Mukoma Wa Ngugi, Pambazuka News, 23 July 2008
Fatima Hassan, is a prominent South African human rights lawyer who was part of a South African Human Rights Delegation that in early July visited the Israel and the Occupied Palestinian Territories. The delegation undertook the mission in order to: “support those, Palestinian and Israeli, working daily, by non-violent means, to bring an end to the post-1967 Israeli occupation, to end all human rights abuses and breaches of international law, and to move towards peaceful relations and a just settlement…to express solidarity with those who are living in oppressive, restrictive and dangerous circumstances; and to to draw attention to the injustice of the occupation and its devastating consequences.” Mukoma Wa Ngugi interviewed Fatima Hassan on the solidarity visit and the implications of the Palestinian struggle for Africans.
PAMBAZUKA NEWS: Well, let’s get straight to it: A Independent Newspaper article quotes you as saying “The issue of separate roads, [different registration] of cars driven by different nationalities, the indignity of producing a permit any time a soldier asks for it, and of waiting in long queues in the boiling sun at checkpoints just to enter your own city, I think is worse than what we experienced during apartheid.” But the same article goes on to say that “Ms Hassan herself said she thought the apartheid comparison was a potential “red herring.” Can you speak more about this?