Zimbabwe and China: a toxic legacy

You have to wonder what the whole anti-apartheid movement was actually about. It certainly has not resulted in the ANC perpetuating the legacy in international affairs that it fought for.

Thanks to a vigilant press, an activist civil society and a strong union movement, South African has been saved from absolutely total disgrace. But it's hard to see how Thabo Mbeki (a leading promoter of the ANC in exile) can't leave office as a total failure.

First there was the debacle of failing to deal with the HIV pandemic based on the remote possibility that the mainstream science was wrong, then there was backing incompetent ministers at all costs, and now this - the defence of a failed policy on Zimbabwe at all costs.

The collapse of the presidential run-off in Zimbabwe only further underlines his failure to intervene decisively. Quiet diplomacy, supposedly the only solution to the problem, has failed so comprehensively that you have to ask whether it was any better than doing nothing at all.

And China? I hope there will be a day not too far in the future when China will be a more open society, and its people will look back on China’s role in Africa with shame and embarrassment. But I am not holding my breath. The Belgians, for example, have battled to accept their role in the destruction of the Congo, including complicity in the murder of independence prime minister, Patrice Lumumba. And of course, for Chinese readers, there's the reluctance of the Japanese to admit their crimes in World War II.

Crimes against humanity are not only crimes against individuals, but crimes against us all: they violate the very concept of what it is to be human. Until this idea is widely accepted, we will have made no advance over the barbarity that was unleashed in Europe in 1914, when old-fashioned limits to the projection of power were overwhelmed by mechanised warfare. Until we develop limits not only on what we can do, but on what we should do, crimes of this kind will continue to be committed.