TALI FEINBERG
About half of the crowd were schoolchildren wearing BDS (Boycott, Divestment, Sanctions movement) t-shirts and waving placards, but when asked why they were there, none of them could say.
Children from Khayelitsha between the ages of 14 to 16 told the SA Jewish Report that they didn’t know why their schools had decided to bring them to the picket, and couldn’t explain what boycotting Israel meant. Members of the older generation were also unsure – three women wearing African National Congress (ANC) t-shirts said they came to the event because they were hoping they would get paid or “be given a job”.
The picket was organised by Boycott, Divestment, Sanctions South Africa (BDS-SA), and at least 15 other organisations including the Muslim Judicial Council, the ANC, the South African Communist Party, the Congress of South African Trade Unions (Cosatu), Congress of South African Students (Cosas), the Embassy of Palestine, the ANC Youth League, Young Communist League, the Al Quds Foundation, the Media Review Network, National Coalition for Palestine, and the KZN Palestine Solidarity Forum.
In their flyers, organisers said the purpose of the event was a “Palestine solidarity protest ahead of the upcoming State of the Nation Address (SONA), and in support of the South African government’s firm stance against Israeli apartheid and in protest against United States President Donald Trump’s recent apartheid Israel plan.”
They were referring to President Cyril Ramaphosa’s address to the African Union on Monday, when he pledged the African continent’s solidarity with the Palestinians, and compared the new peace plan to the “Bantustan system” during apartheid.
Speakers addressing the crowd mostly used the platform to criticise Trump. “Down with your bogus, nonsense, illegal proposal for the Middle East,” said one member of BDS-SA. “Donald Trump must go to hell, and he must know we are coming for him,” said a Cosas leader, while a spokesperson for Cosatu said that Trump was “the son of the devil incarnated and a mass murderer”, and that his plan was “evil.”
The same Cosatu leader asked why a recent delegation of Western Cape teachers was sent to Israel. “Why send a delegation to Israel when we have withdrawn our ambassador? We say Donald Trump is wrong, but also that the DA [Democratic Alliance] government in the Western Cape is wasting our money by sending people to Israel.”
SA Communist Party Provincial Secretary Benson Ngqentsu called Israel an “apartheid and terrorist regime”, saying the South African government should “take a firm decision on Israel, and all products from Israel must be boycotted. We also need to educate our learners as to why Israel must leave the land of Palestine.”
The Muslim Judicial Council’s Moulana Abdul Khalique Alie called Trump’s peace plan “the steal of the century”, and said, “every day a child is killed by the Zionist occupation”. He encouraged the crowd to say, “We are all BDS”, and pointed out that “Zionist Israel is spending a lot of money against BDS. We need to keep strong. Don’t let us be infiltrated by betrayers.”
BDS-SA’s Muhammed Desai called out, “Long live Yasser Arafat [who died in 2004]!” and called on President Ramaphosa to continue with his “strong position against Israeli apartheid”.
