JUSTICE MALALA: No more Mandelas in this seething world
'Leaders blame minorities and immigrants and those who are of a different colour to them as responsible for crime, for poverty, for lack of public amenities and for poor delivery of services'
EXTRACT
The problem is leadership.
Those we trust and have come to expect to exemplify and defend these rights and responsibilities are now routinely breaking them. The perpetrators are across the gamut: men who sit in presidential suites, opposition party leaders who speak radicalism by day and live Marie Antoinette-style by night, even NGO leaders who talk gender rights and equity by day and then go on to commit rape by night. And by day.
Last week the United Nations reflected on the culture of impunity that allowed many male employees to not only assault female colleagues, but the massive cover-ups that accompanied such practices. What’s going on? This is the UN, the organisation that supposedly upholds and defends all rights across the globe!
Travel is a beautiful thing. It gives you a chance to get some perspective, to appreciate your own, to look at others afresh, to raise your eyes above the melee of the noisy, sometimes inspirational and often depressing South African political scene. Often, travel makes you realise how much trouble we are in. I have been travelling, and it isn’t pretty out there.The world is upended. Those we once imagined stood for good, for the poor and the oppressed, are now champions of the world's worst dictators. Those who claim to stand for the poor are actively stoking division to line their pockets. Populism is back in fashion. Leaders blame minorities and immigrants and those who are of a different colour to them as responsible for crime, for poverty, for lack of public amenities and for poor delivery of services. Across the globe now, this is the trend. The right-wing nationalists, everywhere from Italy to France to the US and right back here at home, are beating the drums of exclusion, h...
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