Leon: Mbeki has 'race myopia'

2007-03-23 21:20

Cape Town - President Thabo Mbeki has "race myopia" and his shortsightedness is costing South Africa and the sub-continent dearly, said Democratic Alliance (DA) leader Tony Leon.

Leon said: "On the three overriding crises that have occurred on his presidential watch - HIV/Aids, crime and Zimbabwe - the president's steadfast refusal to take necessary action is traceable to a blinkered attitude towards race."

In his weekly newsletter, published on his party's SA Today website, Leon said Mbeki's "refusal to tackle the real problem" was typical of the racial myopia that had become a leitmotif of his presidency.

Mbeki's hypersensitivity to negative portrayals of Africa and Africans continually skewed his judgement, and fuelled government's refusal to take appropriate action in each case.

"At base is the president's resentment of what he regards as outside interference in the affairs of this continent.

"The irony is that, by refusing to speak out against Mugabe, to act resolutely against Aids or to propel a thoroughgoing 'war on crime', Mbeki reinforces the Afro-pessimists' worst stereotypes.

'Gross inequalities'

"In ANC Today (the party's website) of February 9 2001, for example, he explained that the 'gross inequalities of wealth and opportunity between whites and blacks make possible the assaults and murders that are commonplace on the country's farms and urban areas'.

"The existence of such inequality - undeniable in itself - is certainly no justification for governmental foot-dragging about lawlessness."

Leon said Mbeki's approach to Zimbabwe was the most flagrant example of his race myopia.

"Regarding HIV-Aids - a syntactic and semantic connection Mr Mbeki still finds hard to make, routinely preferring to speak of 'HIV and Aids' - the president's denialism has most obviously cost lives.

'African sexual rapacity'

"For years, Mbeki has pandered to fringe commentators who question the link between HIV and Aids, retarding government's roll-out of the ARVs that might to date have saved hundreds of thousands who have succumbed to the disease.

"At base, again, is the president's race myopia that the world thinks Aids is a peculiarly African problem, because of the myth of African sexual rapacity and promiscuity."

Leon said Mbeki denialism on the three issues had caused, by default, huge damage to human rights across the sub-continent.

"In his obsession with white racists, Mbeki ignores the massive goodwill actually displayed in all communities who have adapted to the new political dispensation.

'Intellectually dishonest'

"It is not only disingenuous to portray such fringe views as the norm amongst white South Africans; it is also intellectually dishonest.

"While he rails against shadowy racist caricatures, Mr Mbeki's own racial myopia undermines his ability to tackle the challenges we face as a nation.

"Ironically, these three issues affect black South Africans more than anyone," Leon said.

- SAPA