I'm an optimist. Well, I try to be, but given events over the past few weeks I've had to carefully rethink the merits of believing that recent global events are just blips on a windy road toward mature democracies.
There have been a lot of postmortems on Thabo Mbeki, who resigned as president of South Africa under great pressure both from within his party and outside. I like this one from The Atlantic, which offers up some good numbers through which to examine Mbeki's acheivements and failures:
Another week. Another Sunday night. Another president. This week we were addressed on TV again by the new president of South Africa – Kgalema Motlanthe. Very reconciliatory, very dignified.
It’s been an interesting weekend, politically speaking, in South Africa. I had been away travelling for a week and came back on Saturday to find out that the President of South Africa - Thabo Mbeki - had been deposed. He had been ‘asked’ by the ANC to resign. He did.
What a weekend for South African politics! Not since 1994, has South Africa had such an abrupt change in leadership. Just having to deal with the global financial meltdown might have been enough for most developing countries, but South Africa's ruling party has increased uncertainty by dropping a political bombshell on an already fragile arrangement.
The New York Times offers a good analysis of the connections between South African President Thabo Mbeki and his Zimbabwean counterpart, Robert Mugabe, and examines Mbeki's seemingly odd (or nonexistent) diplomacy:
More than 30,000 African foreigners have had to flee their homes following attacks on them through xenophobic violence in South Africa. The STEPS team were able to film this footage.
South Africans awoke this morning to incredibly disturbing pictures reminiscent of the dark days of apartheid brutality. The xenophobic attacks has reached a crisis point as 12 immigrants have been killed so far.
