how can we share when we have so little?  Although South African police managed to quell the worst of the violence, South Africa has continued its policy of not seriously pressuring Mugabe to reverse course or to resign, despite urging by the U.S. and others.  African nations, for obvious reasons, are very touchy about sovereignty. 

The good news is that South Africa itself has not been destabilized by spillover from disarray next door.  Nor has the post-Mandela leadership adopted the poisonous anti-White propaganda and policies of the Mugabe regime.  Whites continue to be a relatively prosperous minority in South Africa where they have a significant presence in urban and rural economies.  Whites also continue to be personally safe, as far as anyone is safe in South Africa’s crime-ridden cities.  This accord didn’t happen by chance.  Unlike Zimbabwe, where Mugabe is the black mirror image of the implacable white racist Ian Smith, South Africa has produced some remarkable leaders, men who saw that retribution, deserved or not, was no way to achieve stability and prosperity in a post-apartheid country.

South African Treasures

South Africa was blessed with Nelson Mandela, who became the reincarnated country’s first president, with Anglican Bishop Desmond Tutu who served as conscience for the reborn country, and with a Boer realist  F.W. de Klerk who knew when the game of white monoply on power was over.  South Africa was also blessed with a nationalist party whose millitant wing  was willing to lay down arms without preconditions and let the party leaders join in the process of writing a new constitution.   Long jailed lawyer and African National Congress leader  Nelson Mandela would have as Vice Presidents ANC activist Tabo Mbeki, who would succeed Mandela as president, and—yes!—that very same F.W. de Klerk.  Finally, instead of setting up a war crimes court, the new government chose to conduct a truth and reconciliation process: tell the world exactly what you did, however horrible, and you’ll be free to build a new South Africa with us. 

Confessing is hard.  Letting go of vengeance is equally hard.  By and large, the process seems to have worked. The new South Africa was made possible by realism and idealism, by mediation, negotiation and diplomacy, plus a willingness to live and work together and a disposition to try and trust one another.  The economics, however, have been a little disappointing. South Africa may be the most prosperous sub-Saharan country, but not all share equally in that GNP.  Some Blacks have become very very rich.  Others are hardly better off than they were under the Boers, which makes for anger.

Alaskans: Beware of the Shell Game

By Patricia Lee Sharpe

A letter to the NYT editor by the President of the Shell Oil Company complains that Shell's plans for Alaska are being “held up by unnecessary litigation and unreasonable federal permitting delays.”

Marvin Odum claims that Shell "is a leader in environmentally superior operations" and asserts that his company  has "prepared one of the most environmentally sensitive and responsible exploration plans ever for offshore Alaska."  Considering the highly insensitive operations of many oil companies, that's not saying much, but Shell's own record suggests that extreme caution is in order.

As one who worked in Nigeria, where Shell’s record is as deplorable as it gets, environmentally and from the point of view of human rights, I urge Alaskans and the federal regulators involved to be extremely careful about working with this company.  Get everything in writing, in detail.  Inspect operations rigorously.  Watch everything and everyone every minute.   Your land could be in danger.  Your water could be in danger.  Your wildlife could be in danger.  And anyone who protests a spill would do well to think twice.

Prominent Nigerian writer and environmentalist Ken Saro-Wiwa led his Ogoni people in protest against Shell’s ruin of their Niger delta homeland.  Operations were sloppy, and there was at best laughable reparation made to people whose lives were being changed forever.  Instead of taking Shell to task, an oil-corrupted government in Lagos found a way to silence Saro-wiwa and fellow environmental leaders.  They were hanged in Port Harcourt on November 5, 1995.  Finally, in June of this year, and only because a high visibility trial was about to open, the Shell Oil company paid a settlement of $15.5 million to the heirs of those victims, claiming in the process that the company was shelling out purely from the goodness of its corporate heart.  This article gives an idea of the sorts of damning documents that would have got wide circulation had the case actually gone to trial.  Conviction was not unlikely.

As for Nigeria today, militant pirates spawned by oil companies’ corporate greed and negligence continue to plague remaining oil pumping operations in the Niger delta and vast areas of Ogoni land remain infertile due to seepage from supposedly capped oil wells.  

The solution to the “hypocrisy of relying on other countries’ resources” for fuel and energy isn’t to ravage Alaska  and keep on pumping the pet.  The solution is to promote major reductions in energy consumption and to replace as much petroleum-based energy as quickly as possible with clean and renewable energy. 

Meanwhile, should there be excruciatingly careful scrutiny of Shell's plans for Alaska?  Absolutely.

Arctic Sea: An Enigma Wrapped in A Mystery

By Jyrki Iivonen Guest Contributor

Dr. Jyrki Iivonen is Docent of Political Science, University of Helsinki, Finland.

During the night between 25 and 26 July, 2009, a curious incident took place in the Baltic Sea - in the sound between the Swedish islands of Oland and Gotland. It first became public four days later, when on July 30, news spread that a vessel called the Arctic Sea had been hijacked. A group of six men, disguised as policemen, had boarded the ship in the darkness of the night and kept the crew as hostages for twelve hours. They destroyed the communications instruments on board but finally took nothing, it was said. According to the Swedish police, the vessel was owned by a Finnish shipping company (although its owners are of Russian backgrounds), sailing under the Maltese flag and with a Russian crew. The ship was carrying timber from Finland to Algeria. The case was investigated by the Swedish police because the presumed crime took place within Swedish territorial waters.

(Click on Map of Sweden to enlarge, Perry-Castaneda Map Collection, University of Texas).

So far so clear.

But everything that has happened since July 30 has made it obvious that the whole case is, to quote Winston Churchill’s famous description of the Soviet Union, “an enigma wrapped in a mystery.” What happened on the Arctic Sea has really become an enigma. With every new answer three new questions are raised.

The sequence of events is relatively clear. When the news came out on July 30 that the vessel was lost, mainly because – so it was again argued – the communication instruments had been destroyed by the hijackers and the crew had continued towards Algeria as originally planned. No wonder then that after a few days, the police expressed suspicions that the hijackers were still on board. One entire week elapsed without any sign of the vessel. Spanish authorities revealed that the Arctic Sea definitely had not passed through Gibraltar.

On 9 August it was said that Russian authorities – and especially the secret police FSB – had started to search for the vessel. According to the Russian Ministry of Defense, two submarines had been ordered to search for the vessel in the Atlantic area. There was now an assumption that instead of sailing to Algeria, the vessel had continued to the South, along the West Coast of Africa.

On 14 August, the Defense Minister of Cape Verde said that the vessel had been detected almost 500 miles north of the island and that the French Ministry of Defense would also know about the sighting. On the next day it was revealed by the Finnish police that the hijackers had demanded ransom from the shipping company, an announcement, however, that was not confirmed by the company.

Two days later, on August 17, Russian vessels found the Arctic Sea in the Atlantic, 300 miles from Cape Verde. Most of the crew members were transferred to a Russian naval vessel. It was also revealed that the media had been deliberately misled during the search operation, to protect the crew and to convince the hijackers that the authorities did not, in fact, know the whereabouts of the vessel. When the vessel had been detected and recaptured, the Russian ambassador to NATO, Dmitri Rogozin, told the media that the incident proved that Russia was quickly able to defend its interests and protect its citizens everywhere in the world and is also capable of cooperating with all major actors. (Photo of the Arctic Sea above right)

On August 18, Russian Defense Minister Anatoli Serdjukov announced that Russia had arrested eight persons suspected of the hijacking. Four of the men are Estonians, two Estonian-Russians and two Latvians. Estonia and Latvia immediately sent a note to Russia asking for more information about those arrested. Both the crew and those arrested were sent to Moscow for further interrogation. (Click on Map of Cape Verde to enlarge, Perry-Castaneda Map Collection, University of Texas)

Only ten days later the crew members were able to return home to Arkhangelsk. They are strictly forbidden to comment on the events to the media. The hijackers remain in Moscow and will - in due time - be taken to court.

This is what we know right now about the incident. But a large number of questions are still unanswered.

First, what was the vessel’s cargo? Timber is not so valuable that several countries would track the vessel along the Atlantic. There have been rumours and speculation – but only rumours and speculation – about whether there was something else on board, too. Weapons, nuclear materiel and drugs have been mentioned. It has also been suggested that the vessel was floating deeper in the water than if it had just carried timber and that, therefore, there must have been something else on board besides the timber.

Second, why was Russia so interested in the vessel? It is true that the crew was Russian and Russia has declared its intention to protect its citizens everywhere in the world. But legally the vessel was owned by a Finnish company and it was sailing under the Maltese flag. The hijacking took place in Swedish territorial waters, the cargo was on its way to Algeria and the vessel was found near Cap Verde. The hijackers were Estonians and Latvians. Several countries were involved but Russians assumed the right to try the hijackers.

Third, what was the role in the cooperation between intelligence agencies of different countries? Very little is known of this as well and the information that has been given out has often been contradictory. France has been active, as well as NATO as an organization. Did they cooperate with the Russian government and if yes, how?

Fourth, who are the hijackers and what were their motives? Although their nationalities are known, very little is known of their motives. They have themselves argued that they are actually environmentalists and that they were hijacked by the crew. But if they are only environmentalists, why did they arrange an operation against a vessel carrying Finnish timber and why did they disguise themselves as policemen?

As can be seen, numerous questions remain unanswered.

Finland’s Prime Minister Matti Vanhanen discussed the issue with his Russian colleague Vladimir Putin in Gdansk, Poland, on 1 September. Putin promised there that in the future the other countries concerned will be better informed about the developments of the case. But until then, very little is known of what really happened on the Arctic Sea during the two and half weeks when it was lost.

Big Cheezy Swiss Bites Out of the African Economy

By Patricia Lee Sharpe

President Barak Obama and Secretary of State Hillary Clinton have sung the same song in Africa: you can’t have the prosperity Africans need and deserve without good governance; you won’t have good governance or development when your leaders are stealing you blind. 

So better leadership is needed, yet corrupt leaders wouldn’t have much incentive if there were nothing to embezzle in Africa’s poorly run countries.  In fact, there’s plenty to steal.  Also, once greedy leaders have got their hands on what doesn’t properly belong to them, they have a problem.  They need a safe place to hide it, to stash it.  For this they need enablers—and they get them.  At every stage of the wealth-siphoning process, foreigners tend to be complicit.  Ordinary Africans are cheated.  Foreigners profit.

Here a key passage from President Obama’s speech in Accra, Ghana:

...too many [African] nations, even those that have elections, are plagued by problems that condemn their people to poverty.  No country is going to crate wealth if its leaders exploit the economy to enrich themselves–(applause)–or if police can be bought off by drug traffickers. (Applause.) No business wants to invest in a place where the government skims 20 percent off the top–(applause)—or the head of the Port Authority is corrupt.  No person wants to live in a society where the rule of law gives way to the rule of brutality and bribery.

And this version is from the Secretary of State’s address in Nairobi:

True economic progress—(applause)—depends not only on the hard work of millions of people who get up every day and do the best they can, often under overwhelming circumstances; it also depends on responsible governments that reject corruption, enforce the rule of law, and deliver results for their people.  This is not just about good governance; this is about good business.  Investors will be attracted to states that do this, and they will not be attracted to states with failed or weak leadership, or crime and civil unrest or corruption that taints every transaction and decision.

Ordinary people, including many parliamentarians and middle class meritocrats, applauded during these speeches, because they, as well as service-starved subsistence farmers, need the fruits of better governance.  Practically everyone’s standard of living suffers while the kleptocrats, who get a cut from sales of natural resources to foreign companies, who skim as much as they can from international aid packages, whose greed inflates the cost of imports, live lavishly and still have plenty left for luxury living when the rainy days come.  It used to be that African despots could count on “retiring” to a villa in southern France.  The Francophones could, anyway. Anything to get rid of them!  And then their successors, often elected as “reformers,” proved to be no better.  The cycle was discouraging and debilitating to those who dreamed of an Africa that could hold its head up (so to speak) in the world.

For too long there have been too many excuses for Africa’s degradation.  We naive, well-meaning foreigners bought them, because African history was full of terrible chapters our own ancestors had played an unsavory role in.  The slave trade depopulated Africa.  Colonialism exploited Africa.  Raw capitalism drained its resources.  All of these things happened, and even if there was a certain amount of African complicity at each stage, Africa was more sinned against than sinning.  Thus, we in the West were  paralyzed by shame.  We must make up for our crimes and sins, we cried.  Give!  Give!  Give!

Reality, of course, was not so simple. As Barak Obama noted of his father’s country, “Countries like Kenya had a per capital economy larger than South Korea’s when I was born.  They have been badly outpaced.”  Yes.  Outpaced not only by South Korea, but by other Asian tigers, most of them seen as hopeless basket cases when their racist European colonial masters were forced to exit.  When I first went to Africa, Nairobi was admired as the city that worked.  Journalists covering the whole continent worked out of Nairobi.  Unfortunately, Kenya caught the corruption disease and dissolved into bloody tribal warfare during last year’s elections.  

Judith McHale and the White House Press Corps

By Patricia H. Kushlis

In what turned out to be a less than stellar encounter with the White House Press Corps on July 15, America’s new Public Diplomacy Under Secretary Judith McHale fell just short of flat on her face during the Qs and As.

In contrast, her prepared statement that put a positive spin on America’s public diplomacy efforts during President Obama’s Ghana visit was fine. She did what she had set out to do.

But her responses to all but a single follow-up question were lacking. Not as embarrassing as the high profile Karen Hughes flouncing around town in a mud-colored burqa at an Iftar dinner when she was Bush’s Under Secretary for Public Diplomacy – but too many of McHale's responses were not good enough, nevertheless, for someone who has been in the Under Secretary position since early May and is serious about making a difference in how the US is viewed abroad and in improving this country's public diplomacy efforts.