SA in the company of rights-delinquent nations and authoritarian regimes of the world

South Africa was on a collision course with the new president of the United States, Barack Obama, because of his more enlightened approach to addressing human rights, DA foreign affairs spokesperson Tony Leon said on Wednesday.

Leon told the 100 Club in Cape Town that Obama, inaugurated on Tuesday, offered the opportunity for America and the world to look for rights-based and multilateral solutions to the globe's many crises.

"South Africa, by rights and by inclination, should be a willing and vigorous partner in the plan to reinvigorate a more just world order," he said.

Instead, SA's recent votes and voice in international councils and forums, such as the United Nations, had "put us in the company of the rights-delinquent nations and authoritarian regimes of the world".

"What we practise at home, in our constitution and via progressive legislation we contradict abroad for fear of offending some of the most retrogressive authoritarian countries in the world.

"Shortly before Christmas, South Africa's foreign policy was again in the news in Washington - and again for all the wrong reasons.

"Under the headline 'South Africa's Crime' the highly influential Washington Post decried our government's enablement of Robert Mugabe's 'destruction of neighbouring Zimbabwe, at the cost of thousands of lives'."

South Africa's Crime - washingtonpost.com