In his article in TimesLIVE on 26 February 2023, Tony Leon wrote: ‘As a spectacle of the ridiculous, it is Ramaphosa’s weekly newsletter this week which, à la Orwell, widened the gap between the real and the declared aims of President and party.’
He continued: ‘He writes of the African Union (AU): “We remain committed to use our experience of negotiation, political dialogue and peacemaking to support people elsewhere on the continent …”
‘At the same AU summit of which he writes, the South African delegation exulted at the expulsion of Israel — one side to a protracted conflict — as an observer country. The delegation was literally frog-marched out of the gathering in front of all the other delegates.
‘In its statement of joy at this event, the ANC wrote: “The ANC is against the AU granting apartheid Israel any observer status.’’’
So much for the ANC’s declared ‘political dialogue and peacemaking’ which it reserves for the people of Africa.
On 22 July 2021 the AU Commission accepted Israel’s observer status, but South Africa and nine other countries out of 55 objected.
At the AU Summit in 2022 the AU backed down and appointed a seven-country committee to deliberate and report to the 2023 summit. This committee has never met.
Minister Naledi Pandor (Pandor) said ‘This is a very important issue for the African continent because, as Africa, we have always stood by the freedom struggles since the Organization of African Unity’.
As Leon points out ‘North Korea’s observer status remains intact and unmentioned. And Russian colonialism and imperialism in seizing foreign territory and rebuilding its old empire is to be celebrated not condemned.
‘Orwell had a word to describe the vast gap between words and deeds and the utter confusion of holding two diametrically opposed views and believing both. He called it “doublethink”. Perhaps even that is too grand a term for the mendacity and incompetence which characterises our government today.’
Heavy pressure
South Africa reportedly placed heavy pressure on the AU not to invite Israel to the 2023 summit.
‘South Africa’s single-minded pursuit of Israel’s expulsion from the AU underlines the inflexible – almost obsessional – antagonism towards the Jewish state that dominates our foreign policy’, said Professor Karen Milner, the national chairperson of the South African Jewish Board of Deputies. ‘It’s almost unnecessary to point out how glaringly inconsistent this is with government’s declared approach to other global disputes. In addition to being palpably discriminatory, South Africa’s stance is also hopelessly out of step with contemporary trends’.
Terence Corrigan, project manager at the Institute of Race Relations, said that South Africa is fighting a losing battle. ‘Israel’s advances on the continent have been remarkable, and the doubtful value of anchoring a Middle East policy on this intractable conflict hasn’t been lost on many African states. South Africa has no influence over the conflict but only stands to deprive itself of whatever benefits engagement might bring’.
What are the possible reasons for the ANC’s absolute loathing of Israel?
The ANC is slavishly devoted to the Soviet Union’s propagandistic trope that Israel is an ‘apartheid state’. The trope was used to build solidarity during the Cold War to rally southern African liberation movements to the Soviet Union’s cause.
Israel is not an “apartheid” state, but the label is loaded with the association of being a crime against humanity. It’s akin to being accused of being a rapist. The Soviets understood in the southern African context that labelling Israel an “apartheid state” was the ultimate damnation. The Soviets never forgave Israel for allying itself within the Western sphere of influence.
Brothers in struggle
The ANC also sees the Palestinians as its brothers in struggle. The ANC and the Palestinian Liberation Organisation (PLO) were ideologically socialist; they were both organised by the Soviet Union (the PLO was founded by the Soviets); and the Soviets trained them, together with the Irish Republican Army, in Libya in the 1960s.
The capture of the ANC by the SA Communist Party (SACP) essentially took over its ideological heart. James Hamill wrote in Politicsweb that after its banning in 1950, ‘it had a reasonable claim to be the most ideologically orthodox, pro-Soviet and Stalinist party in existence.
‘The SACP had followed the Soviet line over the years with unswerving devotion repeating, almost to the letter, Soviet rationalisations for the invasions of Hungary in 1956, Czechoslovakia in 1968[i], and Afghanistan in 1979[ii], and taking the most unyieldingly dogmatic pro-Soviet positions during the Cold War and naturally siding with Moscow in the parallel Sino-Soviet conflict.’
The ANC’s position towards Israel is seemingly contradictory: it supports a two-state solution yet its Palestinian allies do not. Either the ANC is ignorant about this (unlikely), or it pretends to support a two-state solution to deflect criticism of its virulent anti-Israel position to keep the West sweet.
Pandor and her department, however, insist that they are committed to a two-state solution based on agreed ‘international parameters’.
This conflict has existed for 75 years, but currently there is no real peace process in play. There may never be a negotiated resolution of the process. For Israel to offer concessions to the Palestinians, the Palestinians, as represented by the Palestinian Authority (PA), Hamas, Palestinian Islamic Jihad etc, would have to recognise Israel and its right to exist as a Jewish state. For the armed groupings this conflict is less about territory than about religion.
Majority Muslim
No Palestinian organisation advocates for a two-state solution; they want a one-state solution that is majority Muslim. Both the PA and Hamas have been hosted by the ANC. So, why does the ANC differ from them – out of conviction or convenience?
To bolster the ANC’s delight in having the Israelis removed at the AU, they passed almost unnoticed just days later a resolution which blamed Israel entirely for the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. The draft statement is part of the AU’s 86-page “Decisions, Declarations, Resolutions and Motions”.
It also calls on all AU states not to ‘recognise the status that Israel has established in the Palestinian and Arab territories, including East Jerusalem, which perpetuates the system of colonialism and apartheid’.
It also calls on them to ‘end all direct and indirect trade, scientific, and cultural exchanges with the state of Israel’. And so forth.
As Professor Hussein Solomon from the University of the Free State says in the SA Jewish Report, ‘This AU resolution isn’t going to fly, and it doesn’t even make sense. I find it interesting in terms of cutting off ties with Israel. Forty-six African countries have relations with Israel. Chad just opened its embassy outside Tel Aviv’.
But not to be outdone, on 7 March 2023 the National Freedom Party (NFP) proposed a parliamentary motion, supported by the ANC, calling on the government to downgrade the South African Embassy in Israel. It was duly passed.
In response the SA Zionist Federation (SAZF) noted that ‘this symbolic act took place during Purim, a Jewish holiday that commemorates how Jews were saved from genocide at the hands of Haman in ancient Persia’. It probably wasn’t coincidental.
‘Crippling energy crisis’
The SAZF also notes ‘This decision comes at a time when South Africans are being brought to their knees by a crippling energy crisis, with rolling blackouts destroying businesses and livelihoods on a daily basis. This is taking place against a backdrop of record-breaking unemployment figures, while crime runs unabated, alongside a murder rate that is higher than the death toll in Russia’s war on Ukraine’.
Whatever the complexities of the conflict, it is the Jewish spirit to deploy rescue teams into disaster zones on every occasion; have an organisation that does heart transplants on children irrespective of them being Israeli and Palestinian; to spearhead innovation from which the world benefits, not least of all in health. Even if an entity supports the Palestinians over Israel, there is nothing about Israel that warrants the ANC’s mindless opprobrium.
Left-wing ideology, an immutable devotion to the defunct Soviet Union, an ahistorical view of the conflict, and identifying with the Palestinians as merely victims, and Israel’s transformation from a poor, socialist, developing country to an extremely successful free market society, probably all go some way to explaining the ANC’s bizarre obsession.
Whatever the Israelis have done to the Palestinians, there are conflicts both in Africa and elsewhere in the Middle East that deserve far more opprobrium by the ANC – if that’s possible.
[Image: Oleg Vakhromov on Unsplash]
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