OPEN LETTER: Should Friends Criticize Friends? Should Supporters of South Africa Speak Out on Corruption?

March 22nd, 2010 - by: danny

Last night, I went to a dinner of a wonderful organization called SHARED INTEREST. Many of its leaders were involved during the fight against apartheid promoting corporate responsibility, reaching out to the business and investment community in America to support sanctions and corporate withdrawal to squeeze the apartheid system.

Working with church groups and economic elites, here and there, they played an important role challenging businesses profiting from apartheid.

When apartheid did fall, Shared Interest emerged in a let’s help the new South Africa grow mode, seeking out investors and training opportunities for South Africa. They raised money from investors, networked with South Africans and played an exemplary role by organizing microfinance projects that have helped more than l.8 million people.

I support their work, and, having been to South Africa in the bad old days of apartheid, I marvel at the progress that has been made there with help from groups worldwide like Shared Interest and other NGOs.

But there are also serious problems we cannot overlook: deepening poverty and a growing gap between the white and black upper classes and the people trapped in poverty. The lives and livelihoods of many South Africans did not change much when the old system crumbled.

I think it is time for those of of us who worked so hard to support the movement for freedom in South Africa to become better friends with folks in South Africa by speaking out against some very deplorable trends now compromising South Africa’s global reputation, marring its image, disaffecting iits supporters and, in some real ways, betraying the millions of people around the world who fought in South Africa, and in the global struggle, alongside South Africans, for their country’s liberation.

South Africans did not end apartheid by themselves. They were supported by anti-apartheid movements the world over who organized, rallied, petitioned, marched and gave millions of dollars for the cause. They were supported by the nations of the world through the UN, and, in the end, even by companies who pulled out or would no longer roll over loans. On the battlefield, they had help from Cuba and underground assistance from activists who backed the African National Congress for decades.

They should listen to their friends now just as they welcomed their support then.

This month marks the anniversary of the Sharpeville Massacre of 1961 which reminds us of the 69 martyrs that fought, bled and died to end apartheid

Out of respect for their memory, and to honor all the sacrifices by so many for so long, it’s time for friends of South Africa to speak up and speak out critically, just as supporters of Israel are being asked to do as part of a larger fight for peace and justice. Many feel the best way to support Israel is encourage it to end its occupation and allow Palestinian self-determination.

Those of us who treasure and identify with South Africa’s transformation have to be willing to do the same in order to remind them and ourselves about why we fought too.

I became involved in supporting the South Africa liberation movement in the early l960′s, I went to South Africa first in l967 to play a small role in the fight there. Throughout the l970′s and l980s I worked with the Africa Research Group and wrote article after article to expose complicity with apartheid. In l985, I helped create the Sun City song and video to advocate for sanctions.

At the end of the decade, I helped create and produce the South Africa Now TV series to fight censorship of the struggle. I later produced and directed six films with and about Nelson Mandela and the fight for freedom there. I also made media about the Aids disaster.

I still have many friends in South Africa who I greatly respect for their courage and perseverance. I try to visit at least once a year.

At the same time, I am becoming increasingly outraged by some political personalities who have blatantly profited personally because of their association with the struggle, who have used their positions to do all sorts of shady business deals with perks and government contracts to enrich themselves while the masses of the people see little improvement in their lives.

There is no shortage of documentation by media organizations, courts and government commissions who have probed dodgey arms deals, empowerment deals in name only, nepotism, kickbacks and worse. South Africa’s ANC is in danger of losing the moral high ground that made it so special for so many years. I remember interviewing the late ANC leader Joe Slovo, on the eve of Nelson Mandela’s election for my film Countdown to Freedom. He expressed his fears that corruption in what he called “the flesh pots” could forever damage the struggle.

How can South Africa criticize corruption in other African states if it tolerates it so widely at home?

Do we who acted in solidarity with South Africa for so long have no right to demand some solidarity from former leaders who seem to have cast their principles aside? Of course we do.

Do non-South Africans in the US and Europe have a right to raise these questions. I believe we must!

I still read the South African press and get disgusted by all the scandals implicating leading politicians and ANC leaders who in the process of selling in seem to have sold out.

It is not for me to pass judgment on anyone, especially from a distance of l0,000 miles. I don’t have any standing to get involved in their political battles nor do I want to. But, that doesn’t mean I should just shake my head and stay silent.

True, my life wasn’t on the line the way many of theirs were. I wasn’t in prison or brutalized. My sacrifices were minimal. But that’s still no excuse for some to help themselves to high salaries, profits, cars and benefits all in the name of black empowerment and the liberation movement. This generate resentment and disaffection. It is seen as hypocrisy.

Yes, there must be black economic power as well as black political power but not in the corrupt way it is occurring in too many instances. There is no entitlement for shakedowns and payoffs. There is no license to steal. No one is owed a living. Accountability and transparency are values that demand respect in practice, not just in rhetoric. The new dispensation in South Africa must not be allowed to degenerate into emulating the old one.

This is a moral issue as well as a political one.

There is also no excuse for me to stand by and take refuge in the touchy-feely good vibes of the past without speaking out about some very disgraceful practices in the present that are being justified often by so-called leaders and party aparatchiks in defensive, demagogic and even racist terms. This leads to divisiveness, racial polarization and promotes cynicism. Who is going to tell a certain “youth leader” to shut up!

I think I know why some of this is happening—many who were deprived in the past say its their time now, that they deserve opportunities they were deprived of, and that they didn’t fight or go to prison to be monks or to live in shacks.

I understand that – but what I don’t understand is why more of the ANC’s base is not speaking out against what Archbishop Tutu has called “The Gravy Train?,” the looting of public funds and what the country says it stands for.

I can’t speak out against crime on Wall Street and ignore fraud and similar crimes in another country I came to love.

How did some of these “leaders” suddenly become millionaires, and why have they traded their sense of mission for a Mercedes.

We need to discuss this.

I am not here to name names. I have no vendetta to start, no self-righteousness to ventilate. I am in business myself that is fighting for survival. I am not here to lecture anyone.

But I do think that those of us who worked so hard in campaigns for freedom because of our belief in universal justice and support for human rights have a right and a duty to demand accountability, honestly, openness and transparency from a country that owes its transformation to an international struggle. We need to pay closer attention to what is happening.

I believe we have a responsibility and duty to challenge practices that dishonor South Africa and all it stands for. They also dishonor our own participation over the years in the freedom fight. I for one question all the money spent on staging World Cup games while unemployment grows and misery spreads. This can easily turn into a cruel joke that the country will be paying for in years to come.

I want to see a debate on issues like this, not a coverup in the name of commerce and national pride. Do we need more bread and circuses, when the people need more bread?

If American Jews should speak out against Israeli injustice – and I believe we should— we who fought apartheid should speak up against the emergence of a new South African self-serving elite and economic apartheid compounded by injustices and vast disparities in wealth and opportunity.

Even Hillary Clinton today justified American criticism of Israel’s settlement poliicies before th AIPAC confernce, on the grounds that friends have a duty to speak out about issues they disagree with as well as those they agree on. This is the same spirit that informs campaigns that say friends don’t let friends drive drunk.

I know that President Zuma was part of the struggle and I think knows what I am talking about. So do all the people I know in South Africa. But, shouldn’t he be speaking out and accepting responsibility too for actions that contribute to a perception that his government and political party are irresponsible and contemptuous of its critics?

THe old regime was known for for its arrogance. Why are some in top positions in South Africa becoming like them?

It has taken me a long time to go public with these concerns, but I know I am not alone.

Will others join me?

Danny Schechter

The News Dissector