Statement by Ryan Smith MP – DA Spokesperson on International Relations and Cooperation:
The ANC’s hypocrisy on international relations was again on full display this week, when a United Nations Human Rights Council (UNHRC) vote was held calling for a special session to address the deteriorating human rights situation in the Islamic Republic of Iran.
The ANC’s failure to support this appeal confirms the party’s ongoing explicit support for the brutal regime in Iran, and its subsequent complicity in the massacre of thousands of anti-government protesters.
This act of rank moral hypocrisy is yet another example of the ANC’s total subversion of the principles enshrined in the South African constitution, and a violation of the Government of National Unity’s (GNU) statement of intent, to serve its party-political interests in the global arena.
These actions continue to severely tarnish our country’s international reputation in the process.
Simply put, the ANC will only engage in diplomatic morality when it suits their pocket or their electoral prospects.
Even more conspicuous in his absence is Minister of International Relations and Cooperation (DIRCO), Ronald Lamola, who has been missing in action when faced with one of the most brutal human rights atrocities in recent history by a BRICS+ member.
The Democratic Alliance’s (DA) demand for South Africa to report Iran to the UNHRC was met with a pitiful statement from the presidency calling for ‘restraint and dialogue’.
The time for restraint has long gone when the blood of over 5000 civilians now stains the hands of the theocratic Iranian regime.
A report by the British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC) earlier this week depicts the blurred photos of the bloodied, swollen, and bruised faces of at least 326 victims of the Iranian civilian massacre leaked to journalists from the south Tehran mortuary.
Among the victims are women and young adolescents.
These are the people to whom the ANC has chosen to turn a blind eye when confronted with the moral test they once presented themselves to the international community during the apartheid era.
South Africa’s silence on Iran is not just an indictment on our country as a supposed international torchbearer for human rights, but on the ANC leadership that has traded ethics and morality for political power.
The ANC has no legitimacy referring to itself as a liberation movement if it remains complicit in the atrocities committed by the Iranian government against its own people.
The DA condemns DIRCO’s failure to adhere to the GNU statement of intent and the ongoing selective approach to foreign policy which has put on full display the ANC’s warped and outdated world view.
At a time of global uncertainty, the ANC’s pursuit of its party interests using foreign policy, is risking South Africa’s standing on the global stage, and it is the people of South Africa who will ultimately pay the price.
Daisy Stick
The Man who could only Drink Milk
I know an old man who had lived a life full of adventure, but his health started to catch up with him. He\’d run the Boston Marathon, was an avid surfer, and climbed Everest, but he\’d started to have abdominal pains around his 85th birthday and went to see a doctor. Sadly, he ultimately was diagnosed with a rare degenerative liver disease that slowly made him allergic to everything he ate.
He kept copious notes, and as an avid gastronomist slowly grew to despair as everything he\’d spent his life enjoying became something he could no longer eat. Alcohol went first, then mushrooms, then bread, then root vegetables, then coffee, one at a time he had to remove them from his diet. The doctor was clear: if he kept eating something his liver rejected the autoimmune response would be quick and severe, and would lead to a painful death. Little by little, everything was taken away as an option, until the only thing that remained was milk.
In some ways, this actually made life easier, because the mental strain of remembering what he could and couldn\’t eat was gone, but then so was the joy in variety. But he took it in stride, and got his own cow and took classes from a farmer to learn everything he could about the only thing that could give him sustenance. And even within milk, he could still have yogurt, butter, cream, some cheeses, and other milk-derived products he hadn\’t fully rejected yet, so it wasn\’t all bad. But then one day a few months later he felt the pain again, and he knew cow\’s milk was no longer an option.
Lacking other options, he tried goat\’s milk, and he was delighted that it worked! The protein structure is just different enough that his body still tolerated it. That bought him another month. And that\’s when we came up with a wonderful plan to go on one last grand adventure around the world. If he could get one month of life out of the milk of every mammal, he\’d actually have a few more years to enjoy life to the fullest and see the world in all its beauty. Each month, we\’d pick a place with a new mammal, and he would immerse himself fully with the locals, learn all the ways to prepare the milk, and just enjoy the hand he had been dealt as much as he could.
We milked sheep in New Zealand. Camels in Egypt. Zebras in South Africa. Giant bats in Indonesia. Do you know how many Peruvian cuy you need to milk to get a single glass? I do. Even as his health slowly faded, he stayed cheerful, and I felt lucky to join him on the adventure of a lifetime. That brings us to today when he got to the very end of his spreadsheet, and declared that he was now allergic to every mammal. He\’d enjoyed his journey, but his time had come to an end, for there was nothing left to milk.
To which I said nonsense, I bet we can milk a few thousand karma out of this post.
Barbera Shift
Fun South African Fact: The Lion, the cheetah and the wildebeest are three of the five fastest animals in the world and they all live in South Africa.