Darkest Africa

Just as being a dissident in the Soviet Union was not necessarily a sign of being on the side of the angels, nor is being a dissident in China necessarily such a sign today, so opposition to the many ghastly regimes on the other side of the Cold War was by no means necessarily a badge of virtue, either. The crackdown on press freedom in South Africa should therefore come as no surprise.

The ANC's uncompromising support for its Soviet paymaster, right up to the bitter end, considerably extended the apartheid era by prolonging American support for that regime until the Cold War was safely over. Whereas the truly effective opposition to apartheid came from the non-violent, non-Marxist, non-racial, pro-Commonwealth tradition of Alan Paton and Helen Suzman, figures who suffered far more than those who were no doubt painfully, but nevertheless comfortably, exiled in London, or Moscow, or wherever.