Karima Brown
23 August 2007
Johannesburg — THE Presidency has defended a congratulatory letter President Thabo Mbeki wrote to his French counterpart, Nicolas Sarkozy, following the French leader's controversial address at the Cheikh Anta Diop University of Dakar in Senegal last month.
Sarkozy came under fire from several quarters on the continent, with his address being criticised as patronising and racist about Africa and its history.
Mbeki's letter was published in the influential French newspaper Le Monde recently. In the letter, Mbeki praised Sarkozy as a "friend of Africa".
Yesterday presidential spokesman Mukoni Ratshitanga confirmed that Mbeki had sent a letter of "congratulations" to Sarkozy, saying that the president had agreed with "aspects" of Sarkozy's speech.
"We concur with some of the elements of Sarkozy's speech in so far as it relates to his commitment to partner the continent in its process of renaissance," Ratshitanga said.
But Mbeki's endorsement of the right-wing president's sentiments is likely to entrench the view of many of his detractors in Africa that SA under Mbeki tends to be an apologist for the west.
Sarkozy's speech did not go down well in Senegal, with many African newspapers and analysts slamming his comments on colonialism as nothing short of racist.
In his address, Sarkozy spoke at length about the cruelty of slavery in Africa, and European imposition on the continent. However, he also made several controversial comments, saying: "The tragedy of Africa is that the African has not fully entered into history. The African peasant, who for thousands of years have lived according to the seasons, whose life ideal was to be in harmony with nature, only knew the eternal renewal of time, rhythmed by the endless repetition of the same gestures and the same words. In this imaginary world, where everything starts over and over again, there is no place for human adventure or for the idea of progress.
"In this universe where nature commands all, man escapes from the anguish of history that torments modern man, but he rests immobile in the centre of a static order where everything seems to have been written beforehand.
"The problem of Africa, and allow a friend of Africa to say it, is to be found here. Africa's challenge is to enter to a greater extent into history. To take from it the energy, the force, the desire, the willingness to listen and to espouse its own history. Africa's problem is to stop always repeating, always mulling over, to liberate itself from the myth of the eternal return. It is to realise that the golden age that Africa is forever recalling will not return because it has never existed."
Mbeki is an advocate of African renewal and has staked much of his legacy on Africa taking its place among nations as a full partner and not as a constant borrower from the west.
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