Tag: Apartheid

Israel marriage ban too racist even for apartheid South Africa

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Friday, 10 March 2023 — The Electronic Intifada

Ali Abunimah

Man speaking at microphone in front of crowd at the Arkansas State Capitol protesting school integration with signs reading Race mixing is Communism and Stop the race mixingIsrael’s restrictions on marriage are reminiscent of laws against race mixing that existed in the United States and apartheid South Africa John T. Bledsoe Library of Congress

Israel is a country where people “can be assured they will not be persecuted or discriminated against because of what they believe or whom they love,” former New York City mayor Michael Bloomberg boldly asserts.

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WATCH: 1976 and 2015: Vital turns towards true freedom

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Thursday, 16 June 2022 — New Frame

The uprisings of 1976 and the Fees Must Fall protests of 2015, almost 40 years later, were important turns in the continuing fight for the true emancipation of a majority of South Africans.

Even though the 1994 settlement was an important political moment, it did not do much to dismantle the systems that propped up both colonialism and apartheid. The security apparatus, for example, still exists to exert control, to protect power, to protect capital. And the path to a better life for many of the country’s people is full of obstacles, many of which are structural. These are systems that were designed to benefit a few. That pattern remains. Until such systems are removed, South Africa will know no progress or equity.

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South African history, through Rashid Lombard’s lens

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29 April 2022 — New Frame

The struggle photojournalist, activist and jazz photographer has given UWC custody of his archive, with plans to digitise it and start an accessible photography centre.

By: Atiyyah Khan


Circa 1989: Rashid Lombard at the Cape Town Press Centre in Shortmarket Street. (Photograph by Shadley Lombard Archive)

Rashid Lombard’s home feels like a photo gallery. Images of all sizes line the passages and bedrooms as moments of history stare at you from the walls. The legendary photographer sits in his lounge with his wife Colleen and daughter Yana, in their home in Athlone, Cape Town. The family presence is important to him as they are central to ensuring his legacy endures.

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Long Read | Home and exile, freedom and loss

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Thursday, 6 January 2022 — New Frame

Mandla Langa and Mphuthumi Ntabeni’s new novels, The Lost Language of the Soul and The Wanderers, intersect in their reflections on the lives of Umkhonto weSizwe freedom fighters.

(Photograph by Thabang Malatji)

Novelist, poet and short story writer Mandla Langa’s latest book, The Lost Language of the Soul, is a coming-of-age tale set largely in Zambia and apartheid South Africa in the late 1980s. The novel chronicles the odyssey of Joseph Mabaso, the son of an Umkhonto weSizwe soldier who goes in search of his mother after her sudden disappearance from their home in Lusaka. The search takes Langa’s teenage protagonist through various towns and borders until he ends up in South Africa.

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The bleak shelter of Yellow Shade

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11 December 2021 — The Mail&Guardian

Off-kilter: Sam Nhlengethwa’s My Grandmother’s Kitchen in the 60’s

The asymmetrical chair and the table cloth sitting skew in the Sam Nhlengethwa lithograph (My Grandmother’s Kitchen in the 60’s) on the cover of Yellow Shade (Deep South) are apt metaphors for how Dimakatso Sedite represents black life. Scenes are off-kilter and co-ordinates are out of place. Her poems are set in townships — the post-apocalyptic townships of the present — with her imagery giving a vertiginous sense of what it feels like to be trapped in the continuum of apartheid.

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Just Like in the US, Policing in Israel is Rooted in Racist Violence

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15 April 2021 — Mint Press News

Palestine/Israel

Pal racismIn the US, policing can be traced back to nineteenth-century slave patrols. In Israel, security forces have roots in Haganah, a Zionist militia group involved in the ethnic cleansing of Palestine.

HAIFA, ISRAEL — Israeli state violence manifests in several ways—police killings, home demolitions, displacement and detentions—but each is grounded in the same colonialist ideology spanning decades.

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EXCLUSIVE: OR Tambo’s forgotten speech at Chatham House in 1985

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9 July 2020 — Mail & Guardian 

OR Tambo would have been 100 this year

Oliver Reginald Tambo 

On October 29 1985, Oliver Tambo gave a speech at Chatham House in London. In it, he urged a reluctant British government to support the fight against apartheid — and expertly dissects the hypocrisy in not doing so. For decades, the speech was buried in the Chatham House archives. For its centennial celebrations, the think tank has made the speech publicly available for the first time, in partnership with the Oliver & Adelaide Tambo Foundation. Tambo’s daughter, Nomatemba Tambo, will be discussing the speech on a Chatham House webinar on Friday, July 10. This is an edited version of Tambo’s address.

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Pro-Israel racist group ADL moves to co-opt Black Lives Matter

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30 June 2020 — The Electronic Intifada

Ali Abunimah

Soldiers restrain a blindfolded youth

The Anti-Defamation League tries to portray itself as an ally of Black Lives Matter while shielding Israel from criticism for its abuses of Palestinian rights. – Wisam Hashlamoun ZUMA Press

For those who yearn for an end to systemic racism, these are exhilarating times as Black activists and organizations lead a global uprising against symbols and structures of white supremacy.

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Israel renews racist marriage law

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3 June 2020 — The Electronic Intifada

Ali Abunimah

Man sits on edge of bench that says Europeans OnlyIsrael’s version of apartheid can be more subtle than South Africa’s, but the goal is fundamentally the same: ethno-racial gerrymandering, segregation and domination. Picture-Alliance/DPA

Israel this week renewed one of the most overtly racist of the dozens of laws on its books that discriminate against Palestinians and Palestinian citizens of Israel.

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Entry ban at Israeli city park provokes apartheid warnings By Jonathan Cook

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9 July 2019 — Jonathan Cook

Jewish mayor calls on residents to raise Israeli flags and play Hebrew music as mother and son barred from playground

Middle East Eye – 9 July 2019

The barring of a lawyer and her infant from a public park in the Galilee last week has triggered a legal battle over whether local authorities in Israel can segregate citizens on a racial basis.

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Apartheid Australia Backs Apartheid Israel By Gideon Polya

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15 June 2014 — 4th Media

Dear fellow humanitarians,

An Apartheid Australia with an ongoing Aboriginal Genocide backs Apartheid Israel with its ongoing Palestinian Genocide.

A politically correct racist (PC racist) Apartheid Australia under an extreme right wing, pro-war, pro-Zionist, US lackey, human rights-abusing, anti-Indigenous, anti-environment Coalition government has moved to be the world’s leading supporter after the US of race-based, nuclear terrorist, genocidally racist, democracy-by-genocide Apartheid Israel.

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FOIA Lawsuit Fights to Reveal US Government’s Involvement in Nelson Mandela’s 1962 Arrest

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7 April 2014 — Unredacted

Nelson Mandela welcomed by President Bill Clinton and Speaker Gingrich at a 1998 ceremony where Mandela received the Congressional Gold Medal - while he was still on the terror watch list. Photo: Ruth Fremson/Associated Press

Nelson Mandela honored by President Bill Clinton and Speaker Gingrich at a 1998 ceremony where Mandela received the Congressional Gold Medal – while he was still on the terror watch list. Photo: Ruth Fremson/Associated Press

Nelson Mandela was found guilty of sabotage and conspiracy to violently overthrow South Africa’s apartheid government on June 12, 1964, served 27 years in prison, and stayed on the US’ terror watch list until 2008 –including while he was president of South Africa. While the US joined the international community in condemning Mandela’s arrest in 1962, it has long been believed that American intelligence agencies played a key, behind-the-scenes role in the event, and a recent Democracy Now! exclusive with the FBI’s “most prolific” FOIA requester, Ryan Shapiro, adds more to this murky chapter in American history.

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The U.S.’ South Africa Policy at the Time of Mandela’s Arrest By Lauren Harper

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13 December 2013 — Unredacted

Screen shot 2013-12-13 at 11.20.31 AMNelson Mandela was sentenced to life in prison by a South African court on June 12, 1964, after being found guilty of sabotage and conspiracy to violently overthrow the apartheid government. While Mandela’s imprisonment was criticized in the U.S. and abroad, at the time of his arrest, U.S. policy towards South Africa was more concerned with preserving access to South Africa’s natural resources than directly confronting apartheid. The five documents included in today’s posting, all part of the Digital National Security Archive’s South Africa collection, provide a glimpse of the U.S. walking a tightrope between strategic concerns and human rights issues at the time of Mandela’s arrest, and contextualize the outpouring of response to Mandela’s recent passing.

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The U.S.’ South Africa Policy at the Time of Mandela’s Arrest By Lauren Harper

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13 December 2013 — Unredacted

Screen shot 2013-12-13 at 11.20.31 AMNelson Mandela was sentenced to life in prison by a South African court on June 12, 1964, after being found guilty of sabotage and conspiracy to violently overthrow the apartheid government. While Mandela’s imprisonment was criticized in the U.S. and abroad, at the time of his arrest, U.S. policy towards South Africa was more concerned with preserving access to South Africa’s natural resources than directly confronting apartheid. The five documents included in today’s posting, all part of the Digital National Security Archive’s South Africa collection, provide a glimpse of the U.S. walking a tightrope between strategic concerns and human rights issues at the time of Mandela’s arrest, and contextualize the outpouring of response to Mandela’s recent passing.

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Video: The Secret History of How Cuba Helped End Apartheid in South Africa

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11 December 2013 — Democracy Now!

As the world focuses on Tuesday’s historic handshake between President Obama and Cuban President Raúl Castro, we look back at the pivotal role Cuba played in ending apartheid and why Castro was one of only five world leaders invited to speak at Nelson Mandela’s memorial. In the words of Mandela, the Cubans ‘destroyed the myth of the invincibility of the white oppressor … [and] inspired the fighting masses of South Africa.’ Historian Piero Gleijeses argues that it was Cuba’s victory in Angola in 1988 that forced Pretoria to set Namibia free and helped break the back of apartheid South Africa. We speak to Gleijeses about his new book, “Visions of Freedom: Havana, Washington, Pretoria, and the Struggle for Southern Africa, 1976-1991,” and play archival footage of Mandela meeting Fidel Castro in Cuba.

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“Mandela and Just People” By John Bart Gerald

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11 December 2013 — Night’s Lantern

mandela1

Mandela didn’t always wear suits and smile a lot. He rose to power promising revolutionary justice and left some unpaid debts behind to those who provided the backbone of his political strength. Among these are a South African diaspora of those who had to flee apartheid in the days the U.S. considered the African National Congress “terrorist”.

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“Mandela and Just People” By John Bart Gerald

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11 December 2013 — Night’s Lantern

mandela1

Mandela didn’t always wear suits and smile a lot. He rose to power promising revolutionary justice and left some unpaid debts behind to those who provided the backbone of his political strength. Among these are a South African diaspora of those who had to flee apartheid in the days the U.S. considered the African National Congress “terrorist”.

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Nelson Mandela: Obama, Clinton, Cameron, Blair – Tributes of Shameful Hypocrisy By Felicity Arbuthnot

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8 December 2013 — williambowles.info

Accusing politicians or former politicians of “breathtaking hypocrisy” is not just over used, it is inadequacy of spectacular proportions. Sadly, searches in various thesaurus’ fail in meaningful improvement.

The death of Nelson Mandela, however, provides tributes resembling duplicity on a mind altering substance.

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Shimon Peres on Mandela and Apartheid: Now & Then By Adam Horowitz

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6 December 2013 — Mondoweiss

Now:

The world lost a great leader who changed the course of history. On behalf of the citizens of Israel we mourn alongside the nations of the world and the people of South Africa, who lost an exceptional leader. Nelson Mandela was a fighter for human rights who left an indelible mark on the struggle against racism and discrimination. Continue reading →