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President Cyril Ramaphosa recently reaffirmed in a high-level global dialogue with China and other countries the cognitive dissonance in the ANC regarding human rights.
While our constitution entrenches freedom of our bodies and thoughts, the ANC has no difficulty equating authoritarian countries like Russia and China (which regard their subjects’ bodily rights and opinions as subservient to the state) with Western countries like the US (which entrench rights similar to those in our constitution).
Ramaphosa said he admired the principled stand China takes on the world stage. This is not to say the US and other Western countries are unblemished. They are not. Nor is this to say a unipolar world is ideal. It is not. Both China and Russia are great civilisations, and inevitably form part of our world order.
The difference is that the US and other Western civilisations do respect bodily freedom in their political critics. They also tolerate — welcome even — free speech and criticism as they regard individuals as the building blocks of society.
One wonders, then, how the ANC can take pride in our constitutional acknowledgment of human freedoms while regarding such freedoms as irrelevant in the context of our relations with the world’s great powers.
The ANC, in the person of Nelson Mandela, took a brave stand before the brutal execution of Nigerian writer Ken Saro Wiwa 20 years ago. Was this to be its last stand?
Willem Cronje Cape Town
JOIN THE DISCUSSION: Send us an email with your comments to letters@businesslive.co.za. Letters of more than 300 words will be edited for length. Anonymous correspondence will not be published. Writers should include a daytime telephone number.
Support our award-winning journalism. The Premium package (digital only) is R30 for the first month and thereafter you pay R129 p/m now ad-free for all subscribers.
LETTER: Farewell to freedom?
President Cyril Ramaphosa recently reaffirmed in a high-level global dialogue with China and other countries the cognitive dissonance in the ANC regarding human rights.
While our constitution entrenches freedom of our bodies and thoughts, the ANC has no difficulty equating authoritarian countries like Russia and China (which regard their subjects’ bodily rights and opinions as subservient to the state) with Western countries like the US (which entrench rights similar to those in our constitution).
Ramaphosa said he admired the principled stand China takes on the world stage. This is not to say the US and other Western countries are unblemished. They are not. Nor is this to say a unipolar world is ideal. It is not. Both China and Russia are great civilisations, and inevitably form part of our world order.
The difference is that the US and other Western civilisations do respect bodily freedom in their political critics. They also tolerate — welcome even — free speech and criticism as they regard individuals as the building blocks of society.
One wonders, then, how the ANC can take pride in our constitutional acknowledgment of human freedoms while regarding such freedoms as irrelevant in the context of our relations with the world’s great powers.
The ANC, in the person of Nelson Mandela, took a brave stand before the brutal execution of Nigerian writer Ken Saro Wiwa 20 years ago. Was this to be its last stand?
Willem Cronje
Cape Town
JOIN THE DISCUSSION: Send us an email with your comments to letters@businesslive.co.za. Letters of more than 300 words will be edited for length. Anonymous correspondence will not be published. Writers should include a daytime telephone number.
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