Mayibuye Melisizwe Mandela
By Mayibuye Melisizwe Mandela
South Africa cannot continue to watch in silence while the people of Gaza are subjected to the most brutal form of state terror by the apartheid regime of Israel.
Every day, the children of Gaza wake up to the sound of bombs instead of birds, their schools turned into graveyards, their hospitals into morgues, their dreams buried beneath rubble paid for by global complicity and silence.
We, as the heirs of a nation that triumphed over apartheid, have both the moral and legal obligation to act.
The Republic of South Africa’s Foreign States Immunities Act 87 of 1981, together with the Diplomatic Immunities and Privileges Act 37 of 2001, gives our government the right to withdraw diplomatic recognition and expel any foreign mission acting contrary to international law, human rights, or South Africa’s constitutional values.
Under Section 231 of the Constitution, South Africa is bound by international treaties and conventions we have ratified, including the Convention on the Suppression and Punishment of the Crime of Apartheid (1973) and the Geneva Conventions.
Israel continues to violate both through illegal occupation, collective punishment, and genocide against the Palestinian people.
The government of President Cyril Ramaphosa must now follow the moral clarity and courage shown by President Gustavo Petro of Colombia, who expelled Israeli diplomats and severed ties after Israel’s criminal interception of a humanitarian flotilla and the kidnapping of peace activists.
President Petro stood on the right side of history, and so must we.
We must not only expel the Israeli Embassy from Pretoria, we must also ban all Israeli goods and services from entering our ports, shelves, and supply chains.
In 1987, when the world finally imposed trade and cultural boycotts against apartheid South Africa, it marked the beginning of the end of an evil regime.
The same principle must now apply to Israel.
No fruits, no weapons, no technology, no cultural exchanges, nothing must come in or go out until Palestine is free and every kidnapped activist and innocent civilian is released unconditionally.
This is not vengeance, it is justice.
It is the same justice that guided our own liberation struggle, when the late President Yasser Arafat of the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO) stood with us during our darkest hours.
The PLO trained and supported South African freedom fighters when the world turned its back on us.
Today, it is our turn to return that solidarity with action, not words.
To President Cyril Ramaphosa and Minister of International Relations and Cooperation, we say this: history will not remember those who spoke softly while children died.
It will remember those who acted with conviction.
South Africa must lead the moral uprising of the Global South by cutting all diplomatic, economic, and cultural ties with Apartheid Israel.
As Nelson Mandela once declared, “Our freedom is incomplete without the freedom of the Palestinians.”
It is time to make those words real through sanctions, through expulsion, and through courage.
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