Shame on Mugabe’s stooges

16 May 2007

Rian Malan is appalled that Zimbabwe has been put in charge of Sustainable Development by the UN — and says it is symptomatic of the way in which Mugabe is indulged by foolish go-gooders from New York to South Africa

News of this triumph cast me into abject gloom, and at the festival I predicted inevitable catastrophe. This was not what civilised white South Africans wanted to hear on a lovely autumn day, what with the economy growing at five per cent and surprising numbers capable of forking out R500 a plate to dine with visiting writers. One such dinner took place on an achingly lovely wine estate that styles itself Haute Cabrière. I was seated alongside Bevil John Rudd, a genial old fellow with a mad-scientist hairdo, whose family once owned a big chunk of De Beers Consolidated. The aforementioned Mrs Astor regaled us with stories of her family’s role in the downfall of apartheid, which consisted of being good chums with Mandela and hiring Anthony Sampson and Colin Legum to agitate against the dreadful Boers.

Opposite us a spiky-haired codger was rattling on in a dismissive way about sceptics who doubt the sustainability of the South African miracle. ‘This is a wonderful country,’ said Ken Owen, the esteemed former editor of South Africa’s dominant Sunday paper. ‘I just get richer and richer. Read this week’s Economist! Our economy is roaring ahead at four times the rate of New Zealand’s,’ and so on. With several glasses of wine under my belt, I was emboldened to say, ‘Pardon me, but in the light of what just happened in New York, your optimism seems unfounded.’ My fellow diners looked mystified, so I explained. ‘You’d have to be blind to misread the writing on the wall here,’ I said.