[Here some infuriated Zimbabweans are seeing what I have warned of for years now. Zimbabweans have been BEGGING the African National Congress Govt in South Africa for years now for help.

The first Zimbabwean who ever came to me and discussed this was Jenny, the woman who runs WOZA (Women of Zimbabwe Arise). Jenny and I sat one morning in a hotel having breakfast discussing this. She was telling me of her ideas, and what she told me that morning later on became WOZA – who have been very active in Zim, many of whose female members including Jenny, have spent time in prison whenever it suited Robert Mugabe.

Jenny also told me that morning how she had friends in the ANC in South Africa and she was going to approach them. She was very hopeful that they would help her. I told her that in my view, despite all the talk by INDIVIDUAL MEMBERS OF THE ANC that they were against Mugabe, I doubted that the ANC would ever help anyone who was against Mugabe. I told her that in my view, the ANC is on Mugabe’s side.

Jenny and I never met again. And to this day, I see one group after another of infuriated Zimbabweans feeling completely BETRAYED by South Africa which they thought (wrongly!) was all for Democracy and Freedom. And rightly they should be.

As bizarre as this may seem… the Blacks who oppose Mugabe are EVERY BIT AS SCREWED AS THE WHITES IN SOUTH AFRICA – maybe even worse! Their only friend is the CIA… who are currently are proving to be pretty damned useless. Believe it or not, but NOBODY IN AFRICA will help the blacks of Zimbabwe. It has been a difficult message to get across to them because one would THINK (yet one would be wrong), that because Africa is ruled by blacks that they will care for the freedom and suffering of other black people. Wrong! They are all going to back MUGABE! Bizarre – but true – and I’m probably the only person who has been warning of this bizarre state of affairs for years now. Jan]

Zimbabwe: Bennett Affair – SA Hypocrisy Exposed
By: Marian Tupy

ON 26 May, South African government denied political asylum to Roy Bennett, the outspoken critic of President Robert Mugabe and former MP.

Bennett fled to South Africa in April 2006 to escape incarceration on trumped-up charges of attempting to assassinate Mugabe. If returned to Zimbabwe, he will likely end up in jail. Bennett’s treatment stands in stark contrast with Pretoria’s treatment of Jean-Bertrand Aristide, whose corrupt and authoritarian rule over Haiti did not prevent him from getting an asylum in South Africa. Clearly, as far as Pretoria is concerned, not all political refugees are equal.

Bennett made the news in May 2004, when he scuffled with Justice Minister Patrick Chinamasa on the floor of Zimbabwe’s Parliament. Bennett, who lost his farm during Mugabe’s disastrous land expropriation policy, lost his cool when Chinamasa said that Bennett “has not forgiven the government for acquiring his farm, but he forgets that his forefathers were thieves and murderers”. Though he later apologised for the incident, Bennett was sentenced to one year in prison by the Parliament dominated by Mugabe’s loyalists.

Bennett was “made to stand naked in front of prison guards and … given a prison uniform covered with human excrement.” While in jail, the once stocky farmer ruined his health and lost about 30kg.

Earlier this year, Bennett went into hiding and later fled to South Africa. His flight followed the alleged discovery of an arms cache on a farm in eastern Zimbabwe. The government immediately started rounding up opposition figures and put out a warrant for Bennett’s arrest.

Once he arrived in South Africa, Bennett petitioned for political asylum under that country’s 1998 Refugees Act. According to the act, “no person may be refused entry into (South Africa), expelled, extradited or returned to any other country … if as a result of such refusal, expulsion, extradition, return or other measure, such person is compelled to return to or remain in a country where he or she may be subjected to persecution on account of his or her race, religion, nationality, political opinion or membership of a particular social group; or his or her life, physical safety or freedom would be threatened on account of external aggression, occupation, foreign domination or other events seriously disturbing or disrupting public order in either part or the whole of that country.”

Under normal circumstances, Bennett would have a strong case for remaining in South Africa. He is a political refugee from a country where public order and the rule of law have totally broken down. The government routinely ignores court orders it disagrees with and murders its political opponents.

The country’s economy is being run by and for the benefit of Mugabe and his cronies. And there is little doubt that Bennett’s personal safety would be imperilled, considering that Zimbabwe’s Security Minister Didymus Mutasa already threatened the regime’s opponents with physical elimination. Absurdly, Mutasa’s fellow cabinet minister in charge of Home Affairs, Kembo Mohadi, recently stated that the government has “never persecuted anybody in Zimbabwe”.

However, South Africa’s ruling elite is strangely enamoured with Mugabe, the former Marxist revolutionary turned despot. South Africans have pursued a policy of appeasement toward Mugabe, which they euphemistically call “quiet diplomacy”. The policy has been a massive failure. In the last few years, Zimbabwe has deteriorated into a primeval State marked by violence, famine and disease, 80% unemployment, and 1 000 percent inflation.

And so Bennett’s request for political asylum was denied. Contrast that with Pretoria’s treatment of the deposed ex-president of Haiti Jean-Bertrand Aristide. According to a report by the US State Department, Aristide ran a “corrupt” government “shot through with drug money”.

Another recent report by the US Bureau for International Narcotics and Law Enforcement Affairs claimed that “8 percent of illegal drugs entering the United States had passed through Haiti”. Moreover, during his 2004 trial in Florida, Beaudoin Ketant, a former confidant of Aristide’s and his daughter’s godfather, testified that Aristide “controlled the drug trade in Haiti. He turned the country into a narco-country. It’s a one-man show. You either pay (Aristide) or you die”.

South African government’s response to the mounting evidence of Aristide’s misrule was to send him a shipment of armaments to keep him in power. When that failed, he was welcomed to South Africa, where he enjoys luxurious exile paid for by the South African taxpayer.

Pretoria’s treatment of Bennett drips with hypocrisy. Isn’t it about time that South African government started living by the high principles it preaches around the world?

Marian L. Tupy: is Assistant Director of the Project on Global Economic Liberty at the Cato Institute.

From the Zimbabwe Standard
July 2, 2006