You’ve got to be there, you know it. It’s one of the most prestigious tournaments on the golfing calendar. The Golf Tournament. It’s nice, because it’s not hosted. It’s not in aid of anything. It’s still sponsored by Coca-Cola, I think, but I suspect that it soon won’t be. So it’ll be like you and your mates down at your local club: totally unremarkable, except that you’ll be playing with Gary Player, Mark McNulty, John Bland and Vincent Tshabalala, and the proceeds go to buying drinks afterwards.

This is the farce that is (or rather, was) the annual Nelson Mandela Invitational, traditionally hosted by Gary Player. First, Desmond Tutu echoes a call by George Monidiot to boycott Gary Player because one of the many golf course he designed happens to be in Burma, and Monidiot supports a boycott of anyone who does business with Burma because he doesn’t like the Burmese junta. Granted, who does like that backward, murderous regime?

Gary Player has been good enough for the organisers for seven years running, so allegations about a business deal in Burma five years ago, or worse, his alleged support for Apartheid in the 1960s, really don’t wash. Now, suddenly, he’s a pariah? Besides, there are no sanctions against Burma, and there is disagreement over whether there should be. The course was built at a time when pro-democracy leader Aung San Suu Kyi had been released and things were looking more positive than they do today. South Africa just recently voted against a UN resolution to place pressure on the regime, citing some procedural nonsense for what really was teenage rebellion: “Yay, we’re on the Security Council now, so we’ll throw our new-found weight around by proving that we don’t have to vote for anything the US supports.”

Essentially, current events in Burma provided an opportunity for political grandstanding by a far-left fool who masquerades as a journalist, and a priest, and they jumped at the chance, stomping on Gary Player’s head in the process.

Three weeks ago, the Nelson Mandela Children’s Fund, which owns the event, reportedly withdrew the invitation to Gary Player, despite the flimsy grounds for the boycott call.

Now, with four weeks to go to the tournament, and the player list almost complete, it’s withdrawing. Completely. And taking its name with it. So it can officially sue, someone, whoever now organises it, for hosting this site.

It’s a disgrace. It’s arrogant bullying and grandstanding. It’s politically incompetent. It’s going to cost someone a lot of money. If this disaster turns out to reflect badly on the Nelson Mandela Children’s Fund, it has only its trustees to thank.

The comments on a recent post about Burma became a rather interesting exchange, and I promised a more detailed reply. I wrote a response to a call by George Monbiot and Desmond Tutu for a boycott of Gary Player. The commenter who raised it, Leo Africanus, took it rather personally, though I seem to recall saying his view was “interesting” and “has merit”. I also called it “a disgrace” when Nelson Mandela did decide to dump Player as host of the Nelson Mandela Invitational golf tournament.

The main point here is that Gary Player’s reputation as a defender of Apartheid isn’t relevant. He may well be a racist sod and political opportunist. As I pointed out, I’m not about to take his word for it that he isn’t. I didn’t counter Leo Africanus’s arguments in this regard because I had no intention of defending Player’s history or character.

The sole reason given for the boycott call was that he had designed a golf course in Burma in 2002, and that its use by the junta there constituted sufficient reason for Nelson Mandela to distance himself from Player. That is the point on which I disagree.

If the problem really was his reputation as a racist throwback to Apartheid, he would have (and should have) been censured years ago. Even then, it seems arbitrary to single him out when a lot of other people qualify for the same treatment, and it would be rather contrary to the spirit of reconciliation, instead of revenge, for which Nelson Mandela himself became the icon.

Ostracising Player now, on the flimsy pretext that one of the many golf courses he designed was built in Burma — at a time when the political situation there was more promising than at any other time in recent history — smacks of hypocrisy.

And when Player’s own country, South Africa, couldn’t even be bothered to join a UN vote calling on the Burmese junta to cease its repression, let alone to support sanctions against the regime, idioms about splinters and motes, pots and kettles, come to mind.

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.

Sean Jacobs, a South African blogger living in the US, added an interesting comment to the post about Burma under his equally interesting pen name, Leo Africanus.

In it, he calls for a boycott of Gary Player for doing business in Burma. This call, while it has merit, leaves me uncomfortable for several reasons, however. Let’s first establish the facts of the matter.

Read the rest of this entry »

Respect to Kader Asmal, former cabinet minister and senior ANC national executive council member. He has stood up and spoken out, publicly and strongly, against the Zimbabwean tyrant, Robert Mugabe, saying that he should have done so sooner. He also disputed the view that Zimbabweans must solve the crisis for themselves.

Our government has often asked, when defending its policy of “quiet diplomacy” towards Zimbabwe, what exactly critics expect it to do, as if the only alternative to “quiet diplomacy” is a full-scale invasion and regime change. There are many alternatives, and the least it can do to appear honourable on the subject is send a vocal message of condemnation of Mugabe’s depradations.

Read the rest of this entry »

Watching the news reports about Burma (now called Myanmar by the military junta) in the last couple of days made me ashamed to be a citizen of a country that voted, six months ago, against a UN Security Council resolution that would have:

…urged the Government of Myanmar to release all political prisoners and make tangible progress towards national reconciliation, leading to genuine democratic transition; It called on the Government of Myanmar to cease military attacks against civilian in ethnic minority regions and in particular to put an end to the associated human rights and humanitarian law violations against persons belonging to ethnic nationalities, including widespread rape and other forms of sexual violence carried out by members of the armed forces.

Why did South Africa do this? Because of some procedural rubbish about which of the damn Useless Natterers committees could “better handle” the matter. Here you go, folks. Here’s how the matter is “better handled”:

Ask this chap, he’ll tell you:

I wonder, sometimes, why on earth South Africans rose up against an oppressive regime. Why they faced ostracism, teargas, bullets or torture in their demand for freedom and democracy. Have we forgotten so soon what it was all about? How can South Africa, of all countries, hide behind procedural technicalities in their craven demurral from even token pressure on the violent oppressors of Burma?

These are stains not on the pavement, but on our national character:

It makes me sick.

(Images courtesy of Ko Htike, a Burmese blogger who deserves a medal.)