ANT KATZ

Mantashe told Jewish Report that the ANC’s top-six had “instructed” Ms Duarte to immediately take three weeks’ stress leave – as had most senior officials since the election, he said.

The interview came in the wake of the very offensive Holocaust remarks made by ANC Deputy Secretary General MS JESSE DUARTE in an official ANC statement last week, Jesse Duarte issued a “VENOMOUS & INSULTING STATEMENT” likening Israel to Hitler’s Nazis said the Fed and Board in a no-holds-barred response to a statement she issued last Thursday.

RIGHT: ANC deputy secretary general Jessie Duarte

Writing from Jerusalem on Friday, SA Chief Rabbi Goldstein didn’t mince his words either, demanding that the ANC and Duarte: PUT UP OR SHUT UP! “Retract or debate me!” was the challenge of Chief Rabbi.

Then, over the weekend, the ANC’s Western Cape social media manager, Rene Smit, posted a HITLER HATE SPEECH item on Facebook.

This served to so further enrage SA Jewry that two hate speech cases have been lodged with the SA Human Rights Council – one by the Board and another by private concerned Jewish citizens.

Jewish Report’s HITLER HATE SPEECH story went viral, was reported by at least eight other media outlets worldwide and resulted a storm of protest in Jewish circles globally.

On the SAJR website alone it was read over 4,000 times in the first two days after its initial publication on Monday.

Mantashe was completely unfazed

On the question of the public statement by ANC Deputy Secretary General Jessie comparing the Israeli government to the Nazi Regime, Mantashe fully supported her. “Jessie is saying that there are 160 dead in the Gaza Strip,” he said, “that is the issue.”

LEFT: ANC secretary general Gwede Mantashe

Asked how SA would react if a thousand missiles were fired from Lesotho at civilian targets in Bloemfontein over 18 months, Mantashe’s response was a trite: You can’t just make comparisons, he said, “the majority of that 160 dead have not fired a single missile!”

While he conceded that there were Hamas terrorists, he said, “how many of those people (killed) are terrorists’?”

He refused to engage with SAJR on the subject of how SA would deal a similar situation.

The ‘Hitler did the right thing’ issue

Mantashe told Jewish Report that the ANC could and would not take responsibility for what a person says on a personal Facebook page, no matter what position they held in the party. He had no issue with the ANC’s Western Cape social media manager posting hate speech. “She has her own page, it is not an ANC page,” he insisted – likening it to the fact that if he were to write an op-ed in a newspaper in his own name, and below the article is a mention that he is the Secretary General of the ANC, the comments he made were clearly his personal comments.

“If I issue an ANC media release,” he said, then it is the ANC’s view.

Despite the many attempts by SAJR for him to at least distance the ANC from Rene Smit’s “Hitler” post, Mantashe persistently refused to do so.

Democratic Alliance condemned the post

DA national spokesman, Marius Redelinghuys MP, said his party condemns the anti-Semitic hate speech by an ANC staffer.

“The DA calls on the governing party to distance itself from the remarks and take the appropriate disciplinary action,” said Redelinghuys. “The ANC Western Cape social media manager Rene Smit posted a Facebook message lauding Hitler’s genocide against the Jews, displaying an image of Hitler with the title ‘Yes man, you were right…’ followed by the line: I could have killed all the Jews, but I left some of them to let you know why I was killing them.

“The post is not only anti-Semitic and hate speech, but can also be construed as an incitement to violence and is an insensitive insult to victims and survivors of the Holocaust,” said Redelinghuys.

“The ANC must distance itself from this post. Ms Smit and the ANC must apologise unconditionally for these remarks that make light of a great human tragedy. Such discriminatory, hateful and divisive remarks have no place in our constitutional democracy and is starkly at odds with our Bill of Rights.”

What do you expect us to do?

“Let’s not forget – the Jewish people should lead the world in how bad it is in how they should be the most sensitive people in the world,” Mantashe told SAJR Online.

The ANC, he said, had to weigh up their relationship with the SAJBD “and a long relationship with the Palestinian people. What should we do?” he asked.

Asked if he would distance himself from Duarte’s statement, Mantashe again ducked the issue: “Jesse is released,” he said. It had been decided on Monday that she would be given some time off to rest “as all of the leadership had done,” he insisted. “She has been given that time from today – she is (going to be) out of the country for three weeks.”

Asked if he was not concerned that, what the Board’s Wendy Kahn called “Holocaust-related anti-Semitism” could lead to a dangerous situation for SA Jewry, Mantashe insisted: “It won’t happen here.”

RIGHT: SAJBD national executive director Wendy Kahn

Asked why the ANC was not prepared to even contemplate discussing the issues of right and wrong on this matter, Mantashe told Jewish Report: “You must never take a position that to be strong is to be right and to be weak is wrong,” supposedly suggesting that the ruling party chose to support the underdog.

Refusal to disavow statements.

Mantashe then told SAJR that people in SA were talking about the people in the Gaza strip. “We are a conscious society,” he said. Every time you switch on the TV the number of dead rises. “People who know (what) the reasons (are) must write about it. The girl in Cape Town sees people are dying,” he said, implying that Rene Smit was a person with such knowledge. A regular SAJR Online user in Israel had tracked down a number for Ms Smit so SAJR called to find out the extent of her expertise. Messages were left but she did not return then calls.

Says Mantashe: “We have freedom of expression, freedom of speech and freedom of religion in SA. All I am saying to the Jewish people is that when there is a conflict in the Gaza strip, SA will react to that, and Jesse will react to that.”

Mantashe’s final word on the matter

Mantashe seemed to be driven by a populist position, with his final words on the matter being:

• We have two million members with strong feelings on many issues; and
• On the Nazi/Hitler/Holocaust rhetoric:
  • “I will not disown it”; and
  • “I will not disassociate myself from it.” 

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