South Africa selling radar warning system to fellow 'rogue state' North Korea

NEWSWEEK: The United States hopes Zuma, who often tussled with Mbeki and has promised a more transparent governing style, can be the sort of leader who will fulfill South Africa's role as the political, economic, and military anchor of the continent. It doesn't look like he will.

SA Selling Weapons to 'rogue' states:

According to the opposition Democratic Alliance, the armaments included "bombs that could be used to deliver nuclear, chemical, and biological weapons" (Libya), "grenade launchers" (Syria), and "thousands of multiple grenade launchers and upgraded assault rifles" (Venezuela). The panel is also considering the sale of military equipment to Iran and Zimbabwe, and it has authorized a South African defense contractor to deliver a demonstration of a radar-warning system to officials in North Korea.

While the government initially claimed that the opposition was spreading "gossip and rumor," it has yet to refute the allegations. Instead, it has accused the opposition politician who divulged the "illegally obtained information" of having "stolen it" and has threatened to investigate him, implying that what has thus far been revealed is accurate.

South Africa's support for totalitarians extends to diplomacy, too: it recently ended a two-year rotation on the United Nations Security Council, where it opposed resolutions that would have increased pressure on Zimbabwe, Belarus, Cuba, North Korea, and Uzbekistan. On the council, it also fought attempts to toughen sanctions on the Burmese junta and Iran. (In these votes, it kept the company of authoritarian powers like Russia and China.)

SHOOT: Guess South Africa is now part of the 'axis of evil'. That being said, not sure if the warmongering USA can claim to be part of the 'axis of good'. At the bottom of all this is money, and money is the root of all evil, even good evil.

clipped from www.newsweek.com Just four months in office, Zuma has done so much worthy of obloquy that's it's a small miracle Clinton would even meet with him. He is peddling arms to police states and terrorist havens (in deals that were revealed just a week before Clinton's arrival); continuing, as Mbeki did, to prop up the despotic Mugabe; and even doing China's bidding to keep trade relations intact. Not long ago, South Africa stood as beacon for morality among the nations. ("Human rights will be the light that guides our foreign affairs," Nelson Mandela wrote in 1993.) Today, it conducts a foreign policy closer to that of a rogue state. Earlier this month, a senior leader of South Africa's official opposition party (the shadow minister for defense) revealed that the country's National Conventional Arms Control Committee had authorized the sale of high-tech weaponry to Libya, Syria, and Venezuela.