Stellenbosch University has sided with the destruction of Gazans
The continued genocide against the people of Palestine by the Zionist state of Israel is without doubt one of the biggest injustices and human rights issues of our time.
The oppression and humiliation of the people of Palestine has its genesis in more than 100 years of Western imperialism as advanced originally by British colonialism, and in recent times by US imperialist policies in the Middle East.
It must be stated repeatedly that Israel is an occupying power and imperialist aggressor that has the financial, military and diplomatic backing of some of the most powerful Western nations.
The people of Palestine, on the other hand, are victims of Western-sponsored imperialist aggression. Palestinians are engaged in a legitimate struggle for national self-determination and against the occupation of their lands.
Since the October 7 attacks on Israelis, according to the Palestinian ministry of health, as of May 7 2024 34,789 people have been killed in Gaza, including more than 14,500 children.
More than 78,204 people have been injured and more than 8,000 are missing. In the occupied West Bank, at least 498 people have been killed, and this includes more than 124 children. More than 4,950 have been injured.
In addition, close to 100 Palestinian professors have been killed and more than 12 universities have been destroyed in Gaza (virtually destroying the entire university system there). Hospitals have also been attacked, with some of the murdered patients being buried in mass graves.
Historically, South Africa’s oppressed majority have had a long and special bond with the people of Palestine because of their different but shared histories under colonial oppression.
Both the South African liberation movement and the Palestine Liberation Organisation (PLO) declared that our individual freedoms are indivisibly linked with each other: that South Africa cannot be free until Palestine is liberated. This is the enduring story of solidarity among the oppressed throughout the ages.
Today the defenders of Zionism, who vacuously claim that Israel is a democracy, conveniently ignore the sordid history of Israel’s close ties with the apartheid state secret arms deals, the co-operation of their security and intelligence services, their respective nuclear weapons programmes.
The Israeli Uzi gun, which was widely issued to the notorious KwaZulu Police (KZP) of the KwaZulu Bantustan and also given to warlords wreaking havoc in KwaZulu-Natal in the 1980s into the 1990s, stands as one of the grim reminders of the
murderous collaboration between the Israeli
Zionist state and the apartheid regime.
No country can claim to be a democracy if it commits acts of terror and genocide against an entire nation. Our shared history with the oppressed peoples of the world makes it impossible for us to be neutral: the suffering of the Palestinian people is a suffering for all of us.
It is for this reason that the government of South Africa correctly filed an application with the International Court of Justice (ICJ) against Israel for crimes against humanity doing so in terms of the Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide. Earlier this year, the ICJ determined that Israel’s actions in Gaza “are plausibly genocidal” and has indicated provisional measures on that basis.
The co-ordinated attacks on South Africa for standing up to Zionist aggression in Palestine have simply exposed the utter hypocrisy and blatant double standards of the collective West and its South African surrogates such as the DA.
It is simply outrageous that these states that claim to be defenders of democratic values and freedom are actively conniving with each other to defend Zionist aggression and neutralise any international effort to call them to justice.
But let us be clear about one thing: the collective “West” is not the voice of the majority of “the international community”. The people of Palestine know their plight is heard and echoed by the overwhelming majority of people on this planet, from the vast African continent to Latin America, Eurasia and all of the developing world.
In the face of all this, on April 30 the senate of Stellenbosch University voted against a motion on “Genocide and Destruction of Scholarship and Education in Gaza”. The motion called for “an immediate ceasefire and the cessation on attacks on civilians in Gaza and Israel, the passage of humanitarian aid, the return of all captives, including the safe return of hostages captured by Hamas”.
The draft motion also called for “the condemnation of the destruction of the education sector in Gaza and the massive scale of killing of teachers and university staff in the current war, and further expressed concern and opposition to any attempts to curtail academic freedom by labelling
criticism of Israel or Zionist policies as antiSemitism.
It is for this and other reasons that I am not only utterly dismayed by the decision of the Stellenbosch University senate, but also regard this decision as blatantly racist, one that constitutes a monumental shame.
This decision amounts to a betrayal of the sacrifices of academics such as David Webster and Rick Turner, without whose sacrifice we would not have defeated the evil system of apartheid.
By taking this repugnant decision, the university’s senate has failed to embrace an opportunity to speak out against the mass murder and dispossession of the oppressed people of Palestine, including the murder of fellow academics.
I stand by my call for all progressive members of council, alumni, the workers and the student leadership at the university to reverse this morally bankrupt and profoundly racist decision.
The call for a stance against Israeli genocide and solidarity with the plight of Palestinians is not only pertinent to Stellenbosch University but for all our public universities to boldly take a stand on this issue, for which there cannot be any neutrality.
I hope all our 26 public universities like many across the world will make their voices heard collectively on this issue. Universities of South Africa must take the lead in this regard. This is not a time for moral cowardice.
The call for a stance against Israeli genocide and solidarity with the plight of Palestinians is not only pertinent to Stellenbosch University, but for all our public universities