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.
Still, South Africa ranks 54th out of 180 countries on the transparency and corruption index. Only that paragon Botswana, at 36th, does better, with Namibia and Ghana trailing at 61st and 67th respectively. Of the rest of the sub-saharan countries, the less said the better. These figures are for 2008. For all its imperfections, South Africa has transferred power through elections and it is less corrupt than most countries in this world. To expect more would perhaps be imposing a burden that could do more harm than good.
A Crime Is a Crime
Now another remarkable South African has made an appearance on the world stage. That’s Justice Richard Goldstone, the chief author of the recent report on what happened in Gaza when the Israeli army moved in to put a stop to the firing of rockets into cities in southern Israel. Two things are remarkable about this 500-page report: Hamas is accused of crimes against humanity for firing those rockets at civilian targets—and Israel is accused of reacting massively disproportionately to provocations it did have a right to defend itself against. Israel refused to cooperate with the inquiry and has rejected the report, produced ironically by a fellow Jew, of all things. Asked by Bill Moyers how he mustered the strength to find the Israeli army so culpable, Justice Goldstone replied that it’s indefensible to lower one’s standards to let one’s co-religionists off the hook.
The whole interview is worth watching or reading, and I found myself thinking how interesting it would be if this highly principled South African, having lived through the remarkable process of transforming South Africa peacefully from apartheid to majority rule, might not play a constructive role in negotiating a just peace and fair settlement between Israel and Palestine. There are, of course, no exact parallels, except perhaps in psychology. The Boers were afraid to let go, afraid of what would happen if they ceased to hold the reins of power, especially since they had ruled over the blacks so brutally. Israel, clearly, is afraid to let go of territory, afraid of a fully sovereign Palestinian state that’s not a ridiculous Swiss cheese. A genuine two state solution, including a Palestine in control of its borders, armed to defend itself and able to make alliances, must appear to be a great risk—and yet the current situation is neither comfortable nor sustainable. Similarly, I’m sure that many Whites in South Africa are amazed, to this day, that they are still alive and still living in the houses they occupied before the big change. It's time for Israel to take the plunge into reality, too.I find myself inclined to end this meditation with a plea. Support PBS when the pledge drive comes around. Programs like this are priceless, but that doesn’t mean they can be made and aired for nothing.