SA 'forgot' Aristide birthday
2004-07-23 16:31
Cape Town - In a generous message of support for deposed Haitian president Jean-Bertrand Aristide, South African President Thabo Mbeki said on Friday that there was another important July birthday that had passed by "without public notice".
In his regular ANC Today column on the African National Congress website on Friday, the president refers to Aristide - who was recently exiled to a safe haven in South Africa after being deposed earlier this year - as "President Titid".
Mbeki describes this as an "affectionate Creole nickname given to President Aristide by the poor of his country".
The other birthday he was referring to was that of former South African president Nelson Mandela, who turned 86 on July 18 - three days after Aristide turned 51.
Under the headline "Haiti after the press went home", Mbeki delivers a lengthy tribute to the role played by the exiled president and what he viewed as the evils of his opposition - including coup plotters and others who wished to speak in the name of the army, which Aristide abolished nine years ago.
Haiti remembered the occasion
Mbeki said: "Where our people did not join him (Aristide) in these celebrations because they did not know it was his birthday, the people of Haiti did not forget.
"But they could not join him because circumstances had taken him and his family far away from his beloved motherland (to South Africa)."
Mbeki summarised the role of Aristide: "From his election in 1990, President Aristide and other patriots have been engaged in a complex and difficult struggle to establish the stable democratic system that has eluded the First Black Republic since its birth 200 years ago.
"They have also sought to ensure that this new democracy should address the interests of the majority of the people, the black urban and rural poor."
Referring to Aristide''s predecessors - "the Duvalier regimes of Papa Doc and Baby Doc", Mbeki said they, in contrast, developed repression "into open state terrorism against the masses of the people, relying on the police, the army that was disbanded in 1995 and the "tonton macoutes".
Refers to 'brutal practices'
Mbeki says that "agents and practitioners of Duvalier state terrorism led the counter-revolution of 2004, which resulted in the overthrow of the Aristide government" in February.
Mbeki continued: "It is perfectly obvious that a safe and secure environment in Haiti, respect for human rights, and a return to constitutional legality cannot be achieved without defeating the criminal forces of counter- revolution that necessitated the deployment of United Nations troops and other international interventions.
"The declared purposes of the UN cannot be realised while those schooled in the brutal practices of the Duvaliers occupy the centre-stage in Haiti."