Once the darling of liberal democracy, South Africa ain't living up to the hype. Besides failing to properly investigate allegedly anti-gay murders, the nation's United Nations representatives recently abstained from a vote affirming gay rights groups' involvement in the international body.

Why such a queer turnaround for the "pro-gay" South Africa?

An opinionated writer at The Guardian sees a broader trend developing:

As the most economically developed and politically stable country on the African continent, South Africa envisions itself as the chief advocate for the underdeveloped world in the courts of Western Europe and North America. But the rhetoric of South Africa's leaders has become increasingly "third-worldist" and anti-western. At the UN, South Africa has regularly sided with undemocratic regimes against the western democracies. It is because of this anti-western intellectual agenda that South African president Thabo Mbeki has overlooked the rampant abuses of Zimbabwe's tyrant Robert Mugabe - who claims he is fighting imagined, imperialist enemies of the state when in reality, his rule is to blame for his people's misery.

The writer goes on to accuse Mbeki and his African National Congress of betraying the "moral authority" they gained while fighting apartheid. Forget "betraying". They've burned it to the ground.