On 7 September 2025, the Wits Palestine Solidarity Committee (PSC) launched another one of its Instagram rants, long on emotion, short on substance, and dripping with divisiveness. Instead of engaging honestly with ideas, they went after me by name and extended their attack to the Economic Freedom Fighters Youth Command (EFFYC) and the Progressive Youth Alliance (PYA).
Their allegations were wild but predictable. They condemned me for writing articles that correctly call Hamas a terrorist organisation. They accused student leaders of being “friends with Zionists”. They even suggested that any candidate for the Student Representative Council (SRC) who did not meet their rigid definition of being “pro-Palestine” must be disqualified.
Let’s call this out plainly: this is not principled student politics. This is selfish, arrogant, truth-hating activism that weakens solidarity, undermines democracy, and most dangerously, normalises terror.
PSC’s arrogance toward black-led organisations
The EFFYC and PYA are not fly-by-night WhatsApp groups. They are majority-black, mass-based student organisations rooted in rigorous deployment, selection, and accountability processes. Leaders are chosen through internal democracy and collective protocols. Yet the PSC presumes to play judge and jury, declaring who is “fit” to represent these organisations and who must be excluded.
This arrogance is more than offensive; it carries undertones of racism. It suggests that black-led organisations cannot govern themselves and must be policed by a self-appointed clique with no mandate. It smacks of paternalism, a mindset that says: “We, the PSC, will decide which black leaders are acceptable.”
Take one example: the PSC’s attack on the chairperson of the EFFYC. Their only evidence against him? That he has friendships with Jewish students. At a university of over 40,000 people from every race, religion, and background, this is absurd. Should leaders now be punished for engaging across divides? Should we ban friendships with Jewish classmates, professors, or community members? That is not solidarity it is sectarianism, and it has no place at a university that prides itself on diversity and intellectual freedom.
Selfish politics disguised as solidarity
The PSC portrays itself as the moral conscience of the campus. But when the real, daily struggles of students arise hunger, exclusion, fees, and accommodation. Where are they? Silent. Absent. Or worse, actively undermining solutions.
Consider their attack on the Sizanani Project, an initiative that provides meals to hungry students at Wits for students who do not have food. Sizanani fills an urgent gap and fosters a nurturing sense of community. Yet the PSC condemned it because it is allegedly “run by Zionists.” In other words, they would rather have Wits students go hungry than accept food from those they ideologically dislike. That is not solidarity. That is cruelty disguised as principle.
Or recall their behaviour in 2023, during a crucial meeting between student leaders and management. Two issues were on the table: the war in Gaza, and midyear academic exclusion. The PSC ensured Gaza was discussed first and supported the resolution. But once that item was done, they staged a walkout abandoning the fight against midyear exclusion. They left other student leaders isolated and outnumbered as they battled for the futures of thousands of students.
This revealed the PSC’s true priorities. International posturing comes first. The daily struggles of Wits students come last. They are not a solidarity committee; they are a selfish committee.
Hamas is terror, not liberation
At the heart of their outrage is my insistence on stating a truth they cannot stomach. Hamas is a terrorist organisation.
The evidence is undeniable. On 7 October 2023, Hamas launched a massacre inside Israel that shocked the world. Over 1,200 civilians were slaughtered. Women, children, the elderly. Families were burnt alive in their homes. Festival-goers were gunned down in open fields. Women were raped, and their assaults were broadcasted live on go cams. Over 200 hostages, including babies and pensioners, were dragged into Gaza.
This was not resistance. It was barbarism.
And this is not a one-off. Hamas has spent years firing rockets indiscriminately at Israeli towns. They have built tunnels under Gaza not for food or medicine, but for smuggling weapons. They crush dissent among Palestinians, jailing or executing critics. They indoctrinate children in schools to glorify martyrdom.
That is why the United States, the European Union, the United Kingdom, Canada, Australia, Japan, and even regional players like Egyptand Jordan classify Hamas as a terrorist organisation. These are not fringe opinions, they are global consensus.
Mkhonto Wesizwe vs. Hamas: a crucial distinction
The PSC loves to claim that Hamas is the Palestinian version of Umkhonto we Sizwe (MK), the ANC’s armed wing. Nothing could be further from the truth.
MK was born in 1961 out of desperation, after decades of peaceful protest were met with bullets, banning orders, and imprisonment. Yet even when MK took up arms, it targeted infrastructure, military installations, and apartheid symbols. Civilian casualties were tragic exceptions, not deliberate strategy. The moral high ground mattered. The ANC’s leadership always insisted that the struggle was against apartheid, not against white people as a group.
Hamas, by contrast, targets civilians deliberately. On 7 October, it was not soldiers in uniform who were killed, it was families in their homes and youth at a music festival. Hamas thrives on civilian bloodshed, because it believes terror advances its cause.
To equate Hamas with MK is to insult our history and dishonour our liberation heroes. Nelson Mandela, Oliver Tambo, and Chris Hani would never have sanctioned the slaughter of unarmed civilians. The PSC should be ashamed for peddling this false comparison.
PSC’s extremism at Wits
The PSC’s rhetoric and actions on campus mirror Hamas’s extremism. Over the past few years, they have:
- Harassed Jewish students and their allies on campus.
- Chanted slogans glorifying jihadist violence.
- Plastered antisemitic graffiti across campus walls.
- Encouraged their followers to disengage from intellectual debate in favour of mob chants.
This is not activism. It is intimidation. It creates a climate of fear for Jewish students and anyone who dares to dissent from the PSC’s orthodoxy. Universities are supposed to be laboratories of thought, debate, and engagement. The PSC has reduced Wits to a battleground of conformity, where those who think differently are branded “Zionists” and targeted for vilification.
Why normalising terror is dangerous
By defending Hamas, the PSC does more than distort history. They legitimise terror as a political tool. They tell young South Africans that massacres are acceptable if the victims are deemed “the enemy.” They normalise the idea that violence, not dialogue, is the path to justice.
This is dangerous for Palestinians, whose legitimate aspirations for statehood and dignity are undermined by Hamas’s brutality. It is dangerous for Israelis, who are told their civilian lives are expendable. And it is dangerous for South Africans, whose democracy was built on dialogue, negotiation, and reconciliation, not bloodshed.
The solidarity Wits students actually need
If the PSC truly cared about solidarity, their actions would look very different. They would begin by acknowledging Hamas for what it is, a terrorist organisation whose methods are incompatible with any genuine liberation struggle. They would centre student needs such as hunger, fees, accommodation, and exclusion, instead of constantly elevating global issues above the urgent realities facing their peers on campus. They would reject antisemitism outright and work to create a campus where Jewish students are safe and welcome, not vilified for their identity. They would champion dialogue, justice, and peace, recognising that both Israelis and Palestinians deserve to live in dignity and security. And they would move beyond empty BDS sloganeering, choosing instead to support real solutions such as coexistence initiatives, humanitarian aid, and lobbying for genuine negotiations. That is what true solidarity looks like, not the glorification of terror, but the pursuit of justice through principled struggle.
A call to Wits students
Wits University has a proud history as a crucible of struggle and thought. From the days of anti-apartheid activism to the #FeesMustFall generation which I’m proud of, Wits has produced leaders who understood that true struggle requires courage, honesty, and vision.
The PSC has abandoned that tradition. They have become Hamas’s mouthpiece on campus silencing dissent, bullying rivals, and sacrificing student welfare for empty slogans.
Wits students must not allow them to normalise terror. We must insist on a different kind of solidarity, one rooted in truth, justice, and peace. One that fights exclusion as fiercely as it debates Gaza. One that feeds hungry students as urgently as it calls for ceasefires abroad. One that builds bridges across divides, not walls of hate.
The struggle for Palestine will not be won by glorifying Hamas. It will not be won by intimidating Jewish students or by silencing dissenters. It will be won, if at all, by the same principles that liberated South Africa: dialogue, reconciliation, justice, and peace.
The Wits PSC poses as a voice for justice, but in truth it is divisive, intolerant, and dangerously glorifies Hamas, vilifying dissent, and abandoning real student struggles. They cannot be allowed to normalise terror on our campus. Wits deserves a solidarity movement built on truth, dialogue, and peace and not lies, selfishness, and hate.
[Image: By zeev stein Pikiwiki Israel, CC BY 2.5, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=142808616]
The views of the writer are not necessarily the views of the Daily Friend or the IRR.
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