One blatant case of double-standards amongst local commentators has gone utterly unnoticed. A decade ago, the ANC Government and other SADC governments agreed to the Zimbabwe Government lobbying that the SADC Tribunal should limit its jurisdiction to inter-state disputes, not litigation brought by an individual citizen. (The consequence of this was that white Zimbabwean farm-owners could not use the SADC Tribunal to sue for compensation for having their farms expropriated without compensation.)
Many South African commentators and think-tanks severely criticised the ANC Government for this. In the following years, the UK Prime Minister David Cameron said it was "unimaginable" that Great Britain should be under the jurisdiction of the European Court of Justice. Successive British Prime Ministers Theresa May and Boris Johnson prominently emphasised that they supported Brexit, specifically so that the UK would no longer be under that Court's jurisdiction. But those same South African commentators and think-tanks now remained silent, and mysteriously uttered not one word of criticism of the UK Government.
More recently, during 2017, the South African Government refused to implement an International Criminal Court warrant to arrest the Sudan's then President, Omar al-Bashir. On this occasion, the Government referred to its contradictory treaty obligations giving sovereign immunity to heads of states under the Vienna Convention on the protection of diplomats. Plus, more concretely, that the Sudanese dictatorship's immediate response to such an arrest would have been to take hostage all South African diplomats and their families in Khartoum, and also the South African peacekeepers in Darfur.
Notwithstanding, a number of South African commentators and think-tanks condemned the ANC Government for its inaction.
In recent weeks the U.S. Government has announced it will refuse to cooperate with the International Criminal Court in any war crimes prosecutions it might seek to bring against US soldiers who served in Afghanistan, or Israeli war crimes in the Gaza Strip or the West Bank. The USG went far further than the South African Government. It imposed sanctions on all ICC prosecutors who might even dare to start such investigations.
The U.S. Secretary of State (Minister of Foreign Affairs) denounced the ICC as "a kangaroo court". Fascinatingly, none of those South African commentators and think-tanks uttered one word of censure of the U.S. Government or Mike Pompeo. One must ask why such protracted and blatant double standards?
Why is the ANC Government consistently judged by a much higher bar than that used to judge the UK and USA Governments? Is it that the South African commentators and think-tanks think unimportant what happens in far-off countries? Could it be that they consider the UK and US Governments as impeccably anti-communist Western powers, and therefore above criticism? Could it be the colonial cringe of deference before former imperial and colonial powers?
Could it be that subconsciously they consider white governments are to be trusted, but black governments are to be feared and condemned? On first reading, it appears to be a blend of all four factors mentioned above. One consequence is that such commentators and think-tanks have debased their credibility, and will make their future condemnations be judged with sarcasm by both ANC supporters locally and Pan-Africanists abroad.
Keith Gottschalk
