USA Africa Dialogue Series - Re: [Leonenet] South Africa Neutral Stance Is Infuriating

This is what someone wrote in The Independent:

The foreign policy of the ANC is fairly straightforward; turn a blind eye to EVERYTHING that threatens the lives and wellbeing of their fellow Africans...

I am also on SA's case. This is what I wrote in the Indepencence:

Is South Africa so blind that it cannot see what everyone else has seen? Do the South Africans thank that President Jimmy Cater and his team, President John Kufour and his team, EU's Cristian Preda and his team, the UN observer team and the ECOWAS observer team are all stupid to say that Gbagbo lost the election? Is South African so blind not to see that Laurent Gbagbo's court acted illegally? If its unfounded claim of electoral fraud was tenable, the law stipulates that it should have ordered a new election, not declare the loser of the election as the winner. Now I understand why many Africans on the continent and in the Diaspora are saying that South Africa does not think it is actually part of Africa because of its economic edge.

South Africa should respect the souls of those people in Gbagbo's mass graves and those who risked their lives to go out and vote. South Africa should get out of the business of rewarding dictators who lose elections and cling on to power through violence. President Jacob Zuma's mission should be quite straightforward: tell his friend, Laurent Gbagbo, to stand down.

In Peace Always,
Abdul Karim Bangura/.


-----Original Message-----
From: johnsimbo@telkomsa.net
Sent: Feb 18, 2011 3:08 AM
To: leonenet@lists.umbc.edu
Cc: USAAfricaDialogue@googlegroups.com
Subject: Re: [Leonenet] South Africa Neutral Stance Is Infuriating

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Power sharing my foot!!!

----- Original Message -----
From: Abdul Karim Bangura <theai@earthlink.net>
To: USAAfricaDialogue@googlegroups.com
Cc: leonenet <leonenet@lists.umbc.edu>
Sent: Fri, 18 Feb 2011 06:09:57 +0200 (SAST)
Subject: [Leonenet] South Africa Neutral Stance Is Infuriating

 South Africa's now-neutral stance on Ivory Coast infuriates president-elect's camp

South African President Jacob Zuma is set to go to Ivory Coast this
weekend in a bid to negotiate a powersharing agreement that will pull
the country back from the brink of another civil war.

South Africa's International Relations Minister Maite
Nkoane-Mashabane said that South Africa had the "prerogative" to change
its mind. "I don't know if, when they are asking us to find a way
forward, we should be stagnating and taking them backward," she said.

President
Jacob Zuma arrives to open the 2011 session of the South African
parliament in Cape Town on Feb. 10. South Africa announced today that
President Zuma will leave this weekend for the Ivory Coast to help
negotiate a powersharing agreement that will pull the country back from
the brink of another civil war.

A step back?

If
Gbagbo and Ouattara do agree on a powersharing agreement, however, they
will essentially be stepping backward into the same uneasy coalition
government of national unity that they had formed in the lead up to the
long-awaited Nov. 28 election.

That vote was intended to be the
final step toward normalization, after a punishing 2002-2003 civil war
split the country between the mainly Muslim north and the mainly
Christian south. Just how another government of national unity will
bring lasting peace to Ivory Coast – or justice to the victims of
political violence in the aftermath of the vote – is unclear.

An
estimated 200 of Ouattara's supporters, along with some journalists,
have disappeared in the post-election crisis and are thought to be dead.
The Associated Press claims to have obtained evidence of mass killings,
including 113 bodies at Abidjan's main morgue, bodies that have not
been released to families.

"The violence is absolutely continuing,
and we get reports of ongoing violence every day," says Corinne Dufka, a
senior researcher for Human Rights Watch, based in Dakar, who recently
conducted a study of political killings in Abidjan. "We could safely say
that there are scores of people in the morgues who have not been buried
and who are victims of political violence, the vast majority of whom
appear to have been killed by forces loyal to [Gbagbo]."

The
growing death toll in Ivory Coast caused Jose Moreno-Ocampo, the
prosecutor of the International Criminal Court at the Hague,
Netherlands, to warn both sides against committing human rights
violations.

"If they start to kill people, then it's a crime and
we will pursue them," Mr. Moreno-Ocampo told France 24 news channel.
"The reality is that some people in Ivory Coast are planning attacks and
we know that. And I want to tell them clearly, if you do that ... you
will be prosecuted. That's a clear message."

Numerous African
leaders – including Kenyan Prime Minister Raila Odinga, former Nigerian
President Olusegun Obasanjo, and former South African President Thabo
Mbeki – have attempted in the past few months to kickstart a negotiation
process, exploring all options, including a possible powersharing
agreement. All such efforts have failed.