End of a credible South Africa http://www.iol.co.za/index.php?art_id=vn20080430105401529C511154A president releases an iconic freedom fighter and together, sunset clause notwithstanding, they arrange a free and fair election that heralds a rainbow of hope for the human spirit across a post-cold-war world.
Nelson Mandela, the most respected freedom fighter since Mahatma Gandhi, governs for a term, then gracefully turns down a second, and thereby seals his immortality. Once more, the world is in awe of his refusal to hold on to power and all salute Madiba, the ANC, the people of South Africa.
From the casual shirts of Madiba, we move to the proud, suited-up intellectual Thabo Mbeki, who aims to bestow his legacy on South Africa, Africa and the world at large.
South Africa's macro-economic policy is tailored according to the global elite consensus, fiscal and monetary stability is achieved, and South Africa and Mbeki push a renewed Africanist agenda through the mechanisms of Nepad and the OAU, now the African Union (AU), promoting democratic values, accountability and peer reviews.
Yet, the gigantic project of uniting South Africa's dual systems, in everything from education and health to public toilets, took its toll, HIV and Aids spiralled up from 0,7 percent in 1990 to 22 percent by 1999, while the majority continued to live in abject poverty. The South African president soon imagined that HIV did not cause Aids. Instead, historical inequality, i.e. poverty, did.
How else could one explain 20 percent of poor sub-Saharan Africa being HIV-positive?
The world reacted with shock, but as ridiculous as Mbeki sounded, he did have a point. Instead of unpacking the very legitimate thesis that poverty and its associations of risk behaviour, malnutrition, illiteracy and perpetual vulnerability, Mbeki allowed his HIV does not cause Aids thesis to fester, creating mayhem.
Then Manto took her farm to the UNAids gathering in Toronto and made our Health Ministry look like jet-setting cave-dwellers. Again the world, courtesy of the Treatment Action Campaign (TAC) and Zackie Achmat's suicide threats (or refusal to take ARVs) stood up and took notice of the new South Africa with its teething problems.
Tourists started getting raped during office hours, CNN journalists were shot at, and foreign diplomats' homes were being burgled and the world scratched their heads in confusion. Others started nodding their heads, muttering awful things like "this is what you get if you don't have a proper civil war and merely sign some papers instead" and "it's Africa after all, what else did you expect?".
Still, Madiba would stand up once in a while and give the world their glimpse of remembered rainbows again: turning Afro-pessimists into followers and South Africa appeared to be accountable and monitored.
But the South African government would cry out in strong support for Palestine, but no one would listen because, clearly, ignoring starving Zimbabweans while screaming about the far away Middle East didn't cut it by international standards.
Mbeki mediated in central Africa somewhere, but generally when the warring parties had run out of ammunition and wanted to talk.
In one of its first opportunities to showcase its prowess as a serious leader of the developing world, South Africa voted against a United Nations (UN) Security Council resolution aimed at sanctioning the military junta running Myanmar in early 2007.
Like India, whose energy-based relationship with the Myanmar government silenced that country's criticism of the regime, South Africa's vote proved that it was yet another ruthless player in international politics.
Yet, despite growing global awareness of internal problems - including corruption, civil-war-like crime stats, severe income inequality and unemployment, diminished democratic values with Mbeki's closet-dictator style of autocratic governance and response to discord, a rapidly failing health system, especially in regards to the management of HIV and Aids and now, most recently, the mismanagement of resources like energy and, if the grapevine is to be believed, soon water - South Africa is still held in high esteem.
Indeed, the imagery of a nation that narrowly avoided bloodshed through tactical Gandhiism by all sides is what makes up bedtime stories in troubled places as far afield as Kashmir and Armenia.
In fact, no matter how hard Manto tried to match perceptions of South Africa's intellectual capacity with those preconceived, dangerous, and racist stereotypes of Africans with the help of her beetroot fantasies, and no matter how many times the media has showcased Zuma publicly exposing his medialised macho Zulu ego and belief in shower cure-alls across the globe, South Africa's hold on the moral high ground was secure.
Until last week, that is.
By blithely ignoring the Zimbabwean people's choice in an election - that many argue Mbeki influenced the holding of in the first place - South Africa has lost sight of that guiding star, the ideal that allowed it to navigate relatively protected by its shielding light, even in times of dim-witted decision-making.
By tacitly supporting Mugabe at his most vulnerable hour, Mbeki has finally destroyed South Africa's credibility.
At last, the crowd that had once gathered to witness, cheer and offer songs of praise to the dignified characters of Albert Luthuli, Oliver Tambo and Steve Biko, while they lobbied and fought for universal human decency and respect, has finally dispersed in horror at the circus act that has come to replace them.
Mbeki's "no crisis in Zimbabwe" will enter the history books for students to ponder and analyse as a euphemism for a growing crisis in South Africa itself. Of course, as lowly citizens and the local broadsheets show, this lack of concern for the common man and woman has long resonated in letters to the editor sections and the SMS feedback columns in newspapers.
The moral degeneration has also long interested interactive talk shows and citizen journalism. Spending millions to change names of roads while its inhabitants starve, building world-class cities through the displacement of dark-skinned traders from the city centre, supporting Mugabe's oppressive regime but exacerbating severe xenophobia towards foreigners looking to make a living and, simply, to live - and the list goes on.
But the South African image-making machine - the Madiba magic potion wrapped in tinsel and flanked by mostly disastrous and poverty stricken African neighbours - has always proven the harder liquor, even more resilient than the frustrated squeaks from the peanut gallery.
Conferences on racism and sustainable development have been awarded, cricket and rugby world cups have been hosted and Fifa has bestowed the 2010 soccer World Cup finals. It is the ultimate badge of legitimacy. But the sham that this government is turning out to be is increasingly evident.
Of course, China has long trampled deviant students, forced foetuses to make shoes and played with Tibetans like they wouldn't dare with their food, but the world still awarded it the Beijing Olympics.
But respect, unlike everything else, cannot be made in China.
And thank you Mr Mbeki, we've just lost that too.
Azad Essa is a researcher and journalist at IOLS-Research, UKZN
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