Why was South Africa’s tenure at the Security Council mired in controversy?
No, the South African tenure was extremely successful. Our biggest mistake was that we didn’t explain to South African people what it meant to be in the Security Council. So most of these so-called controversies were really people being confused about what the Security Council is about. What were these issues that were misunderstood? In our term there were 121 decisions. Of those only three times did we go against everyone — on Zimbabwe, Lebanon and Myanmar. Myanmar was referred to the Human Rights Council and it was their rapporteur who went there and got those monks out. On Lebanon, we were asked that the Security Council must create a tribunal overriding Parliament. So I said, “What if someone in Orania says ‘I don’t like what the South African Parliament does, I will go to the Security Council’? No, you have to work with the Parliament of Lebanon.” On Zimbabwe we were more into the solution that was to allow the Zimbabweans themselves to solve it. We could’ve issued a nasty stateme
