Proposals to rename Sandton Drive to Leila Khaled Drive are intended to provoke bad feeling between South Africa and the US, and probably to stir domestic animosity too.
This is the view of IRR analyst Terence Corrigan.
In comments published by BusinessLive, Corrigan noted that Sandton Drive was the address of the US Consulate in Johannesburg, and that when the idea was first mooted in 2018, this was explicitly raised in support of the motion.
Leila Khaled is a prominent Palestinian activist whose initial rise to fame came in the 1969 hijacking of flight TWA Flight 840. She said that TWA had been chosen as it was an American company; the US supported Israel, and “we are against America because she is an imperialist country”.
The narrative matches views frequently espoused by the ANC and EFF.
Corrigan noted that naming the street in which a major US diplomatic facility was located after someone who hated the country – and engaged in what the US considered terrorism – was explicitly meant as a rebuke. (Khaled is typically used as an avatar of “militant”, violent Palestinian resistance.)
This would encourage bad feeling between the two countries, though it would do nothing to alter US policy or further the Palestinian cause.
A South African delegation is currently in the US seeking co-operation in development endeavours.
Corrigan remarked of the Council’s intention to rename: “It would, however, be a gratuitous, reckless statement of hostility. It is the sort of thing that sends a not-so-subtle message that will probably be responded to in a not-so-subtle manner. If SA attempts to alienate the US it may find this to be successful. Getting a hearing in the US, as it is now, may become rather more difficult. And to what end?”
“There is a boundless self-indulgence here,” he added, “the equivalent of the Johannesburg council giving the US the middle finger, or dropping its trousers to expose its posterior. This is the politics of the playground. Unfortunately, foolishness on playgrounds can be hazardous.”
Image: Jeff Attaway, CC BY 2.0 https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0, via Wikimedia Commons