Address to Lenasia Rally
14th January 2009
From our own experience, we know how painful and dehumanising is the system of segregation, otherwise known as apartheid. Apartheid is a system based on the assumption that one group or race is superior to others and therefore has a right to all the privileges and virtues associated with that particular status. It has a right to run and determine the lives of others, excluding them from certain privileges, merely because they do not belong to the “chosen” group.
What other definition would so fittingly define a system based on different rights and privileges for Jews and Arabs in the Middle East? The bantustanisation of Palestine into pieces or strips – West Bank, Ramallah, Gaza strip and so on – run by Israel and with no rights whatsoever for the Palestinians, is definitely an apartheid system.
Israel occupied the land of the Palestinian people and created settler communities of Jews who enjoy a different lifestyle and privileges than those experienced by Palestinians. Palestinians are packed like Sardines in a tin throughout the Bantustans, with Gaza being acknowledged as the world’s biggest open-air prison.
The prime characteristics of apartheid in South Africa included:
· Segregation of the country into highly developed whites-only areas co-existing with extremely under-developed black communities, where the majority lived with no or limited rights and access to basic facilities;
· The black majority had no rights to freely participate and determine their destiny without the supervision of the superior race, which made all the decisions and enforced them through a highly militarised state machinery;
· The country was further balkanised into various Bantustans – Bophuthatswana, Kwangwane, Kwandebele, Venda, Transkei, KwaZulu, Ciskei, etc. – which were partitioned in such a way that within the same country you needed a passport to travel from one Bantustan to the other. In between these Bantustans was South Africa, a land foreign to all blacks but firmly in the hands of white supremacists
What is the situation in Palestine today?
Related:
Victory for worker solidarity
6 February 2009
The Congress of South African Trade Union is pleased to announce that its members, dock workers belonging to the South African Transport and Allied Workers Union (SATAWU) achieved a victory last night when they stood firm by their decision not to offload the Johanna Russ, a ship that was carrying Israeli goods to South Africa. This, despite threats to COSATU members from sections of the pro-Israeli lobby, and despite severe provocation.