Mandela should boycott South Africa

This is a disgrace. Nelson Mandela caved to pressure to tell Gary Player to get off his greens, as punishment for building a golf course in Burma five years ago, at a time when Player points out the situation had seemed to be improving, and pro-democracy leader Aung San Suu Kyi had been released from house arrest.

If this was so obviously such a bad thing, why hasn’t Player been boycotted earlier? He built the thing five years ago, after all. Plenty time to realise how vile and evil his business was, not so? In fact, why even hold the event in South Africa? After all, it was as recent as February this year that the South African government voted against a UN resolution condemning the Burmese junta’s human rights violations. And if IOL’s report is correct, the SA government itself last year doubled trade with Burma, to R35.6 billion.

I’m not going to take Player’s word for it that he’s a good guy, but picking on him seems awfully selective. If Mandela wants to be consistent, he’d have to boycott South Africa entirely.