Word: africas
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...fair, the ANC is far from the worst example of a revolutionary movement lapsed into self-enrichment and autocracy. But because South Africa is the continent's biggest economy and natural leader, the ANC is a role model and has influence beyond South Africa's borders. That's not always been a good thing. Mbeki, who succeeded Mandela as President in 1999, tried to forge a middle way between revolution and democracy by calling on the ANC to embrace a "democratic revolution" in government. The approach proved schizophrenic. Mbeki the democrat adopted liberal economics, oversaw impressive growth and won plaudits...
Abroad, the former President failed to rein in fellow liberator and neighbor Mugabe, when the Zimbabwean leader unleashed his security forces on the opposition, crippled his country's economy and created millions of refugees. At the U.N., South Africa has consistently defended some of the world's worst regimes - Burma and Sudan, as well as Zimbabwe - against punitive international measures, apparently more concerned about Western bullying than the way governments treat their own people. As Feinstein says, the ANC "hasn't sent a great signal to other countries in Africa that are trying to build democracy and progress...
Problems at Home If there is one region in South Africa on which the ANC might have focused its efforts to build democracy and progress, it is the Eastern Cape around East London. Drive out of the city and after an hour you descend into a steep, forested canyon along whose floor snakes the River Kei, the old boundary between white-run South Africa and the rolling prairies which apartheid authorities designated the black "homeland" of Transkei, meaning "across the Kei." During apartheid, the Transkei was a place of destitution: thousands of mud-walled, grass-roofed huts where people lived...
...pictures of Pope Benedict XVI in Africa...
...pictures of violence in South Africa...