Al-Qalam 
By Imraan Buccus
Watching the debate in South Africa on international issues is like watching the same movie over and over in a relentless loop.
One faction, mostly white and generally self-identified as liberal, roundly condemns states that are in conflict with the United States and demands that South Africa has no contact at all with these states. Sometimes it collapses into conspiracy and makes assertions for which it has no evidence, such as the claim that Iran bribed the ANC to take Israel to the International Court of Justice.
Another faction, more racially diverse and generally identified as nationalist or left-wing, condemns the US and other Western states with equal passion while staying silent on the failings of the regimes opposed to the West. On occasion, it also collapses into conspiracy theory, denouncing all opposition to these regimes as a Western plot.
Both sides are often simply propagandists and this endlessly tiresome and pointless exercise that takes us exactly nowhere. The uncritical cheerleaders for the West cannot be taken seriously until they acknowledge that the West supports and collaborates with authoritarian regimes such as Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates and Egypt. They also need to acknowledge that the West has repeatedly engaged in unlawful and wantonly destructive bombings, wars and coups against many countries, and that it has backed Israel’s assault in Gaza, which has resulted in the mass killing of civilians.
Those who uncritically support all the regimes opposed by the West need to acknowledge, for instance, that labour conditions in Chinese factories are atrocious, that Russia locks up its dissidents, that Zanu-PF runs a rapacious regime in Zimbabwe and that the last election in Venezuela was clearly stolen.
Getting past this sorry state of affairs requires, as a first step, that the empirical facts of each situation need to be taken seriously. We must acknowledge that powerful states in and outside of the West use ‘fake news’, or just plain lies, as part of their political strategy. This is as true of the US and Israel as it is of Russia or Zimbabwe.
If we use Venezuela as an example, the widely documented facts are that the fentanyl that has done such damage to US society is made in Mexico with chemicals imported from China and not Venezuela. It is also clearly true that Cartel de los Soles (Cartel of the Suns) – the alleged cartel US prosecutors previously claimed Maduro led – does not exist. There is also no doubt that the US violated international law when it kidnapped Maduro and his wife.
However, it is also true that Maduro stole the last election, ran a corrupt government, locked up some political dissidents and presided over a police force that regularly kills darker-skinned and poor young men.
Any political position that does not acknowledge all these clearly confirmed facts is not credible. Similarly, it must be acknowledged that the West is waging a proxy war against Russia in Ukraine that followed a Western-backed coup and that the Russian state has violated international law and committed war crimes. It must also be acknowledged that China has done extraordinarily well to end absolute poverty and that it runs a massively exploitative labour regime and represses dissent. At home, we must be clear that the ANC has been complicit with authoritarianism and corruption in Zimbabwe and that it took a principled position on Palestine and in support of international law when it approached the ICJ.
Both the left and the liberals must, if they are to be taken seriously, deal with the factions in their midst that just line up behind one side or the other in the new Cold War.
Liberalism has many currents, some of which hold consistent positions, but figures such as Greg Mills on its right-wing happily support the West at all costs and under all circumstances. This must be addressed.
The left also has many democratic currents, but the inheritors of the old Stalinist tradition happily support any authoritarian regime that opposes the West. They are known pejoratively as ‘tankies’ after the Stalinists who supported the crushing of the Hungarian uprising in 1956 by Soviet tanks. In South Africa, the SACP invariably takes the ‘tankie’ position. The radical nationalists in the EFF and MKP do the same.
There is a ‘tankie’ current in the trade union movement, with its origins in the SACP, but the most principled positions on international politics in our public life are taken by the democratic components of the trade union movement with their origins in ‘worker democracy’. Zwelinzima Vavi is one of the few public figures who has both noted that Maduro was an authoritarian leader and that his kidnapping by the US is unlawful and an outrageous violation of sovereignty.
Liberalism in South Africa has been dragged firmly to the right in recent years and while there are left liberals who hold states on all sides of the geopolitical divides to the same standards, there is no organised expression of this kind of liberalism. It does not have a party or its own NGOs or media.
In party politics, Songezo Zibi of Rise Mzansi is the only significant figure willing to be critical of both the US and Israel and its enemies. However, his party has only one seat in parliament and while his voice on international affairs is welcome, it has limited numbers behind it. It is only the democratic currents in the independent trade unions that offer a principled position on international affairs backed with numerical support.
But even though our politics has few voices that do not just uncritically line up behind one side on geopolitical issues, our commentariat have no excuses for continuing with crude forms of comment and analysis. We should all be opposed to all human rights violations and all forms of authoritarianism, not to mention illegal state actions and mass killing of civilians, whoever the perpetrators may be.
*Dr Buccus is director of a study abroad program, research fellow at UJ and editor of Al-Qalam.
