G8 controversy: not just for anti-capitalists
As the G8 summit draws ever closer, more people are starting to ask questions about the proposed presence of Thabo Mbeki at the summit. Yes, he is an African leader and therefore ups the political correctness points of the summit, however two main objections have been raised to this:
- South Africa is not a G8 member. This is supposed to be a G8 summit- not a UN summit, African affairs summit or anything else. This should not be changed just because Africans happen to be Blair’s chosen group of ‘special people’ at the moment. From a poverty-fighting point of view, there are plenty of developing countries that are much more important than South Africa- Brazil, China, and India to name but a few
- Why should the G8 be supporting a Mugabe apologist? He continually plays the race card as an excuse to avoid doing what is right- when Archbishop Desmond Tutu (an arch-critic of both black-supremacist Mugabe and the white-supremacist apartheid regime in South Africa) dared to question his leadership style and policies, Mbeki called him an ‘icon of the white people’ (see any parallels to Mugabe’s ‘embittered little bishop’ claim folks?)
As the group of the world’s richest countries, the G8 always attracts the attention of anti-capitalist and anarchist demonstrators, but with this unprecedented invitation to the likes of Mbeki, it loses all credibility with everyone else.
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