Speaking of Peace Prize winners, Mandela has withdrawn his support of the war.
Or, the commies are launching another anti-American crusade.
Analysis: Mandela's reversal means more
Date: Saturday, January 05, 2002 5:06:04 PM EST
By R.W. JOHNSON
As sub-Saharan Africa's dominant power, South Africa could make any follow-up action in the war on terrorism uncomfortable for African Muslims.
The signal came in an address given by Deputy President Jacob Zuma to Durban's biggest mosque on Thursday, which has now become public. In it Zuma not only claimed that it had been wrong to apply the term "terrorist" to the Sept. 11 bombings -- they were, apparently, an act of war and thus more understandable -- but that American air power had since been used in an unjust war against innocent Afghan civilians.
The view represents a major volte-face by the South African government. Zuma never speaks on foreign policy issues except at the specific behest of President Thabo Mbeki, who likes to handle foreign policy himself. Immediately after Sept. 11 Mbeki roundly denounced the bombings and announced South African support for the United States in general principle.
Indeed, when the ANC premier of Eastern Cape province, Makhenesi Stofile, declared the United States should ask itself if it hadn't provoked and deserved the events of Sept. 11, he was sharply told that he was out of line with the policy of Mbeki's ruling party, the African National Congress.
Clearly, Stofile would now be perfectly in line with the new, revised policy. It is now clear that the government has decided to shift its stance and that its first task was to bring pressure to bear on Mandela, whose support for Bush had been more outspoken than anything anyone in the Mbeki government had said or implied. Now, with Zuma's statement, the turn is complete.
It is unlikely that this shift has occurred as a result of anything that has happened in Afghanistan. To oppose the U.S. action there now makes little sense -- the war is effectively over and the various videotapes released by bin Laden amount, in the eyes of most, to virtual admissions, indeed boasts, of his responsibility for Sept. 11.
To some extent the shift of policy may be due to pressure from Muslim states whose support Mbeki is keen to maintain within the wider context of the Non-Aligned Movement. Far more likely, however, the pressure came from domestic sources. These are twofold.
Although South Africa's Muslims account for less than 2 percent of the population, Muslim Asians have always enjoyed a pivotal position within the ANC and the South African Communist Party, or SACP. This community of 200,000 people, centered in Durban, is on average far wealthier and better educated than the 500,000 Muslim Africans in the Cape, and during South Africa's struggle years they effortlessly rose to leadership positions in the ANC.
Today, all four Asians in the Cabinet are Muslims, while the 800,000 non-Muslim Asians have no representative.
Almost immediately after Sept. 11, a strong current of resistance to U.S. reprisals was apparent in this community. For some time, for example, one can buy a bin Laden T-shirt on the streets of Durban with the slogan "Innocent till proved guilty."
It is no accident that Deputy President Zuma came to Durban to publicize the government's policy shift -- or that he did it in the central mosque which sits in the shadow of the exceptionally well-heeled Islamic Information Centre, set up with funds from bin Laden.
The second point, however, is that the SACP has decided to wage a pro-Palestinian campaign, denouncing Israeli aggression. Ronnie Kasrils, the Jewish (and SACP) minister for water affairs, has spearheaded the campaign. He is strongly seconded by the Cabinet's Muslims, particularly Deputy Foreign Minister Aziz Pahad; his brother, the de facto prime minister, Essop Pahad; and Dullah Omar, the minister of transport -- all three SACP members.
In effect this campaign is also anti-American -- U.S. support for Israel is routinely denounced -- and tends to see Sept. 11 as a blow in a larger struggle.
This movement has already had considerable success. In large part it was due to such pressure that South Africa has made it less than easy for U.S. warships to call in at its ports.
The key to this latest shift is the role rumored to be played by Raymond Mhlaba, Mandela's old fellow prison inmate from Robben Island, in persuading Mandela to publicly reverse himself. Mhlaba is no Muslim but he is a lifelong SACP stalwart -- who would never have taken an initaive of this kind unless it was endorsed by the Party.
The fact that Mbeki has decided to bow to such pressures is no small indication of the SACP's continuing strength within the ANC alliance as well as the power of the Muslim lobby. It is a odd choice: It risks infuriating the Bush administration in the hour of its triumph in Afghanistan and when it is far too late to influence events there.
It is a clear sign, though, that if the United States follows this phase of its campaign with a strike against Iraq, South Africa is now likely to be vocal in its criticism, at the head of a large Third World group.
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