RW Johnson: Pretoria’s support for global monsters exposed in Syrian “Belsen redux”

RW Johnson exposes South Africa's troubling role in shielding Syria's Assad regime, now infamous for Nazi-level atrocities revealed in mass graves. Johnson highlights Pretoria's UN votes preventing investigations into Assad's abuses, contrasting this with Mandela's human rights-driven vision. He criticizes both the ANC and opposition for their silence, revealing a pattern of support for oppressive regimes..Sign up for your early morning brew of the BizNews Insider to keep you up to speed with the content that matters. The newsletter will land in your inbox at 5:30am weekdays. Register here..The seventh BizNews Conference, BNC#7, is to be held in Hermanus from March 11 to 13, 2025. The 2025 BizNews Conference is designed to provide an excellent opportunity for members of the BizNews community to interact directly with the keynote speakers, old (and new) friends from previous BNC events – and to interact with members of the BizNews team. Register for BNC#7 here..By RW Johnson___STEADY_PAYWALL___.The fall of the Assad regime in Syria has thrown open the dreadful prisons where political prisoners were tortured and murdered. In addition there were mass graves where the sorrowing relatives of the victims looked for traces of loved ones who had "disappeared". Initial estimates were that at over 100,000 people had ended up in the mass grave at al-Qutayfa, 30 miles north of Damascus – but that is only one of many mass graves around the country. This suggests that the ultimate reckoning may be of utterly horrific proportions. One foreign observer, surveying one of these mass graves, was quoted as saying that "We haven't seen anything like this since the Nazis. It makes you realise what it was like for Allied troops when they captured Buchenwald and Belsen.".This should be causing great soul-searching in Pretoria, particularly in the foreign ministry for South Africa was a notable supporter of the Assad regime, using its vote at the United Nations to prevent the Assad regime from being investigated for human rights violations. Astonishingly, neither the government nor the Opposition has yet commented on how South Africa became involved in this culpability for some of the worst human rights violations the world has ever seen. A full explanation and mea culpa would be in order..Of course, this was hardly the first time that the ANC government has shown friendship for those who violate human rights. Cuba, which does not allow freedom of speech or the press or free elections and which, under Fidel Castro, imprisoned HIV+ sufferers in solitary detention, is a notable example. .Similarly the Zanu-PF regime in Zimbabwe has continually practised torture and murder and has rigged election after election while ANC presidents one after another, Mbeki, Zuma and Ramaphosa, continued to offer their fulsome support and solidarity with the Harare regime. Currently, South Africa is in the awkward situation of having hailed the Mozambican elections as free and fair – but finds that so gross was Frelimo's election rigging (which was fully noted by more neutral foreign observers) that major civil disturbances continue to this day in Mozambique. In addition, of course, the ANC government has happily championed terrorist movements like Hamas which practise torture, rape, kidnapping and murder – and which have prevented those Palestinians under its control from having free elections or even free speech..Yet Nelson Mandela declared that South Africa's foreign policy would be based on "our belief that human rights should be the core concern of international relations" and that "to deny people their human rights is to challenge their very humanity". After all, under the new Constitution a Bill of Rights (contained in Chapter Two of the Constitution) guarantees basic human rights to all South Africans..The first showdown came over the murderous Abacha regime in Nigeria. Abacha had seized power, imprisoning the elected President, Mashood Abiola. Thabo Mbeki went to meet Abacha, was shocked to discover that 43 political detainees had just been murdered, but returned to South Africa to urge Parliament to avoid any hostile moves or sanctions against the Abacha regime. Instead, he said, South Africa would use silent diplomacy to work towards the restoration of Nigerian democracy. This was, of course, utterly pointless. However, at the next Commonwealth Heads of Government Meeting (CHOGM), Mandela furiously denounced Abacha for the murder of Ken Saro-Wiwa and eight others, demanding Nigeria's expulsion from the Commonwealth and sanctions including an oil boycott. .Mbeki, who maintained a cordial relationship with Abacha, worked together with Aziz Pahad to try to undermine Mandela, though Archbishop Tutu and Cyril Ramaphosa, the ANC Secretary-General, supported Mandela. Most African states stayed silent, preferring not to criticise Nigeria. Abacha had Mandela hanged in effigy in Abuja and Nigeria's foreign minister accused Mandela of betraying Africa and showing that South Africa was still a white-run state. Gradually, Mbeki wore down Mandela's resistance, and ultimately, Pretoria cancelled its hard line in the name of "African solidarity". Abacha took immediate advantage, murdering first Mrs Abiola and then Abiola himself. .Ironically, Abacha died shortly after Mbeki's accession to the Presidency. There was huge popular rejoicing over the restoration of democracy in Nigeria, where Mandela had been popularly hailed as a hero. Ironically, had South Africa stuck to Mandela's principled position it would have been wholly vindicated and scored an enormous international triumph. But it was Mbeki's cynical disregard for human rights which set the pattern for the future. Even Ramaphosa, when he came to power, was careful to continue in that direction..Why has the ANC thrown away its much-trumpeted regard for human rights? In part, its claim to moral high ground has always been bogus: in its Angolan camps, it tortured and murdered many of its own supporters, after all. And throughout the Struggle years it showed zero interest in the denial of human rights in the Soviet bloc and African countries where it was in exile. And it has pursued a highly ideological foreign policy, solidarising with left-wing regimes regardless of their human rights abuses and with "the Global South", a romantic label which conceals many dictatorships, human rights abusers and worse. .Nonetheless it is a severe shock to see that South Africa has been aiding and abetting the Syrian dictatorship whose human rights record compares with that of the Nazis. Assad had special prisons in which torture and murder was routine and on a massive scale. How did it come about that South Africa has been shouting from the rooftops about the "genocide" in Gaza while actually supporting the next door regime in Syria which was killing and torturing many times more of its own citizens ? The sheer hypocrisy of this stand is breath-taking. .To be fair, this was not the work of the current foreign minister, Ronald Lamola, but of his naive and silly predecessor, Naledi Pandor, and her predecessors before that. They happily embraced what Iran called the Axis of Resistance, thus ignoring the fact that Iran is an exceptionally brutal regime, that Assad's Syria was even worse, that Hezbollah and Hamas are both terrorist movements guilty of murder, rape and torture as well as the medieval barbarism of hostage-taking. Israel, quite reasonably, called this "the axis of evil". If Pretoria wanted to criticise Israel, that was its prerogative – but there was no need to embrace the opposing "Axis of Resistance" which was, on any accounting, many times worse..Moreover the new Syrian regime has asked Israel to remove its troops from any part of Syria – but also said that Syrians and traumatised and exhausted, that they have no hostility to any of their neighbours (i.e. including Israel) and that they only want to live in peace. This is potentially a huge breakthrough for Israel and, if Netanyahu manages the situation sensitively, could even result in Syria recognising Israel. It would be ironic indeed if Hamas's attack of October 7, which was intended to prevent the further extension of the Abraham Accords, ultimately resulted in facilitating that process. It is certainly not impossible and one should also realise that Israel has just given a breathtaking display of its military strength and abilities, impressing its potential allies and deterring its potential enemies. In the Middle East, as in most of the Global South, sheer strength is respected ahead of almost everything else..Should this occur – with Saudi Arabia and most of the other Gulf states recognising Israel – Pretoria would find that it had backed the wrong horse, that it was now bracketed with the sole remaining hold-out, Iran, and that it was increasingly out of sync with the majority of the Middle East. But while that might or might not happen, there is no doubting its huge moral failing over Syria..When the Allies first liberated the Nazi concentration camps General Eisenhower ordered his officers to make sure that American soldiers under their command went into the camps "so that they can see what we are fighting against". For Ike was rightly confident that anyone who saw such sights would feel a complete revulsion and need no more convincing. .But why has the revelation of Assad's atrocities not had a parallel effect upon South Africans? The government has said not a single word about it. There has been no apology for South Africa having prevented the UN Human Rights Commission from having investigated Assad's abuses. were What is even more astonishing is that the Democratic Alliance has not said a word about this appalling denouement. It would be foolish to have high expectations of a party led by John Steenhuisen, but even so the DA's complete and bland silence is extraordinary. There surely has to be a full accounting for how South Africa came to be supporting and protecting a regime which was carrying out a Holocaust against its own citizens. And there must be a commitment never to allow such a thing to happen again. .Read also:.The fall of Syria's Assad regime: The winners, the losers and the uncertainty – Katzenellenbogen🔒 The Economist: The secret talks between Syria's new leaders and the Kremlin🔒 FT's Gideon Rachman: The West should not succumb to cynical regret over Syria

RW Johnson: Pretoria’s support for global monsters exposed in Syrian “Belsen redux”

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