The Zimbabwe Mail: Zuma can’t ignore what is happening in Zimbabwe

Zuma can’t ignore what is happening in Zimbabwe
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TIM COHEN  on 16 February, 2010 12:51:00
 
These include employment agencies, estate agencies, valet services, grain
milling, bakeries, tobacco grading and packaging, tobacco processing,
advertising agencies, milk processing and provision of local arts. They also
include barber shops and beauty salons.
Incredibly, they also include agricultural production of food. I suppose
that’s because there is such an oversupply of food in Zimbabwe that you
wouldn’t want just anybody growing it. The inclusion of “milk processing”
is also interesting, given Grace Mugabe’s investments in the milk business.
The legislation is intended as a kind of black economic empowerment process, but
has all the usual hallmarks of Zanu (PF) thuggery and brainlessness; absurd,
unworkable targets and deadlines.
In a memorable piece on Moneyweb, Zimbabwean Cathy Buckle writes: “We all
wondered what would happen when there were no more farms left to grab, now we
know.
“After a year of appeals, conferences and seminars to try and attract
investors back to Zimbabwe, everything was wasted in a single stroke this week.
A new regulation has just been gazetted requiring that all local and foreign
owned companies must hand over at least 51% ownership to ‘indigenous’
Zimbabweans. Multiple thousands of companies are going to be affected and
economists predict that many local industries will be forced into bankruptcy.”
But what’s interesting about these laws, which are so obviously and flagrantly
racist, is how little South Africans seem to care about it.
The African National Congress (ANC) Youth League cannot write a press release
without condemning racism, yet it cannot bring itself to condemn racism that is
happening now, in the country right next door. I guess racism is not racism if
the victims are not your own kind.
Johannesburg churches are overflowing with Zimbabwean refugees who prefer to be
on the winter streets of the city than in their own country. Yet ANC leaders
remain totally unmoved.
The legislation, being announced just before President Jacob Zuma ’s opening
of Parliament speech, was an obviously intended as a kind of “up yours” to
the South African government, which the South African government blithely
ignored, as it always does.
The foreign policy announcements Zuma made in his speech were really of the most
gloriously general kind. Zuma said SA would “intensify efforts to promote the
interests of SA globally”. Shock! He then mentioned the Southern African
Development Community, the African Union and the New Partnership for Africa’s
Development.
Almost as much time was spent in the speech on broadband issues as on foreign
affairs, not including the Copenhagen climate change conference, if that can be
called a foreign affairs issue.
Foreign affairs was one of the areas where Zuma sought to differentiate himself
from the Mbeki administration. Mbeki was known for constantly jetting off to
some conference with the leader of this or that organisation or international
working group, at which long discussions would be held about the necessity for
global moral rectitude and more Scotch. By contrast, Zuma intended to keep his
focus local — something his party and supporters clearly appreciated about his
campaign.
But insisting that a neighbouring country which has ejected perhaps a quarter of
its population into SA should try to remain within the realms of reasonable
barbarism ought not to offend against this general approach.
Zuma needs to do more than just push for “a solution”. He needs to choose
sides.
And please let it be against one of the most openly racist regimes on the
planet.
Cohen is a freelance writer and this article was originally published in The
Business Day (SA)