Anti-Israel policy isn’t Sisulu, it’s entire ANC

Brian Josselowitz, Cape Town

Krengel and National Director Wendy Kahn can celebrate and rub shoulders with as many ruling party members as they like. But the African National Congress (ANC) is unequivocal in its support for the Palestinian people’s fight for self-determination, and believes that the Palestinians are the victims and the oppressed, because rightly or wrongly, their situation resonates with the party’s own fight for liberation from the apartheid government.

You can schmooze with the political elite, and even take selfies with ANC President Cyril Ramaphosa, but he serves at the pleasure of the national executive committee, and he will not vote against ANC policy, especially on the question of Israel.

The SA Jewish Report (SAJR) gave him its unqualified backing when he won the ANC presidency at the party’s last elective conference, and if he has, as the SAJR would have us believe, an open mind about the conflict, why didn’t he take cabinet colleagues Naledi Pandor and Sisulu to task, in public, for their anti-Semitic remarks? Why has he allowed Sisulu to say that all relations with Israel are being severed, and the embassy will be downgraded to a visa office, without repudiating her in public?

Commentator Ferial Haffajee speculated in last Friday’s Daily Maverick that Sisulu would lose her job as department of international relations and cooperation minister, and be replaced by house leader (former speaker) Baleka Mbete. Be afraid, very afraid. Mbete is cut from the same cloth as Sisulu. As recently as March, when the sixth Boycott Divestment Sanctions conference took place in Gaza, she also gave her unqualified support to the Palestinians. Her message read in part, “South Africans under the ANC government are consistent and unequivocal in our support to the Palestinians since our democratic dispensation. Our president recently confirmed our position of a downgraded embassy in Tel Aviv. We know that more needs to be done, and we will continue to stick to our anti-imperialist stance until a truly free Palestine is realised.”

In my view Ramaphosa is an appeaser, and no matter what he says, the ANC comes first. He is also an astute politician. He will tell his audience what they want to hear.