South Africa's recent failure in its bid to install Dlamini-Zuma as AU chief has made some journalist and commentators gloat in their unanimous expression of opinion that the solidity of negative perception by nations like Nigeria,Kenya,Gabon and Sudan towards South Africa,only highlights that the country's recent pre-eminence is way too arrogant and self-serving by South Africa.
Do you agree with that? Has South Africa's position on the African continent made our country and its people become to full of itself/themselves and in desperate need to be knocked down a few pegs by being brought down to earth?
The New York Times writer LYDIA POLGREEN said this week that "major African nations, like Nigeria and Kenya, had reservations about giving so much power to South Africa, and smaller nations fretted that their interests would be neglected...There is considerable fear and resentment about South Africa’s role, said Steven Friedman, a political analyst and director of the Centre for the Study of Democracy, a research institution here. “There are very serious fears about being dwarfed."
Botswana's Mmegi daily newspaper in an article wrote that:
"South Africa is too American to lead the continent" referring to Dlamini-Zuma's failure to get the top AU job. The news paper goes further by saying "the rest of Africa doesn't like them very much. Being a South African in Africa is like being an American in the rest of the world.
They're looked upon with a mix of envy and resentment, its wealth and power relative to the rest of the continent ensuring that most of the time South Africa gets its way...South Africa's foreign policy ie the bothersome issue of the unwritten rule,that South Africa doesn't maintain a sustained position on all issues i.e. Libya and UN resolution,the rest of Africa love M-net and Debonairs, but hate the power this gives the South African government and the fact that all the profits flow south"....
Where do you and I stand on this perception by others about our country? Does it even matter what other African nations think of South Africa and South Africans in general? Proudly South African used to be shown big-time in ads and commercial in cinemas across the UK.
But does South Africa have what it takes to be jealous about? What was all that hype about anyway this rejection of Dlamini-Zuma? Is it really all about the country she was born in? What makes South Africa so famous on the African Continent?
Is its big $525billion economy that dwarfs the other smaller African Economies,its natural beauty of its landscape that brings in all the visitor's and tourist from across the world, is it its diplomatic heavyweightyness shown across the continent and indeed the entire world,is it its high crime rate,HIV Aids,unemployment,murder,rape,corrupting officials across the board?
Do people rather find South Africa a country that is sad and pathetic with a mish mash of having a welfare state and plenty of cheap and squalid housing? Excactly what are they suppose to be jealous of I wonder?
Are other Africans jealous of South Africa or just looking down on our country,coming into our country illegally to take advantage of what we have and what they can get and take and then laughing at our in-ability to get along with one another i.e. black with white or indian or coloured and vice versa? Do they secretly or openly mock South Africans,even giving them the finger at every opportunity and then take what they need from our lifestyle?
As poet John Donne(1572-1631) once wrote goes:"No man is an island,every man is a piece of a continent".Do you believe that? Are we to arrogant,intolerant,belligerent and foolish to think other Africans are jealous of us?
Granted South Africa and its people has a lot of good things about itself/themselves, but a lot of people don't see much of it on display. It's our bad side that effects them and their opinions most, like the dumping and forcing of our will on the rest of the continent,our murders,rapes,high jacking etc that takes centre stage in their minds.
Ten year old kids working in the "klip" hard rock mines in the rest of Africa just so as to you and the rest of the world can have cell phones and computers. What's not to be jealous about a country where very little of such cruel acts ever gets done and reported!
South Africa is by and large probably not the best place to live by any stretch of the imagination for some people,but to me as a patriotic South African,I stand by my country of birth and that does not mean me thinking I'm better than others,no, rather I am proud of what has been achieved and accomplished in my country to say the least.
As former American President Theodore Roosevelt once said:"Patriotism means to stand by the country. It does not mean to stand by the president or any other public(government) official, save exactly to the degree in which he himself stands by the country. It is patriotic to support him insofar as he efficiently serves the country. It is unpatriotic not to oppose him to the exact extent that by inefficiency or otherwise he fails in his duty to stand by the country. In either event, it is unpatriotic not to tell the truth, whether about the president or anyone else".
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