organization:african national congress

Why South Africa needs Democratic Socialism
▻https://africasacountry.com/2019/05/why-south-africa-needs-a-democratic-socialism

After 25 years in power, one would expect that the African National Congress—the party that brought

Albert Luthuli, Martin Luther King Jr. and global human rights
▻https://africasacountry.com/2019/01/albert-luthuli-martin-luther-king-jr-and-global-human-rights

Albert Luthuli was the president of South Africa’s current ruling party, the African National Congress (ANC), from 1952 to 1967. One of

The ANC : the story of a liberation movement that’s lost its lustre
▻https://www.cetri.be/The-ANC-the-story-of-a-liberation

South Africa’s governing African National Congress (ANC) celebrates its 107th birthday this year against a backdrop of an election campaign it’s likely to win handily – but which is likely to mask its longer-term decline. January 8 is the day the ANC was founded. It observes it by issuing a statement compiled by its national executive committee which sets out its plans for the year. The statement, once the subject of endless analysis, is now often better at saying what the ANC would like to do (...)

#Le_Sud_en_mouvement

/ #Le_Sud_en_mouvement, #Afrique_du_Sud, Relations entre mouvements sociaux & gouvernements, The (...)

#Relations_entre_mouvements_sociaux_&_gouvernements #The_Conversation

#Miners_Shot_Down

In August 2012, mineworkers in one of South Africa’s biggest platinum mines began a wildcat strike for better wages. Six days into the strike, the police used live ammunition to brutally suppress the strike, killing 34 and injuring many more.The police insisted that they shot in self- defense. Miners Shot Down tells a different story, one that unfolds in real time over seven days, like a ticking time bomb.

The film weaves together the central point-of-view of three strike leaders, Mambush, Tholakele and Mzoxolo, with compelling police footage, TV archive and interviews with lawyers representing the miners in the ensuing commission of inquiry into the massacre. What emerges is a tragedy that arises out of the deep fault lines in South Africa’s nascent democracy, of enduring poverty and a twenty year old, unfulfilled promise of a better life for all. A campaigning film, beautifully shot, sensitively told, with a haunting soundtrack, Miners Shot Down reveals how far the African National Congress has strayed from its progressive liberationist roots and leaves audiences with an uncomfortable view of those that profit from minerals in the global South.

http://www.sudplanete.net/_uploads/images/films/DESAI_Rehad_2014_Miners_shot_down_00.jpg

International outrage about a “genocide” against white farmers in South Africa ignores the data

South Africa’s reputation for crime extends beyond its borders, but attacks on white farmers in particular have captured the attention of international audiences, especially in conservative circles. But data in a new report indicate that farm attacks have actually been on a steady decline.

Isolated and believed to be wealthy, South African farmers have historically been the targets of attacks in South Africa. In some cases the attacks and murders have been so brutal that many believe there is an element of race-based vengeance for apartheid. White farmers’ vulnerability has increased along with the rest of the country as South Africa struggles to contain crime, especially violent crime.

Some farmers have chosen to fly the old apartheid flag to express their belief that they are being persecuted. The Afrikaner cultural group #AfriForum (which calls itself a civil rights group) organized a protest dubbed Black Monday to call attention to farm murders, which they say the African National Congress government is willfully ignoring.

https://qz.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/06/South-Africa-Farm-Murders-Protests.jpg?quality=80&strip=all&w=3200#.jpg

‘Let them occupy!’
▻http://africasacountry.com/2018/02/let-them-occupy

In 1991, South Africa’s African National Congress (ANC) convened a housing policy conference in Johannesburg. The organization had only been unbanned by the apartheid government the year before. Alongside negotiations for democratic elections and a new constitution, the ANC and its allies were deep in the throes of policy deliberations to prepare to take power. Thozamile Botha, a previously exiled trade unionist, was the…

The Lame Duck President
▻http://africasacountry.com/2018/01/the-lame-duck-president

South Africa’s President, Jacob Zuma, is a lame duck. On December 18 2017, Cyril Ramaphosa, Zuma’s deputy, was elected president of the ruling African National Congress (ANC), placing him on a trajectory toward the state presidency. Zuma, clearly unable to threaten this eventuality, has lost support, as erstwhile allies jockey for position around his successor. Seizing the…

The #Cyril_Ramaphosa Model
▻http://africasacountry.com/2017/12/the-cyril-ramaphosa-model

The election Monday night of Cyril Ramaphosa as president of #South_Africa’s ruling African National Congress (ANC) – with a razor-thin 51% majority of nearly 4,800 delegates – displaced but did not resolve a fight between two bitterly-opposed factions. On the one hand are powerful elements friendly to so-called “White Monopoly Capital” (WMC), and on…

#AFRICA_IS_A_COUNTRY

L’Afrique du Sud espère enfin tourner la page Zuma
▻https://www.mediapart.fr/journal/international/151217/l-afrique-du-sud-espere-enfin-tourner-la-page-zuma

Jacob Zuma, toujours combatif, a passé l’essentiel de son mandat de président à essayer d’échapper à la justice. © Reuters À l’heure où s’ouvre, du 16 au 20 décembre, la conférence quinquennale de l’African National Congress qui doit voir le parti de Mandela choisir un successeur à #Jacob_Zuma, l’Afrique du Sud est plongée dans la corruption, les inégalités sociales et une économie à la traîne. Vingt-trois ans après les premières élections libres de l’histoire du pays, l’Afrique du Sud n’est pas au rendez-vous que beaucoup espéraient.

#International #Afrique_du_Sud #ANC #apartheid #Nelson_Mandela #Thabo_Mbeki

The Youths
▻http://africasacountry.com/2017/09/the-youths

When I was a youth, each January 8, the African National Congress, then the dominant liberation movement against apartheid, issued a statement to commemorate its founding and embolden its followers. They were a big deal. Every statement came with a theme in which they dedicated the year to some group (women, the “comrades”, the generic…

#AFRICA_IS_A_COUNTRY #South_Africa

Karabo Mokoena’s #murder like Anene Booysen and Reeva Steenkamp, won’t stop South Africa’s #gender #violence — Quartz
▻https://qz.com/992704/karabo-mokoenas-murder-like-anene-booysen-and-reeva-steenkamp-wont-stop-south-af
▻https://qzprod.files.wordpress.com/2017/05/ap_0602130189-e1495788194786.jpg?quality=80&strip=all&w=1600

It is clear from these remarks that the governing African National Congress (ANC) sees higher incarceration rates as the solution to rape and #femicide. Its members’ oft-repeated cry of “rot in jail” also suggests that rehabilitation is not viewed as a priority.

The problem is that this response individualises the challenge of violence. It focuses on individual perpetrators without attempting to understand the very complex social conditions in South Africa that contribute to men’s violent behaviour. These conditions include colonial and apartheid histories of violence, endemic poverty, substance abuse, deeply held patriarchal attitudes about women’s place in society and the emasculation of unemployment when men measure their worth through work, or an absence of it.

These issues all beg for solutions on a collective level. Without that sort of intervention, gender based violence will continue unabated.

#culture_du_viol

Hacking Apartheid - Cryptography Tools for Activists
▻http://www.filmsforaction.org/articles/hacking-apartheid-cryptography-tools-for-activists

During the apartheid era in South Africa, the ban imposed on the African National Congress (ANC) party meant that anti-apartheid activists were under constant surveillance, and were frequently...

The turn to burning in #South_Africa
▻http://africasacountry.com/2016/09/the-turn-to-burning-in-south-africa

In October last year thousands of South African students marched on key sites of power – Parliament in Cape Town, the seat of government in Tshwane and the headquarters of the ruling African National Congress (ANC) in Johannesburg – under the banner of #FeesMustFall. The scale of this mobilization, which included students from elite and working class universities, was impressive. There was […]

#POLITICS #Academy #activism #colonialism #Politics #protest #University

Les hystériques parlent ! Notre défense de la non-mixité à Paris-8
▻http://mouvements.info/les-hysteriques-parlent

La pratique de la non-mixité (et sa théorisation) dans les luttes de libération et d’émancipation a une longue histoire, que l’on pense à l’African National Congress des années 1940 et 50 en Afrique du sud, aux Black Panthers aux Etats-Unis dans les années 1960, aux mouvements féministes des années 1970 ou aux pratiques de l’autonomie ouvrière depuis le 19e siècle. L’actualité nous montre que cette stratégie de prise de parole et d’autoémancipation des personnes minorisées ne va toujours pas de soi, aussi bien du côté du gouvernement de la République « universaliste » française que des mouvements sociaux. Dans le contexte des mobilisations contre la Loi Travail en France ces derniers mois, à l’université ou à Nuit Debout, se sont structurés des groupes non-mixtes, dont la légitimité a été fortement mise (...)

Selon un ancien agent de la CIA et vice-consul à Durban, un certain Richard Dickard, les Etats-Unis percevaient Mandela comme « complètement sous le contrôle de l’Union soviétique », ce qui aurait amené cet agent de la CIA à s’impliquer directement et à organiser l’arrestation de Mandela en 1962 (il restera 27 ans en prison) par le régime d’apartheid sud-africain :
▻http://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2016/may/15/cia-operative-nelson-mandela-1962-arrest?CMP=share_btn_tw

A tip from a CIA spy to authorities in apartheid-era South Africa led to Nelson Mandela’s arrest, beginning the leader’s 27 years behind bars, a report said on Sunday.
Donald Rickard, a former US vice-consul in Durban and CIA operative, told British film director John Irvin that he had been involved in Mandela’s arrest in 1962, which was seen as necessary because the Americans believed he was “completely under the control of the Soviet Union” , according to a report in the Sunday Times newspaper.
“He could have incited a war in South Africa, the United States would have to get involved, grudgingly, and things could have gone to hell,” Rickard said.
“We were teetering on the brink here and it had to be stopped, which meant Mandela had to be stopped. And I put a stop to it. ”

Et puis dans la suite de l’article, faisant penser un peu à la situation brésilienne où des autorités très critiquables se voient déstabilisées, en partie de l’extérieur, non pas pour leur incompétence et pour leur corruption, mais pour des raisons d’alignement sur le projet alternatif de multipolarité des BRICS, ces accusations générales du porte-parole de l’ANC sur le rôle toujours déstabilisateur de la CIA :

Zizi Kodwa, national spokesman of Mandela’s ruling African National Congress (ANC) party, called the revelation “a serious indictment”.
“We always knew there was always collaboration between some western countries and the apartheid regime,” he said.
He claimed that though the incident happened decades ago, the CIA was still interfering in South African politics.
“We have recently observed that there are efforts to undermine the democratically elected ANC government,” he alleged. “They never stopped operating here.”
“It is still happening now – the CIA is still collaborating with those who want regime change .”

EDIT : sur le même sujet, un article de l’AFP en français sur le Huffington Post québecois signalé par @loutre ici : ►http://seenthis.net/messages/489555
ainsi qu’un article du Figaro signalé par @rezo là : ▻http://seenthis.net/messages/489488

South African Jews Vow Not Be ’Bullied’ by Calls to Cut Dual Israeli Citizenship - Jewish World News - Haaretz
▻http://www.haaretz.com/jewish-world/jewish-world-news/.premium-1.675013

An attack on the Jewish community – that is how South African Jewish community organizations are describing proposed changes to the country’s dual-citizenship laws.
A deputy cabinet minister and senior official in the ruling African National Congress (ANC) made headlines at the weekend when he was quoted as saying that the government should look at changing current laws so as to prevent South African citizens from fighting for the Israel Defense Forces.
The South African Jewish Board of Deputies (SAJBD) and South African Zionist Federation (SAZF) condemned the comments made by Obed Bapela, who is also head of the ANC’s national executive committee’s panel on international relations. 
“He has undermined the very core value of South Africa’s democracy by proposing a change to our law purely to prevent one sector of our society, in this case, South African Jews, from having a relationship with Israel,” the SAJBD and SAZF said.
“The South African Jewish community will not be bullied or intimidated by his threats and have sought a meeting with President Jacob Zuma and will request further meetings to clarify Bapela’s statement.”
SAJBD chairwoman Mary Kluk told Haaretz that she didn’t know how many South Africans have served with the IDF in recent years.
Asked if she believed that Bapela’s views reflected those of the senior ANC leadership, she said: “No. I strongly believe that these are Bapela’s personal views and that he uses every opportunity provided to him to put them out there.”
Bapela rejected the notion that the proposed policy changes were aimed only at Israel.
In a radio interview, he said that Israel was used as simply an example, but that the government was also concerned about South Africans serving with other nations’ armies.
Several citizens had served with the American and British militaries during the invasion of Iraq, he said, and that others take part in mercenary wars and escape prosecution by adopting another country’s citizenship.
Responding to the assertion that the South African Jewish community was being singled out, Bapela said: "Not at all. We are not anti-Jewish. We are not anti-Semitic. That is why even the policy says ’the Israeli state co-existing with that of Palestine.’

Pro-Gaza, anti-Israel demonstrators in Cape Town, August 9, 2014.Reuters
“That’s recognition of Israel as an independent state and the Jewish community as citizens of the world. It’s the policies of the government of Israel we oppose and are against.”
He added, however, that if a “specific group” is sending boys to a country every year to receive military training, it was something that goes against ANC policies and would have to be looked at.
Speaking to Haaretz, SAZF President Avrom Krengel said that although the organization doesn’t keep track of how many South Africans have served in the IDF in recent years, it was definitely far less than the number who serve in the British armed forces.
“A year or two ago, the U.K. High Commissioner said that there were over 1,000 South Africans serving as British Marines,” Krengel said.
He added that while the children of South Africans who make aliyah would eventually end up in the IDF when they reached conscription age, it could not be interpreted as a case of South African Jews sending their children to Israel to be part of the army.
The fewer than 200 families who make aliyah every year come from a big cross-section of the community and are motivated to immigrate to Israel for various reasons, Krengel said.
“They are not going there to join the IDF,” he said.
He described Bapela as being part of a very vociferous anti-Israel camp in the ANC, but said his views weren’t shared by the country’s president, deputy president or senior cabinet ministers.
The mooted change to the law also drew sharp criticism from Mangosuthu Buthelezi, who for 10 years served as Minister of Home Affairs and is head of the opposition Inkatha Freedom Party.
Buthelezi said he felt frustrated by the ANC’s intention to “instruct” government to change its citizenship laws “purely on the basis that a few South Africans are also citizens of Israel, and a few among them may be receiving military training in Israel.”
Buthelezi pointed out that under current laws a citizen can only lose his or her citizenship for serving in the armed forces of a country with which South Africa is at war.
“We are not at war with Israel,” he noted.
“One can reach no other conclusion than that the ANC has moved from being ’pro-Palestine’ to being ’anti-Israeli’.”
Bapela was in the news less than two months ago for comments related to Israel.
He had harsh words for South African students who visited Israel under the auspices of the South Africa-Israel Forum, saying that they had brought the ANC into disrepute and promising to launch a probe.
At the time he accused Israel of “offering free trips and holidays to embarrass the ANC."
Bapela was also a featured speaker at a protest in March of this year against the South Africa-Israel Expo in Johannesburg.
During the BDS event, participants were heard shouting “You think this is Israel, we are going to kill you!” and “You Jews do not belong here in South Africa!”

South African Jews Vow Not Be ’Bullied’ by Calls to Cut Dual Israeli Citizenship
Official in the ruling ANC party said that the government should look at changing the laws to prevent South Africans from fighting for IDF.

Michael Campbell Sep 07, 2015

An attack on the Jewish community – that is how South African Jewish community organizations are describing proposed changes to the country’s dual-citizenship laws.
A deputy cabinet minister and senior official in the ruling African National Congress (ANC) made headlines at the weekend when he was quoted as saying that the government should look at changing current laws so as to prevent South African citizens from fighting for the Israel Defense Forces.
The South African Jewish Board of Deputies (SAJBD) and South African Zionist Federation (SAZF) condemned the comments made by Obed Bapela, who is also head of the ANC’s national executive committee’s panel on international relations. 
“He has undermined the very core value of South Africa’s democracy by proposing a change to our law purely to prevent one sector of our society, in this case, South African Jews, from having a relationship with Israel,” the SAJBD and SAZF said.
“The South African Jewish community will not be bullied or intimidated by his threats and have sought a meeting with President Jacob Zuma and will request further meetings to clarify Bapela’s statement.”
SAJBD chairwoman Mary Kluk told Haaretz that she didn’t know how many South Africans have served with the IDF in recent years.
Asked if she believed that Bapela’s views reflected those of the senior ANC leadership, she said: “No. I strongly believe that these are Bapela’s personal views and that he uses every opportunity provided to him to put them out there.”
Bapela rejected the notion that the proposed policy changes were aimed only at Israel.
In a radio interview, he said that Israel was used as simply an example, but that the government was also concerned about South Africans serving with other nations’ armies.
Several citizens had served with the American and British militaries during the invasion of Iraq, he said, and that others take part in mercenary wars and escape prosecution by adopting another country’s citizenship.
Responding to the assertion that the South African Jewish community was being singled out, Bapela said: "Not at all. We are not anti-Jewish. We are not anti-Semitic. That is why even the policy says ’the Israeli state co-existing with that of Palestine.’

Pro-Gaza, anti-Israel demonstrators in Cape Town, August 9, 2014.Reuters
“That’s recognition of Israel as an independent state and the Jewish community as citizens of the world. It’s the policies of the government of Israel we oppose and are against.”
He added, however, that if a “specific group” is sending boys to a country every year to receive military training, it was something that goes against ANC policies and would have to be looked at.
Speaking to Haaretz, SAZF President Avrom Krengel said that although the organization doesn’t keep track of how many South Africans have served in the IDF in recent years, it was definitely far less than the number who serve in the British armed forces.
“A year or two ago, the U.K. High Commissioner said that there were over 1,000 South Africans serving as British Marines,” Krengel said.
He added that while the children of South Africans who make aliyah would eventually end up in the IDF when they reached conscription age, it could not be interpreted as a case of South African Jews sending their children to Israel to be part of the army.
The fewer than 200 families who make aliyah every year come from a big cross-section of the community and are motivated to immigrate to Israel for various reasons, Krengel said.
“They are not going there to join the IDF,” he said.
He described Bapela as being part of a very vociferous anti-Israel camp in the ANC, but said his views weren’t shared by the country’s president, deputy president or senior cabinet ministers.
The mooted change to the law also drew sharp criticism from Mangosuthu Buthelezi, who for 10 years served as Minister of Home Affairs and is head of the opposition Inkatha Freedom Party.
Buthelezi said he felt frustrated by the ANC’s intention to “instruct” government to change its citizenship laws “purely on the basis that a few South Africans are also citizens of Israel, and a few among them may be receiving military training in Israel.”
Buthelezi pointed out that under current laws a citizen can only lose his or her citizenship for serving in the armed forces of a country with which South Africa is at war.
“We are not at war with Israel,” he noted.
“One can reach no other conclusion than that the ANC has moved from being ’pro-Palestine’ to being ’anti-Israeli’.”
Bapela was in the news less than two months ago for comments related to Israel.
He had harsh words for South African students who visited Israel under the auspices of the South Africa-Israel Forum, saying that they had brought the ANC into disrepute and promising to launch a probe.
At the time he accused Israel of “offering free trips and holidays to embarrass the ANC."
Bapela was also a featured speaker at a protest in March of this year against the South Africa-Israel Expo in Johannesburg.
During the BDS event, participants were heard shouting “You think this is Israel, we are going to kill you!” and “You Jews do not belong here in South Africa!”

Africa to #Obama: Mind Your Own Business
▻http://www.commondreams.org/views/2015/07/30/africa-obama-mind-your-own-business

Contrary to Obama’s self-appointed role as the secular priest of good governance, Africans fight for more freedom, democracy, and clean government daily.

And in these struggles, the US has consistently sided with our oppressors.

It was complicit in the murder of Patrice Lumumba, supported apartheid South Africa against Nelson Mandela and his African National Congress (ANC, whom it declared terrorists), financed the terrorist organisation National Union for the Total Independence of Angola (UNITA), and propped up incompetent and corrupt tyrants like Mobutu, Samuel Doe, and Siad Barre.

Instead of coming to lecture, Obama should have had the humility to come and apologise to Africans for his country’s sadistic adventures on our continent.

Indeed, Obama has no moral right to lecture Africans on democracy, human rights, and clean government because his country has been sponsoring corrupt and cruel policies against black people at home and thieving tyrants on our continent.

If there are weaknesses in our governance they are ours to struggle against and overcome.

Steven Biko, a hero of the anti-apartheid struggle, said that the greatest weapon in the hands of an oppressor is never his guns and armies, but the mind of the oppressed.

This was clear from the assembled African #elites in Addis Ababa who were cheering Obama as he presented himself as the altruist advising our leaders on how to lead us better.

Like all imperial powers before it, the US seeks to dominate the world in order to exploit it. This is how it sustains her greedy consumption.

But to disguise its intentions, the US rewrites history, employs selective indignation, and chooses arbitrary priorities to present its selfish agenda.

Obama being of African ancestry is the best puppet the US uses to disguise its contempt for Africans. But the best he can do is to mind his own business and let us mind ours.

#Marionnette #Etats-Unis #sans_vergogne

Pioneer Jewish South African freedom fighter calls Israel ’apartheid state’
Denis Goldberg, aided by Israel in 1985 release from S.A. prison, says even Israel’s treatment of Arab citizens counts as apartheid.
By Haaretz | Jul. 28, 2015 Haaretz Daily Newspaper | Israel News
▻http://www.haaretz.com/news/world/.premium-1.668316

Veteran Jewish anti-apartheid activist Denis Goldberg, whose release after two decades in a South African prison was aided by Israel, and who then lived briefly in the Jewish state before leaving in protest, told a Johannesburg gathering that Israel is an apartheid state, the Middle East Monitor reported on Tuesday.

Noting that critics of this view protest that Palestinian citizens of Israel, unlike blacks in apartheid South Africa, vote and serve in their country’s parliament, Goldberg said, “You don’t need to be like South Africa to be an apartheid state, there is a definition in international law through the UNESCO declaration on apartheid,” he said.

Apartheid exists, he said, in states that enforce laws and policies that discriminate between people on the basis of race or religion, and this holds true in Israel proper as well as in the occupied West Bank and Gaza Strip. He was one of a panel of anti-apartheid activists discussing the lessons that struggle holds for the Palestinian cause.

Goldberg, 82, one of the original members of Umkhonto we Sizwe, the armed wing of the African National Congress, was sentenced with Nelson Mandela and other activists to life in prison in the 1964 Rivonia treason trial. He was released in 1985 with Israel’s intercession, then went to live on a kibbutz, but moved to London months later, denouncing Israel’s war in Lebanon, its occupation of the Palestinian territories, and its close ties with South Africa.

“There is no doubt in my mind that Israel is an apartheid state,” Goldberg told the gathering. “Having lived through apartheid in South Africa, I cannot allow in my name the same kind of oppression to go on.”

He added, “I have to be an opponent of the exclusionist policies of Zionism, but let me say straight away that I have to be opposed to the exclusionary policies of the feudal Arab states of the Middle East as well.”

The obvious and curious South African angles of Israel’s FIFA challenge - West of Eden - -
The irony of history: Former ANC leader and anti-apartheid activist Tokyo Sexwale is pegged to monitor Israeli policies towards Palestinian footballers.
By Chemi Shalev | May 30, 2015 Haaretz Daily Newspaper | Israel News
▻http://www.haaretz.com/blogs/west-of-eden/.premium-1.658781

Former South African cabinet minister and African National Congress (ANC) leader Tokyo Sexwale figured prominently in Friday’s political drama at international soccer’s FIFA conference in Zurich. Palestinian football chief Jibril Rajoub explicitly mentioned Sexwale as having played a critical role in his decision to withdraw the motion to have Israel expelled. And FIFA President Sepp Blatter, shortly before being reelected to a fifth term in office, unilaterally appointed Sexwale from the podium to head the monitoring committee that will deal with Palestinian grievances, including the demand that five West Bank teams be barred from participating in official Israeli soccer leagues.

In their rush to declare victory following the frustration of Rajoub’s plan to expel Israel outright, most Israeli politicians and analysts seemed to ignore the potential symbolism and irony of putting a prominent anti-apartheid activist to adjudicate Palestinian claims of Israeli racism and discrimination. The lapse is significant in light of the fact that Palestinians and the boycott divestment and sanctions (BDS) movement view the international boycott of apartheid South Africa – in which sports played a pivotal role – as a precedent and inspiration for their own anti-Israeli campaigns.

In fact, though white South Africans were stung far more by subsequent boycotts in rugby, cricket and the Olympics, soccer was one of the first arenas in which non-white South Africa together with the rising Africa-Asian bloc of non-aligned nations scored initial victories against the apartheid regime. FIFA’s first suspension of South Africa in 1961 was temporarily lifted at the behest of Blatter’s apartheid-condoning predecessor, the English Stanley Rous, but was shortly reinstated thereafter until 1976, when the Pretoria regime was expelled altogether following the Soweto Uprisings. South Africa was only reinstated in 1992, after it abolished apartheid.

Sexwale’s role in Israel’s FIFA drama seems far from straightforward. The 62-year-old Soweto-born ANC leader, who spent 13 years alongside Nelson Mandela in the Robben Island prison, is a former provincial premier, presidential candidate and cabinet minister. As head of his own foundation’s Global Watch, dedicated to fighting discrimination in sports, Sexwale recently toured the West Bank together with Rajoub in order to see the plight of Palestinian footballers first hand. But despite the Israeli government’s reluctance to facilitate his visit as well as a reported scuffle with Israeli soldiers in Hebron, Sexwale’s summation was markedly evenhanded: “What we saw in Palestine in relation to what is happening in Israel is shocking. Palestine is a swollen cheek with tears, but so is Israel. They are two cheeks on the same face, and a resolution to the problem has to be found beyond sport.” 

Sexwale’s relationship with Blatter himself seems equally complex: In 2011 he helped save Blatter’s career by allowing himself to be photographed with the FIFA president, who was facing harsh criticism at the time after claiming that there was no racism in soccer, and if there was, it could be solved with handshake. More intriguing and current, however, is the fact that Sexwale was a member of the South African organizing committee of the 2010 World Cup that is now figuring prominently in the U.S. indictments of top FIFA officials on charges of corruption. While Sexwale has since assured South Africans that they were justly and legally awarded the right to host the coveted games, speculation is rampant about the identities of “Co-Conspirator #15” and “Co-Conspirator #16”, two “high-ranking South African football and government officials” who are suspected of offering cash for votes in order to make sure the World Cup was held in South Africa.

According to the indictments, the two suspects served on both the 2010 World Cup organizing committee and on the 2006 South African World Cup bid committee. The reports in South Africa suggest there are only two other officials, in addition to Sexwale, who fit the bill.

Sexwale also has another Israeli connection: according to press reports, he made a fortune at one time in the diamond and mining business and was involved in a convoluted joint venture in the Congo with controversial Israeli billionaire Dan Gertler, who has himself been at the focus of several criminal inquiries, including those related to former Israeli Foreign Minister Avigdor Lieberman. And his financial records have now been subpoenaed by his one time advocate and subsequent wife, with whom he is now embroiled in a widely covered and messy divorce.

Politics and sports

Though most historians dispute the narrative that economic sanctions “brought South Africa to its knees," as its proponents claimed, no one denies the devastating influence of the boycott in sports on the white public’s morale: In a 1977 poll, white South Africans listed the lack of international sports as one of the three most damaging aspects of apartheid. Sports are important everywhere, of course, but in mid-20th century South Africa, as in Australia and New Zealand at the time, they often attained a semi-religious status. In apartheid South Africa, the all-white teams were a source of national pride and racial defiance.

Throughout its 30-year battle to maintain racially pure squads, the South African government used a slogan frequently uttered by Israeli officials and their FIFA defenders in recent days: “Keep politics out of sports.” Their non-white challengers, also South African, countered with a slogan that Palestinians have also adapted and adopted as their own: “No normal sports in an abnormal society.”

Of course, despite the efforts of BDS supporters to draw a direct analogy between the two, Israel’s policy towards the Palestinians, arguable immorality notwithstanding, is no successor to South Africa’s racially motivated white supremacist regime. In fact, without detracting in any way from the existence of rampant racism in Israeli soccer in general and in teams like Beitar Jerusalem in particular, Israeli Jews and Arabs probably mix and collaborate in the Israeli football leagues more than they do in most other sectors of society. And while countless Israelis are soccer crazy, sports in Israel is viewed as no more than a hobby, as its international results attest. If FIFA had expelled Israel on Friday it would have dealt a stinging blow to Israel’s national pride, not necessarily to its sporting convictions.

Nonetheless, the fear that Israel has reached the point that expulsion by FIFA seemed possible if not imminent is an ominous harbinger of things to come. As the South African precedent proves, sporting arenas offer infinite possibilities for activists to hassle Israel and its teams, in professional associations, official tournaments and bilateral matches, both official and friendly.

Israelis have conveniently forgotten that their national soccer teams had already been placed in unofficial quarantine in the Asian arena after the 1973 Yom Kippur War and were only accepted to Europe’s UEFA soccer group in 1994 in the wake of the goodwill generated by the previous year’s Oslo Accords. With the current government’s record on peacemaking and general popularity, however, the credit accrued then seems to have finally run out.

Why Israel’s Jews must vote for the Arab list -
Those who hesitate because Joint List is an ’Arab party’ should remember the role that Jews played in the African National Congress during the apartheid era.
By Gideon Levy | Mar. 8, 2015 Haaretz
▻http://www.haaretz.com/opinion/.premium-1.645750

The Joint List is the clear ray of light in this election season. It’s important for many Arabs to vote for it, and no less important for many Jews to do likewise. There is no more appropriate way for anyone who is guided by moral and ethical standards to demonstrate empathy and register protest.

Those who hesitate because it’s an “Arab party” should remember the role that Jews played in the African National Congress during the apartheid era. They did not recoil because it was a black movement. They did not hesitate because it was not their battle, supposedly.

The ANC was the movement of the oppressed natives of South Africa, and the Joint List is the movement of the oppressed natives of Israel.

There were a few South African Jews with a conscience who not only supported the ANC but also fought, were injured and were banned alongside their black comrades.

Denounced as traitors then, today they are a great source of pride – to Jews as well. Joe Slovo, the commander of the ANC military wing who went on to become a cabinet minister in the post-apartheid government; Ronnie Kasrils; Albie Sachs, who became a justice in South Africa’s Constitutional Court; and Ben Turok, who became a member of parliament – these were among many who fought shoulder-to-shoulder with the oppressed blacks, despite or perhaps because they were white Jews who enjoyed all the privileges of the apartheid regime.

Less is being asked of Jews in Israel, for now. They are called upon to identify with a new party that offers a promise of something new. There is no need to ignore its failure to put more Jews on its slate, and it is okay to be upset that it did not sign a surplus votes agreement with Meretz. One can be skeptical of the future relations of its various components, but anyone who dreams of genuine change, not about replacing Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu with Isaac Herzog, must vote for the Joint List.

What better option is there for the Israeli voter who can no longer bear the occupation in the territories and the ultranationalism within Israel, of the ruse that Israel is both Jewish and democratic, of the injustices of present-day Zionism, and who perhaps has reached the conclusion that the two-state solution is dead? Who will they vote for?

Are there many other party heads as impressive, eloquent and refreshing as Ayman Odeh? Are there many other MKs as outstanding as Ahmad Tibi, Jamal Zahalka, Dov Khenin and even, yes, even Haneen Zoabi? Is there another party that does not demand “support for Israel Defense Forces soldiers” at the start of every pointless war?

If the overwhelming majority of Arabs vote for them, they will, for the first time, enter the heart of the political dialogue in Israel – to the annoyance of nearly all the other parties.

If many Jews also vote for it, we can begin to speak of a “game changer,” and perhaps even of a good omen.

Just imagine: The Joint List is the third largest party in the Knesset. The coalition belongs to Netanyahu, Herzog and Yair Lapid. Odeh is selected leader of the opposition – the heir of Menachem Begin, Shimon Peres, Yitzhak Shamir, Ehud Barak, Netanyahu, all prime ministers who held the position at one point.

The prime minister is obligated to brief him on security and diplomatic matters, “no less than once a month,” by law. The law requires him to address the Knesset after every speech by the premier. Foreign heads of state meet with him and listen to his views. As a symbol of government, he is protected by the Shin Bet security service. Perhaps for the first time in its history, Israel has a true leader of opposition.

A few stereotypes will be shattered in a single, not-imaginary act that might also usher in a deep change in consciousness.

Odeh could surprise us yet, as he already surprised many Israelis who were not even aware of the existence of the combinations “Arab and impressive,” “Palestinian and charming.” His party must get a lot of votes for this process to begin. His friends must support him and many Jews must choose the Israeli ANC, which could yet prove it has what it takes to prevent the establishment of a second apartheid state, the apartheid state of the Land of Israel.

Gideon Levy tweets at @levy_haaretz

Debate: The future of the workers’ movement in #South_Africa
▻http://africasacountry.com/debate-the-future-of-the-workers-movement-in-south-africa

In May this year, South Africa will host its 5th general election since the advent of democracy in 1994. The ruling African National Congress have dominated these elections until now (62.6% of the vote in 1994, 66.3% in 1999, 69.6% in 2004 and 65% in 2009) and are poised to get a majority again, though […]

#Alex_Lichtenstein #COSATU #leftism #National_Union_of_Metalworkers_of_South_Africa #NUMSA #Peter_Dwyer #Sakhela_Buhlungu #Steven_Friedman #trade_unionism

The two mutually irreconcilable Nelson Mandelas
▻http://africasacountry.com/the-mutually-irreconcilable-mandelas

Nelson Mandela’s post-presidency saw the rise of a larger-than-life caricature of himself, one that somehow managed to be smaller than both the real accomplishments of the man as revolutionary and politician, and an apolitical, often commercial, valorization of the failures of a lengthy transition to democracy that never seems to amount to liberation.

#African_National_Congress #Economic_Freedom_Fighters #Julius_Malema #Nelson_Mandela #South_Africa

Remembering #Nokutela_Mdima_Dube
▻http://africasacountry.com/remembering-nokutela-mdima-dube

For ninety-five years the remains of Nokutela Mdima Dube lay ignored in the Brixton Cemetery in Johannesburg. Similarly ignored were her contributions to the founding and development of a critical set of institutions – the Ohlange Institute, the Inanda Seminary, the Ilange lase Natal newspaper, and the African National Congress – and cultural practices – […]

#FILM #Cherif_Keita #John_Dube #Remembering_Nokutela #Ukukhumbula_uNokutela

Over 150 former international anti-Apartheid activists tell South Africa’s ANC to boycott Israel
►http://electronicintifada.net/blogs/ali-abunimah/over-150-former-international-anti-apartheid-activists-tell-sout

At the opening plenary of the African National Congress’ (ANC) 3rd International Solidarity Conference (26-28 October), former Dutch anti-apartheid activist, Adri Nieuwhof, presented a statement on behalf of over 150 former international anti-apartheid activists to the ANC. The call has the support of signatories from more than 19 countries, belonging to over 35 organizations. It also has the backing of long-time international ANC supporters such as E.S. Reddy, Alice Walker, Victoria Brittain and Prexy Nesbitt.