Dear Gaza,
South Africa is truly with you! 
More than 200 000 South Africans gather in support of the Palestinian struggle for freedom.
August 9, 2014 Political commentary
by Affan Sosibo
The streets of the city of Cape Town in South Africa were swarmed by a pro-Palestinian demonstration which gathered nearly 200,000 participants Saturday. Marching down to the South African parliamentary building thousands shouted “
free Palestine” and “We are all Gaza”.
This is by far the largest protest ever in a democratic post-apartheid South Africa. Muslims, Jews, Christians, Hindus and all South African races (Blacks, Indians, Coloureds, and Whites) marched together in a spirit of brotherhood and in vehement rejection of the Zionist colonial regime of Israel.
The march was organized in part by the National Coalition 4 Palestine (NC4P), whose belief it is that political cooperation with Israel is “nothing less that collusion with racism driven war crimes killing
women, children and disabled people.”
The African National Congress Youth league(ANCYL) the largest and most representative youth movement in South Africa said “Our government must listen to the tens of thousands of protestors who have gathered across South Africa; we do not need to test the patience of these masses. Expelling the Israeli Ambassador and protesting against what Israel is doing is done out of revolutionary
love. It’s also done after the ANC, President Zuma and the South African government have asked, requested and pleaded with the Israeli government to end its attacks on Gaza.
The government must be fearless and must act immediately, we cannot find ourselves in a situation where conference resolutions are undermined the ANC and its leagues have never and will never be neutral on the attacks on Gaza and the on-going oppression of Palestine’.
The ANCYL also congratulated protest organisers for the great discipline, dignified behaviour and peacefulness which prevailed during the protest even though there is an understandable frustration with the attacks on Gaza and the need for our government to be decisive. This was the biggest protest action South Africa has seen since the fall of apartheid.
South African anti-apartheid veterans , politicians and cabinet minister could be seen in the crowd as well. Minister Buti Manamela, Minister Ibrahim Patel, Archbishop Desmond Tutu, Dr Ahmed Kathrada, Nelson Mandela’s grandson Mandla Mandela, leaders of the Confederation of South African Trade Unions (COSATU), leaders of the ruling party the African National Congress (ANC), religious and business organisations allstrongly advocated the Palestinian cause, saying in a speeches that “We South Africans recognise apartheid and colonialism when we see it.”
Another figure present was the Trade unionist Tony Ehrenreich who said “There is a right to support expression but not oppression. People want justice and freedom for the Palestinians, and they will be voicing this in their thousands.”
The ANCYL in KwaZulu Natal province sent a 15 member delegation headed by Jennifer Lombard to reiterate its stance that:
We note that the premier organisations for the liberation of our people such as the African National Congress (ANC), The African National Congress Youth League (ANCYL), the South African communists Party (SACP), the Congress of South African Trade Unions, (COSATU) are still on the trenches fighting for the Palestinian freedom consistent with the call from President Nelson Mandela that “We know too well that our freedom is incomplete without the freedom of the Palestinians”
We are aware
THAT The South African apartheid Prime Minister, Hendrik Verwoerd said “the Jews took Israel from the Arabs after the Arabs had lived there for 1,000 years. Israel, like South Africa, is an apartheid state”.
THAT the UN Human Rights Rapporteur John Dugard, a South African legal professor and apartheid expert, said that “Israel’s laws and practices” in the Occupied Territories “certainly resemble apartheid”.
THAT the former South African ambassador to Israel Ismail Coovadia rejected a gift of 18 trees planted in his name by the Jewish National Fund, a body that has played an important role in the displacement of Palestinians. Ismail Coovadia made striking criticism of Israeli policies, calling them a “replication of apartheid”.
THAT our beloved Archbishop Desmond Tutu said “I know first-hand that Israel has created an apartheid reality within its borders and through its occupation. The parallels to my own beloved South Africa are painfully stark indeed.”
THAT the colonial immigration to Palestine of a European people has resulted to more than 12-000 Palestinians homes destroyed and more than 250-000 colonial settlements built on Palestinian land.
Further to this end;
WE understand the Palestinians reason in rejecting a partition plan in 1947 which gave the Jews, who only owned 7 percent of the land, an astonishing half of Palestine.
WE support the Arab’s refusal to succumb to such partition, where 86 percent of the land designated for the proposed Jewish state was Palestinian-inhabited and owned land.
WE register our awareness that Israel grabbed 78 percent of Palestine through war and forced the flight of the population through deliberate massacres and then shamelessly called it a war of independence.
WE condemn the evilness of Nazism but also the use of the plight of Jews in Hitler’s Germany as justification for the murder, expulsion, and occupation of another guiltless people.
WE regard as classical colonialism the decision by Israel to legislate that any resident of France, Romania, New York, India, Australia, Iceland, or even China has a right to “return” and settle in Palestine to someone who has been expelled from his very own land, confined to a squalid refugee camp, and still holds the keys to his house.
WE are painfully aware that Israel incarcerate the Palestinian people inside squalid ghettos, destroying their livelihoods, confiscating their lands, stealing their water and uprooting their trees, and then disingenuously condemn their legitimate resistance as terrorism.
WE have not forgotten that Israel invaded Lebanon in 1982 and indiscriminately bombarded its civilians for a relentless three months, murdering thousands of innocent people.
WE know that Israel continue to humiliate the Palestinians at gun point by forcing them queue for hours to move between their villages, forcing mothers to give birth at check-points through a 441 miles apartheid wall which disconnects farmers from their farms and children from their schools, while stealing even more territory as the wall freely zigzags and encroaches on Palestinian land.
In light of the above, our demands, as articulated by the broader Palestine Solidarity network, are:
1. The immediate withdrawal of our ambassador from Tel Aviv;
2. Expulsion of the Israeli ambassador from Tshwane;
- To terminate and prohibit all trade relations with the Israeli government and citizens.
4. A strategic, effective commitment to the call for Boycotts, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) in the form of the following directives;
* Implementation of the decisions of the Non-Aligned Movement (NAM) conference in Durban in 2006 to ban all products of Israeli companies operating in the Occupied Palestinian Territory, and prevent the entry of Israeli settlers into South Africa;
* Prosecute South Africans who enlist in the Israeli Occupation Forces in accordance with the Regulation of Foreign Military Assistance Act;
*Issue guidelines to South African citizens and businesses, in line with guidelines issued by 17 European governments to discourage support for Israel`s occupation and illegal colonies; and
* Adopt ethical and international legal guidelines to exclude international corporations such as Caterpillar, G4S, Veolia, from public contracts and South African companies such as Cape Gate because of their complicity with violations of international law by Israel.
* South African government and Non-Aligned Movement support for SWIFT sanctions against Israeli banks until the Israeli government:
- Agrees to relinquish its nuclear weapons, and to accede to the Non-Proliferation Treaty,
- Agrees to release immediately all Palestinian political prisoners,
- Agrees to end its occupation of the West Bank including East Jerusalem, and that it will dismantle the Apartheid Wall,
- Recognizes the fundamental rights of Arab-Palestinians to full equality in Israel-Palestine,
- Acknowledges the right of return of Palestinian refugees, and
maintain no contact with Israel until a peaceful solution is found and Palestine is free.
http://affansosibo.wordpress.com/20...ort-of-the-palestinian-struggle-for-freedom/#
