ANOTHER PATHETIC COUNTRY – AT 10:01 P.M. ET:  First lady Michelle Obama has just arrived in South Africa with her two daughters. 

Now, I can well understand the emotional attachment of an African-American to South Africa, considering the country's apartheid past.  What I cannot understand is the silence of the mainstream media about conditions in that country today.  Simply stated, South Africa is a disgrace.  Its government is a gang of old creeps, Marxists and racial hustlers who never met a dictatorship they didn't like.  Indeed, in a report by Freedom House about the extent to which human rights plays a role in the foreign policies of a number of democracies, South Africa came out dead last. 

Internally, the country is a horror story.  It has one of the highest crime rates in the world, and one of the highest rates of sexual violence against women.  Not much talk about that in the trendy Western press.  South Africa, to too many journalists, is all about the battle over apartheid.  What has happened since apartheid is of no great interest.

From AFP:

Relations between the United States and South Africa have suffered a number of diplomatic strains this year.
In March, South Africa allowed exiled Haitian ex-president Jean-Bertrand Aristide to return home, despite a personal appeal from President Obama to keep him in South Africa until after a presidential run-off election that Washington feared he would destabilise.

President Zuma has also lashed out at the NATO-led bombing campaign in Libya, which Washington supports.

South Africa has been close to Gadaffi.  In fact, the only government in the Mideast it seems to find problematical is the government of Israel.

Obama has a packed schedule that includes a safari in Botswana, a visit with Nobel Peace Prize laureate Desmond Tutu in Cape Town and a trip to the memorial for Hector Pieterson -- a 12-year-old student killed during the anti-apartheid Soweto uprising in 1976.

Tutu was active in the fight against apartheid, but that was more than a quarter of a century ago.  What's he done since to improve his country?  The world wonders.

COMMENT:  I hope the first lady has a good time, but we really must get beyond discussions on South Africa that begin and end with apartheid.  There's a country there today, and it's sinking.  People are living behind gated walls just to survive.  Anyone interested?

June 20, 2011