Viva Madiba! For a man known more for his conciliatory rhetoric, Mandela's attack on George W. Bush's stupidity comes as something of a surprise. For me, at least, it's a welcome surprise. I can imagine world leaders getting into bed at night, cuddling up to their wives and privately muttering such delightful foreplay nothings as "What's that idiot in America doing?!" But not Nelson Mandela. Oh no, he's far more publicly eloquent and thus a far greater turn-on with his "what I condemn is one power with a president who can't think properly and wants to plant the world into holocaust." I can just imagine Graca giggling with anticipation.

What has struck me recently is that all this opposition to another war in Iraq is not because anyone supports Saddam Hussein, quite the contrary, there is a world-wide distaste for this reincarnated Stalin, but that the opposition is aimed at America. By opposing America's, or should that be Bush's, intention of taking unilateral action against Iraq, without UN support, the world is voicing it's fear that it's institutions and sovereignty are being ridden rough shod over by a yippee-yayaying bounty hunter.

The ideal of democracy in America is not extended as a right by Americans to the rest of the world. It should not come as a surprise that the majority of voices in the UN are ignored by a president who did not get the majority vote in his own election. He got the antiquated Electoral College votes, the one's that counted, and is doing the same thing with the UN - getting the votes that count, even if they are not representative of the majority. It is a fearsome prospect that even if France vetoes any Security Council resolution to attack Iraq, which many hope they will do, no one is militarily strong enough to stop the United States attacking anyway. Which raises the question: Who's next?

In an ironic twist, the chair of the UN's Disarmament Commission, which passes to UN countries on a revolving basis in alphabetical order and is currently held by Iran, is scheduled in May this year to pass on to Iraq. Perhaps there is some justice in Bush making a mockery of the UN.

31 January 2003

Dion Marc Delport

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