Imagine ...

Peter Hitchins in the Daily mail

Very insightful article, and sadly not a happy view.

Selected quotes:

"Imagine how you would react if Gordon Brown opened and closed his election rallies by bursting into a song called Bring Me My Machine Gun, swaying and jigging to the hypnotic chorus of this menacing ditty.

And how would you feel if the Prime Minister were alleged to be taking campaign money from Colonel Gaddafi; faced 783 counts of fraud, racketeering, tax evasion and corruption which somehow never came to court; and had been acquitted of rape while his fearsome supporters mobbed the courthouse?"

"Mr Mandela himself, personally decent but politically ineffectual and naive, served as both figurehead and figleaf for the new order. The world ignored or forgave his continuing friendships with the world's worst despots, and the fraudulent bungling that surrounded him.

Now, looking frail, bemused and ancient, he recently had to be helped on to the stage by his suspect would-be successor, to endorse the grotesque rabble who seek to succeed him.

Once, South Africa dominated the nightly news for weeks on end. Now the liberal media barely mention it. Why not? Because post-apartheid South Africa is a failure."

"Zuma is wholly African. He has at least four wives and 18 children. He has for years avoided standing trial on fraud and corruption charges. Nobody seriously believes he ever will: his approaching election is already spreading fear in South Africa's legal establishment."

"The grisly Winnie Mandela, a convicted fraud with a creepy past, is number five on the ANC's parliamentary election list, despite the fact that as a criminal she is legally banned from being an MP. She is expected to be a minister in any Zuma government.

Zuma's old friend and business partner, Schabir Shaik, has just been released early - on medical grounds, although almost nobody believes this - from a 15-year sentence imposed in 2006 for fraud and corruption, including a payment to Zuma himself."

"Kate Mantsho, mother of five of his children, killed herself with an overdose in 2000, and left a devastating suicide note denouncing him. In one harrowing passage she said: 'I hope it is true we will meet again - but not as husband and wife. I dare not take that chance again due to the bitter and most painful 24 years of married life I have gone through.'

South African coverage of this event was muted, and many journalists denounced the small newspaper that broke the story."