Will Israel’s war on Gaza sway South Africa’s election?
https://www.aljazeera.com/features/2024/5/13/will-free-palestine-issue-sway-voters-in-south-africa-election
Cape Town, South Africa – “We cannot allow supporters of baby killers to talk to us,” a furious resident of Surrey Estate in Cape Town shouted as he heckled the speaker at the podium.
The man was one of hundreds of residents of the mostly Muslim suburb who had gathered for a pre-election panel discussion early in May, where representatives from 10 political parties sought to lobby support.
When Riad Davids, the representative for the Democratic Alliance (DA) – South Africa’s liberal, centrist main opposition party that is considered a steadfast supporter of Israel – took to the podium to make his pitch to residents, he was booed.
The audience shouted and jeered, preventing him from delivering his message and seeking to force him off the stage.
The South African government’s support for Palestine has become a common theme in debates leading up to the May 29 general elections and expressions of solidarity with the people of Gaza have featured during the campaigns of various political parties.
‘We want Palestine to be free,’ South African President Cyril Ramaphosa, right, said at a May Day rally in Cape Town
Global Anti-Apartheid Conference condemns Israel’s settler-colonialism, genocide
https://s3.documentcloud.org/documents/24659656/johannesburg-declaration-on-israels-settler-colonialism-apartheid-and-genocide-towards-a-global-anti-apartheid-movement-for-palestine-2.pdf
South Africa has hosted a Global Anti-Apartheid Conference for Palestine aimed at highlighting the continuing Israeli war on Gaza and the Israeli settlers’ illegal colonialism, among other issues.
The delegates from more than two dozen countries have now issued a statement in which they state they are “outraged by a century of colonialism; 75 years of ongoing Nakba; 75 years of Israeli genocide, colonialism, and apartheid”.
“We have witnessed seven months of ongoing genocide. The world has watched Israel brutally bombard Gaza from land, sea and air, turning it into an extermination camp,” the statement read. “Israel has destroyed the conditions for life of Gaza’s people, including medical care, nutrition, education, infrastructure”.
“Just as the Global Anti-Apartheid movement did not make concessions to the apartheid South African state until the complete dismantling of the apartheid system, we too refuse to concede until the total dismantling of Israel’s settler-colonial project,” the statement concluded.
The three-day conference, which began on Friday at the Sandton Convention Center in Johannesburg, attracted international speakers, including Declan Kearney, the chairperson of Sinn Fein, the Irish Republican and Democratic Socialist political party, and Mustafa Barghouti, a Palestinian human rights activist and politician.
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