South African President Must Help Zimbabwe

I fell in love with South Africa before my plane had even landed. By the end of my first trip to the country, my new home after my parents moved there my sophomore year, I had no intention of ever ending that love affair. The nation is the most remarkable place I’ve ever been, which I feel carries some weight given I’ve reached elite status on four airlines over as many continents.

Visually, the country is stunning. There’s the Highveld toward the north, a series of seemingly endless, ever-rising plateaus rich with vegetation and wildlife. Durban in the east is like Myrtle Beach, a seaside town with amusements warmed by the Indian Ocean. Cape Town is similar to Northern California’s Napa Valley, except beautiful. Like icing on a cake, all of this is populated with exotic animals. I often kid with my friends that five minutes’ drive from my house is a park that has a family of giraffes, herds of wildebeest, impala and zebras, and two ostriches. Except I’m not kidding — that park actually exists and many more like it. The country is awe-inspiring.

What I love most about South Africa is the politics of hope. I was arriving in a country torn apart by hate and ruled with fear for over four decades. The picture of the death of Hector Pieterson, a 12-year-old boy shot dead by police while protesting that his school be taught in Afrikaans, is the perfect example of the injustice the South Africa state embodied. Yet, out of this police rule, the Bantu-homelands and racial segregation, world greats were born. Nelson Mandela, Archbishop Desmond Tutu and Steve Biko are a few of the many extraordinary characters chiseled during those harrowing times. They came together to build a nation not based on racial politics, rising class tensions or egotism. They built South Africa to epitomize their belief that all people, regardless of any orientation or identification, ought to have the justice and equality they were denied.

But my love affair with South Africa ended when I visited Zimbabwe this summer. My family visited Victoria Falls and spent two nights in perhaps the most outrageous hotel I’ve ever seen (a full-size portrait of Queen Elizabeth II?). I did the customary tour of the shops and restaurants. Yes, prices actually are in the billions. A 231million percent inflation rate will do that to a country — quickly. My most informative experience was the two hours I spent talking with a missionary. I asked him how people could afford billion-dollar offals. He told me they couldn’t. People were going to work not to get paid, but because they believed one day things would improve and then they’d be better off for keeping their jobs. This bothered me because I’ve always strongly believed if someone works hard they can improve their lot in life. I realize that we don’t all start off at the same point and that life isn’t always fair, but it can always improve. These people, however, were working hard and life was getting worse by the day. The cause of their suffering is President Mugabe. His policies are slowly killing the citizens of Zimbabwe, and the world is sitting idly by.

The one government in the world that can enact real change in Zimbabwe was, and still is, doing precious little to change anything. The South African government supported Zimbabwe’s “Old Boy” politics with their own racial constructions. South Africa has the power to turn injustice into justice at no substantial cost to itself, merely by speaking out and taking a public stance. But no. President Mbeki closed his eyes to the Zimbabweans starving to death in Victoria Falls and those being beaten to death in Johannesburg. This was not the justice Nelson Mandela talked about or Desmond Tutu preached. The veil of ignorance the South African government wore was pure selfishness.

The new South Africa, barely two decades old, needs to return to its roots. The situation in Zimbabwe is a stain on South Africa’s foreign policy and domestic policy. The new president, elected next year, needs to finally take Zimbabwe by the proverbial horns and extend the principles of the 1994 government to all aspects of government, not just those which are convenient.

Eamon Nolan is a senior in the School of Foreign Service He can be reached at Nolan@thehoya.com. Memoirs of a Traveler appears every other Monday on www.thehoya.com.