Get your boycotting boots on, and let’s start tackling some issues!

Ah regional politics… You’ve gotta love it.

Our Ms South Africa finds herself travelling to compete in Miss Universe without the support of the South African government. Obviously that must suck but if support is basically just lip service, it’s not like there’s much to lose out on.

So why all the fuss? Lesser minds may think it’s about direct effect, that somehow by competing in a competition in Israel, you’re giving legitimacy to the country while if you boycotted, the country would collapse. Were that the line of thinking, there would be no leg to stand on since South Africa doesn’t exactly have much political capital over many countries.

If we tried to bring down the hosting nation with a boycott of Miss Universe, the organisation would probably put out a shorter statement than Mthethwa along the lines of, “Oh. Okay”.

The bigger brains are arguing on the level of morality and justice. The questions on this level revolve not around solving the problem, but taking a stand against the cause. Whether the cause is legitimate, the problem existent is another issue too.

Now I’m not about to take a side on this issue right now because I want to deal with something closer to home; which is the decision to back out of supporting Miss SA at Miss Universe.

Having read the statement and heard the argument, it’s pretty obvious that our government’s position is not based on trying to solve the Middle East crisis, but is rather an attempt at sticking to what they dub as their anti-apartheid values and the like.

Cool. Whatever…

If that’s their view, people can debate that. People can even debate whether holding that view justifies the boycotting of support for a non-political actor. Fine.

Where I draw the line is at the fact that it’s low hanging political fruit. Anti-Israel rallies seem all the hype at the moment, even if some get there using the Waze app (it’s developed in Israel by the way).

If our government is going to get on that train, that’s up to their strategists but I would beg for some philosophical consistency.

Remember how our deputy president spent heavy lockdown in Russia because South African medical care wasn’t good enough for him? Yeah, Crimea didn’t seem like a big issue then.

Speaking of lockdown, did you notice how the Jewish Board of Deputies delivered a smackdown to Nathi Mthethwa, calling him out for being absent and silent about artists? That too is alarming.

This statement withdrawing Miss SA support hardly has teeth to begin with, but in the context of having done precious little for your own people, has the dude got any moral ground to stand on? Probably not and to quote 7 year old me, the floor is lava.

Oh and all that Chinese infrastructure and development… Yeah, so Hong Kong… Am I Right?

The UK and their casual military bases in Cyprus?

The examples of relationships South Africa has with countries who are allegedly engaged in some geographical man-spreading are pretty vast.

The issue is that if they want to be taken seriously with this boycott, it’s going to take a lot more than targeting Israel and it’s going to take more than a statement in each case.

If our leadership is serious about the moral justification for withdrawing their support to Miss SA, then there’s a lot more boycotting to be done with many other countries.

However, if this is political appeasement, then we need not even bother considering the moral justification, since it won’t be applied consistently until we get a strong pro-Crimea lobby in South Africa. In other words, our leadership doesn’t stand up with strong backbone, but rather flows freely in the political gusts.

Since I suspect that the latter is the case, and I’m hungry, and I have an issue with certain foods, I’m going to end this here and see if I can get enough people to protest fast food chains placing that one annoying slice of pickle on my burger.

Sure, pickles on burgers is not as big of a moral problem as the Middle East, but it’s not like this was ever about morality to our government by the looks of things.