Same old Mbeki

Therevival of interest in Thabo Mbeki is deeply disturbing.

In his much-praised Stellenbosch speech, he hid behind obscurantist terms such as “the democratisation of knowledge”. This sort of sociobabble may impress some, but we should ask ourselves what Mbeki really means by such a term. Perhaps that all opinions ought to be treated as equal, the outlook that allowed Aids denialism to determine his administration’s health policy in this country for years?

To hear Mbeki then accuse others of spreading false knowledge is rich in the extreme. His example of this also exposes the extent to which he remains out of touch with reality.

Western intervention in Libya, he says, was based upon “false knowledge” that Muammar Gaddafi would otherwise have slaughtered thousands of his own people. Mbeki is on record as having been a Gaddafi supporter (as were many within the ANC, including even Nelson Mandela) and his solution to the uprising there would have been to send in AU negotiators, who would have accomplished nothing while thousands were being murdered.

Indeed, this is exactly what is happening in Syria now with its “Arab League Monitor”. To Mbeki’s mind, though, the Nato intervention in Libya was some sort of conspiracy to replace Gaddafi’s regime with one more amenable to Western interests.

Never mind that it’s not at all clear how regime change in Libya is in Western interests. At the moment, it looks as though the regime that will finally emerge in Libya will be an Islamist one even more hostile to the West than Gaddafi’s.

Mbeki lambastes the so-called “new media” such as Twitter and Facebook for misleading the public. But according to him, so too do the “old” print media! So what is “true knowledge” or “democratised knowledge” for Mbeki, one wonders? I suggest that it is little more than his own perverse musings. Shame on us for not knowing better by now than to pay them any attention.