South Africa

Suffice it to say that one should not turn to ESPN for rugby coverage. Nonetheless this preview should at least give Americans some sense of the favorites heading into this year’s World Cup in France. The headline, “All Blacks, Les Bleus and Wallabies are the favorites” is a little misleading. New Zealand, France, and Australia are the top three teams in the world according to the International Rugby Board rankings, (with Australia ranked second, France, the hosts, third) but by most serious reckonings, number-four-rated South Africa is considered New Zealand’s most serious threat.

Crossposted from dcat.

In this week’s New York Times Book Review, John Donnelly, who covers global health and the environment for The Boston Globe, has written a favorable review of Helen Epstein’s The Invisible Cure: Africa, the West, and the Fight Against AIDS. An important book on a vital topic, The Invisible Cure posits that the best solutions to the AIDS crisis in Africa will come from Africans, an argument put forth by many in the development community as well. Of course an Africa for Africans by Africans has been the cri de couer of the continent since independence. But the Pan African dream, the African Renaissance, a solution to the continent’s problems, will not come until good governance, transparency, and democratization are all priorities across the continent, and not just in a few scattered pockets.  

Two months after taking office after a disputed election fraught with irregularities, Nigerian President Umaru Yar’Adua finally announced the formation of his cabinet yesterday after weeks of horse trading with the Senate, which has to approve the selections. It is difficult to discern whether this represents good news or bad in oft-troubled Nigeria. On the plus side, it seems to represent collaborative democracy in action, with the senate vetting process going forward as required. But there are also whispers that Yar’Adua’s predecessor, Olusegun Obasanjo still wields too much influence over his successor. Nairobi’s East African Standard fears that Obasanjo might still be “calling the shots” in Nigeria.

Hat Tip to the Council on Foreign Relations.

The International AIDS Society (IAS) conference, the biggest of its kind in the world, just closed in Australia. Its most significant conclusion is that the world must find a way to develop and deliver child-specific, side-effect-free (or limited) drugs to allow children with the disease to survive into adulthood (and perhaps to live to see a future in which the disease is eradicated).

Beyond hoary “children are the future” cliches, this proposal makes sense for a number of reasons. For one, call me a cynic, but the cliche is a great selling point. Finding a way to address in AIDS in children will inevitably capture hearts and imaginations in a way that simply addressing AIDS in Africa does not. But beyond the salesmanship, it seems logical to try to stanch the spread of a disease that has proven so fatal for children. Address the disease among its youngest victims while at the same time pushing for antiretroviral drugs geared toward adults and with side effects that can prove as dangerous to children as the disease they intend to attack. This is a strategy that seems both smart from a disease-combating perspective as well as from a marketing and political vantage point.

On Sunday former United Nations Secretary general Kofi Annan gave the fifth annual Nelson Mandela lecture at Madiba’s foundation. In his talk Annan entreated African leaders to promote democracy and good governance and to disavow tyranny.

It turns out that throughout much of the continent, Africans are already heeding the call for democracy and away from kleptocracy and dictatorship. In the newest issue of The Journal of Democracy Daniel N. Posner and Daniel J. Young have an article posing the argument that peaceful transitions of power may well already be underway, with force having given way to a general trend toward the rule of law.  In sum, that Africans are benefiting from the “institutionalization of political power.”

Drought has exacerbated a food shortage which in turn has been exacerbating an HIV/AIDS-fueled health crisis in the tiny Mountain Kingdom of Lesotho. Maseru has declared a state of emergency. And things are probably going to get worse before they get better.

According to Business Report, South African consumer confidence, which has been ongoing for some time,  either continues apace or it does not. What this somewhat frustrating contradiction tells us, I think, is that the dismal science is more dismal than science and that consumer confidence is probably a pretty vague matrix to gauge the health of any economy.

For whatever reason, Blake Hounshell at Foreign Policy’s “Passport” decided that on Mandela’s birthday he needed to write a blog post declaring that “Nelson Mandela is No Saint.” Let’s leave aside the fact that no one has actually argued that Mandela is a saint, and so Hounshell is heroically creating a straw man to beat him up and then declare victory. Huzzah. And Hounshell’s point would have disappeared into the nether had it not been for the fact that Andrew Sullivan reproduced large portions of Hounshell’s post, including the “No Saint” crack. And he did so uncritically.

Andrew Sullivan is a huge driving force in the blog world, and even though he has never given any indication that he has any real concern, interest, or understanding of Africa, if he grants his imprimatur to an argument, it will have a huge ripple effect. Thus I wrote him an email (which has gone unacknowledged), which I would like to excerpt here (I have edited the email slightly without changing the meaning at all):

Andrew –
 I really wish you had been a little more fair to Mandela, especially on his 89th birthday, even in using someone else’s article. Was his tenure in office as ahead of the curve as it ought to have been on AIDS? No. But let’s keep in mind a few salient points — as important and devastating as the AIDS scourge has been in Subsaharan Africa and in South Africa, Mandela had a few things on his plate in his one term in office (and serving just one term, given the context of African politics, is itself incredibly laudable). He took over from a loathsome regime during a time when the idea of reconciliation was not some quaint idea but a real need in his country. The transformation which he oversaw was a tremendous accomplishment. He had to deal with not only foreign affairs as newly elected head of state, he had to do so as the first legitimate leader of the region’s only superpower. He had economic issues to address. In other words, his AIDS policy may have left a lot to be desired, but let’s keep in mind that the man had a few things on his plate.
 
But furthermore, your glib “no saint” characterization also reveals a static understanding of contemporary history. Mandela’s life, even his public life, did not end in 1999 when he gave way to Thabo Mbeki. His foundation has made AIDS a central issue and Mandela has often been forthright that as president he did not do enough. Can one imagine many other leaders being that candid about their shortcomings so soon after leaving office? And then taking the issue on which he or she fell short and making it a centerpiece of an active and profoundly important foundation?
 
I know that blogging sometimes invites glibness. I am the blogger and writer on Africa and especially South African issues for the Foreign Policy Association and I have a blog of my own,  in addition to my normal writing duties and responsibilities as a professor. But we, and especially someone with your profile, must avoid an unfair glibness in which nuance gives way to a “gotcha” approach. Mandela is not beyond reproach, but he warrants more than a dismissive treatment, even if you can cover it by saying you are using someone else’s words.

The problem with taking a one-issue focus on Mandela, who certainly is not beyoind reproach, is that doing so is myopic. But furthermore almost all of the examples of irresponsibility Hounshell cites and Sullivan uncritically replicates fall in the lap of Thabo Mbeki. And while Sarafina II proved to be a disaster, but at its essence the idea was not necessarily a bad one even if its execution proved a disaster – have a playwright with an international education produce a show that will serve as a public educational tool in the fight against AIDS. Every major public health crisis that I can think of has been accompanied by a major education component. The idea of such an endeavor is not the problem — the misallocation of scarce resources and the execution is what doomed Sarafina II to the status of an unfunny punchline.

 It seems unseemly to me to publish a post declaring Mandela not to be a saint on his 89th birthday when there is so much to celebrate. But that unseemliness is multiplied when the criticisms are repeated by people who have not otherwise shown themselves to be especially dedicated to South Africa or to African issues generally. 

Nelson Mandela turned 89 today, birthday gifts pile up, and South Africa celebrates. The still vibrant liberation hero and South Africa’s first legitimate president still inspires hope, and continues to grow in popularity, whether dealing with his beloved South Africa, advising African leaders, or drawing the support of global football stars at a ceremony on Robben Island, where Mandela has said that soccer provided “a way of survival.” Mandela is the one African figure who is considered a global icon and hero.

It is easy to be cynical, about Africa and about just about anything. And Mandela is, of course, not beyond reproach. But despite all of my finely tempered professional cynicism, Mandela still stands as a hero to me and to millions in South Africa and across the globe. Happy birthday, Madiba.

Over at The New Republic James Kirchick (whose work, frankly, I have little use for most of the time) wonders, based on idle comments from Bulawayo’s Archbishop Pius Ncube, whether Great Britain should invade Zimbabwe and remove Mugabe. While Kirchick makes some fundamentally (if somewhat obvious) decent points, I’m not certain that an invasion of Zimbabwe, initiated from a former colonial metropole, is viable, practical, sensible, or desirable. But Kirchick’s article does point out the frustration that at least a few outside observers have over Mugabe’s ability to run roughshod in Zimbabwe, eliciting little more than finger waving, if that.

While a Great Britain-initiated invasion seems like a bad idea, what about a South Africa-initiated and led invasion to which western powers provid some overt support? Mugabe is old, but depending on old despots to die away too often results in significant and unfortunate outliers from actuarial tables while in the meantime those subject to the despot’s rule tend to suffer, never mind what could result in the succession crisis.

The current world climate has created an environment of knee-jerk opposition to the use of force, and that response may even be understandable. But current circumstances should not blind us to the fact that force is sometimes necessary to counter force, and Mugabe is nothing if not forceful. Maybe military action should not be the option of first resort, but we are sort of beyond talk about “first resorts” now anyway, are we not?