Political gratitude toward a past host can blind leaders to a regime’s current crimes

Evidence

Mandela’s tragic misreading of the Abacha regime and the threat to Saro-Wiwa can best be understood in terms the ANC’s historical sentimentality toward Nigeria. Many of South Africa’s new political and cultural elite had found refuge in Nigeria in the 1960s, when it was emerging as a bulwark against apartheid and colonialism. Those exiles included eminents like the academic and writer, Ezekiel Mphahlele, and the South African deputy president, Thabo Mbeki. It is no coincidence that Mbeki became South Africa’s chief negotiator in the country’s “softly-softly” response to the Abacha coup. He seemed to confuse South Africa’s historic debt (and his own personal one) to the Nigerian people with a debt to Nigeria’s rulers, even when they had deposed an elected government and enjoyed no popular mandate whatsoever. … Calling for an international ban on Nigerian oil, Chukwuma pointed out, “The proceeds from oil revenue are going into private accounts. They don’t even get to the people.” In 1994 alone, $12 billion worth of oil went missing from government accounts. — Rob Nixon, Slow Violence and the Environmentalism…, 327

Categorization

• XREF: Echoes the moral-geography theme across the polyad and the earlier claims that exiles’ loyalties shape political action; also connects to Nixon’s broader witness-and-recognition machinery. — connects to: Loyalty to a charismatic leader can override an accomplice’s own moral self-censure — Albert Bandura, Moral Disengagement: How People Do Harm…, 232; Material privilege and status rewards cement loyalty to a violent regime — Albert Bandura, Moral Disengagement: How People Do Harm…, 675

Broader Connections

• Material privilege and status rewards cement loyalty to a violent regime #expands (0.85) — Albert Bandura, Moral Disengagement, 675
• Loyalty to a charismatic leader can override an accomplice’s own moral self-censure #expands (0.82) — Albert Bandura, Moral Disengagement, 232