SA riots: US, allies’ deathly silence disturbing
SILENCE is speech and silence can be loud. There has been loud silence from the United States of America and its allies on the events in South Africa.
The recent rioting and looting in neighbouring South Africa are unfortunate, to say the least.
The saddest part of it all is the loss of more than 200 lives, then follows the loss in business worth billions of dollars and rand equivalent.
The loss of life is a serious issue. I am however not going to delve into the demography of who died, because that is subject to a full final report.
It is fact not fiction that not all those killed might be foreigners, too. It is fact not fiction that the Government went through a difficult time trying to control the rioters.
It is also fact and fiction that South Africa’s neighbours were worried about the development.
Again it is fact and not fiction that the whole world followed the events in South Africa.
But the biggest lesson, and a shocking one, to some of us who follow African politics is that, the United States of America, the self-proclaimed policeman of the world and its allies, went mum.
There was deathly silence from their corner, which is very unusual.
And for me, coming from Zimbabwe where one slap on a protester, raises the ire of the US and its allies, it is unbelievable that there was that silence. Cemetery silence!
I might be missing something here, or I missed something, I did not hear the usual banter on human rights violations, I did not hear the usual banter of rule of law, democracy, blah, blah, blah.
Indeed, there is nothing to celebrate on what happened to South Africa but there is everything to worry about. It is something very shocking, given the race relations in that country and significance of its economy to SADC and beyond.
President Cyril Ramaphosa has said that the violence was preplanned, but has not said who he suspects was behind it.
Ferial Haffajee, associate editor of the Daily Maverick, has written about a co-ordinated strategy of chaos, masterminded by a dozen close associates of the former president Zuma.
He made reference to a number of senior sources from inside the ruling African National Congress (ANC) and intelligence services, Haffajee has sketched an outline of that strategy — from the burning of transport trucks in KwaZulu-Natal seen in the early days of the insurrection, to the blocking of key routes from the port in Durban to the economic heart of South Africa, Gauteng.
The suggestion is this was intended to further undermine and weaken an already fragile economy, and by extension Mr Ramaphosa’s government.
While that might be the internal politics of the ANC, to me there is need to go deeper into what, really silenced the US and its allies.
What really blinded the world’s policeman and champion of human rights? What? Is there something special that the US and its allies know, which most of us do not know about what happened in SA?
There are more questions than answers to this?
The first day passed without comment, so did the second and the third days of rioting.
In the past few years the US and its allies, including Britain, have made it clear that they were using SA to try and influence events on Zimbabwe.
To me it sounded the US and its allies have special interests in SA as a big regional economy and when they turn blind to a mega tragedy then there are more problems than meets the eye.
As a write back, we are yet to hear officially from the US and yet we know that if it was little Zimbabwe, we would have not gone past the first 30 minutes without a policy pronouncement by the US and its allies.
I am tempted to say, the deafening silence is indeed hypocrisy on the part of the US and its allies.
How on earth did they keep quiet on such a major issue?
Prior to the riots in SA, there were riots in Eswatini and he read of a very long interview on the situation from the US ambassador in that country. When there were riots in Zimbabwe, boy oh boy, there was statement after statement on how evil the Government of Zimbabwe was and how it should have allowed protesters to proceed and do as they wished.
Dear reader, does this not make you see things from another angle? Is this not a question of interest? Who killed who in SA? Who was killed in SA?
In a country where the police use rubber bullets and private community security gangs use live ammunition, who killed who? Maybe, when the mystery eventually unfolds, when the dust has settled, we will be able to unpack, why the loud silence from US and it allies?.
“But the biggest lesson, and a shocking one too, to some of us who follow African politics is that, the United States of America, the selfproclaimed policeman of the world and its allies, in Europe went mum. There was deathly silence from their corner as South Africa burnt, which is very unusual. And for me, coming from Zimbabwe where one slap on a protester, raises the ire of the and its allies, US it is unbelievable that there was that silence. Cemetery silence!”