Was South Africa part of "the west"? Is it anymore?
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How the West was Lost
Posted by Shannon Love on April 10th, 2007 (All posts by Shannon Love)
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Via Instapundit comes a link to a James Kirchick article which contains this paragraph:
It has become de riguer among the press to call on South Africa, the regional power and, at present, Zimbabwe’s lifeline, to act. Newspapers ranging from the Los Angeles Times to the Wall Street Journal have reprimanded South Africa for its silence and complicity in Mr. Mugabe’s crimes. These remonstrations are necessary and right, but no matter how much international outrage there is over the horrors of Zimbabwe, there is little hope that South Africa will ever do anything close to what the West wants it to do.[emphasis added]
I’ve seen this usage before recently. When did South Africa stop being part of the western world?
During Apartheid, everyone very much identified South Africa as western nation, but now that it has black majority rule it seems to have slipped out of the category. I wonder why?
South Africa still retains its western legal and political system. Do we so strongly associate Westernism with European culture that we do not believe that non-Europeans can qualify for inclusion even if they retain the attributes of a western nation?
How different people talk about South Africa might reveal a lot about their underlying models of the relationship between the West and the rest of the world.
This entry was posted on Tuesday, April 10th, 2007 at 9:21 am and is filed under Anglosphere, Politics. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.
3 Responses to “How the West was Lost”
1. RE Says:
April 10th, 2007 at 10:10 am
It seems perfectly natural to me. When control was passed back to the indigenous peoples the symbolism placed them back into the African sphere. Likewise with Rhodesia, India, or Hong Kong.
2. Shannon Love Says:
April 10th, 2007 at 10:47 am
RE,
I suppose so but I would point out that Europeans have lived in South Africa as long as they have lived in the Americas. Most of the peoples of South Africa have lived under Western law and political systems for centuries. I just wonder how much it has really changed in 15 years.
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