[Fresh Ink] An Open letter to Mr. Jacob Zuma, President of South Africa

[Richard Menec]

http://palestinechronicle.com/view_article_details.php?id=15413

03:34 09/10/2009

An Open letter to Mr. Jacob Zuma, President of South Africa

By Dr. Haidar Eid - Gaza Dear Mr. President,

I am writing to express my dismay and disappointment with both your 
attendance at the national conference of the South African Jewish Board of 
Deputies - a racist organization by any standards - as well as the content 
of your speech at that forum.

I am a naturalised South African of Palestinian origin. I spent more than 
five years in  Johannesburg, during which I earned a PhD from the University 
of Johannesburg and lectured at the-then Vista University in Soweto and Rand 
Afrikaans University in Johannesburg.

I would like to take issue with the manner in which you express your support 
for the two-state solution: "It is a solution that fulfils the aspirations 
of both parties for independent homelands through two states for two 
peoples, Israel and an independent, adjoining, and viable state of 
Palestine" (emphasis mine). Allow me, Mr. President, as a resident of Gaza, 
to express my shock with the fact that - only 8 months after the Gaza 
massacre, in which 1500 civilians, including 434 children, were brutally 
murdered - you still believe that there are two symmetrical sides. You even 
call it the "Israeli-Palestinian conflict!" Was that your belief in the 
1970's and 80's; that there were "two-sides" to the South African 
"conflict"? Were there two equal parties, namely White and Black, with equal 
claim to the land and equal historical responsibility for the-then status 
quo? No doubt, this sounds like a bizarre interpretation of South African 
history and one which we Palestinians find equally astounding when applied 
to our history and our reality today.

Mr. President, these words of yours are even more disturbing, given your own 
involvement in the commendable struggle against the brutal, anti-human 
apartheid system and the notion of "independent homelands" which were based 
on the separation of human beings. Your struggle as Black South Africans, 
was morally superior to apartheid because it was inclusive where apartheid 
focused on separation; it was embracing where apartheid focused on division; 
it was life-affirming where apartheid was violent and murderous.

The South African anti-apartheid goal, adopted by anti-apartheid activists 
all around the world was unequivocal: the end of the racist system and 
ideology of apartheid. There could be no toenadering (rapprochement)with 
apartheid ideologues; no creation of homelands and puppet leaders: the 
system had to be dismantled in its entirety. Many South Africans supported 
by a sustained global anti-apartheid campaign, sacrificed their lives to 
bring down the Bantustansan euphemistically, called independent homelands by 
the apartheid regime.  Mr. President, Steve Biko, Oliver Tambo, Chris Hani, 
the Mxenges, the Slovosac to mention but a few anti-apartheid heroes must 
have listened to the speech to the JBD and wondered what happened to the 
universal values and human rights espoused by the ANC.

Comrade Jacob (if I may),

I would like to brief you on the nature of the powerful party, i.e. Israel - 
with whom your post-apartheid government still, amazingly, maintains 
exceptional diplomatic and economic ties.

Unlike the new post-apartheid South Africa, which you helped to create, in 
the State of Israel all human beings are NOT equal. There are fundamental 
artificially created and selectively rewarded  a level of of citizens in the 
state. Israel defines itself as a Jewish State. It, therefore, creates a 
bizarre distinction between "nationality" and "citizenship." Almost 22% of 
the citizens of Israel are Palestinians who are excluded from such a 
definition. Israel thus, by definition is NOT the state of its citizens, but 
rather that of "The Jewish People", most of whom, like the members of JBD 
whom you were addressing, have no birthright connection to it. The question 
which begs an answer is what the status of those Palestinian citizens in a 
Jewish state is? The answer is, as every single - to use a word you must 
abhor "non-white" South African knows: Racism.

The delegates at the national conference of the South African Jewish Board 
of Deputies, Jewish, but at the same time, South African citizens "enjoy 
full rights" in Israel, rights that apartheid Israel denies to us, the 
indigenous people of this land. They also call us "Israeli Arabs", 
"Jerusalem residents", "Arabs of the territories", not to mention the 
refugees living in the Diaspora, whose mere mention always spoils any party, 
and whose right to return and compensation is sanctioned by International 
Law (UNGA resolution 194).

Israeli nationality, therefore, is non-existent. Instead, there is "Jewish 
Nationality". To make such a bizarre term comprehensible, think of "White 
Nationality" as opposed to South African. In your speech before the JBD, you 
state very eloquently that "(m)uch as we are conscious of who we are 
culturally and otherwise, it must not take away the national identity, as we 
should be South Africans first".

The International Convention on the Suppression and Punishment of the Crimes 
of Apartheid, Article 2, Part 3, clearly defines apartheid as:

"[a]ny legislative measures and other measures calculated to prevent a 
racial group or groups from participation in the political, social, economic 
and cultural life of the country and the deliberate creation of conditions 
preventing the full development of such a group or groups, in particular by 
denying to members of a racial group or groups basic human rights and 
freedoms, including the right to work... the right to education, the right 
to leave and return to their country the right to a nationality, the right 
to freedom of movement and residence."

This definition, in its entirety, clearly applies not only to the 
Palestinian people residing in the West Bank and Gaza Strip, but also those 
living in Israel itself. This is precisely the reason that the UN Special 
Rapporteur on the Human Rights Situation in the Occupied Territories, a 
fellow South African, John Dugard, concluded that "the 1973 International 
Convention on the Suppression and Punishment of the Crime of Apartheid 
appears to be violated by many practices".

If you were born to Palestinian parents living in Israel - a fate you have 
been spared, Mr. President - you too would be denied the rights of  "Jewish 
Nationality" and been forced to submit to institutionalized inferiority or 
choose to resist it.

Furthermore, ICSPCA (quoted above), Article 2, Part 4, makes it crystal 
clear that:

"[t]he term 'the crime of apartheid',' shall apply to "any measures 
including legislative measure, designed to divide the population along 
racial lines by the creation of separate measures and ghettos for the 
members of a racial group or groups The expropriation of landed property 
belonging to a racial group or groups or to members thereof.."

Comrade Jacob, the word apartheid never appears once in your speech before 
the JBD! A listener would never know that you were speaking to an audience 
who actively support apartheid in another country.

Did you know that racist laws used to forbid Black property ownership in 
white areas in apartheid South Africa are in force in apartheid Israel? 
Indigenous Palestinian citizens of Israel are not only prohibited from 
living on land owned by "Jewish institutions",  but are also not allowed by 
force of "law" to reside in any areas designated "Jewish" either.

I, myself, Mr. President, a resident of Gaza, like so many Palestinians, 
have legal title to my parents' land in Israel, but have no "legal" right to 
it because my parents' property, like that  of millions of other 
Palestinians', was taken away from us and given over to Jewish ownership. 
The facts are that Jews owned only 7% of Palestine before 1948; today 93% is 
considered "state land" and can only be owned by Jews or Israel.

This is only one example, Comrade Jacob, of the nature of the state your 
government deems "democratic"and "friendly" despite its past strategic ties 
with apartheid SA. In your presidential campaign, you were quoted singing 
"kill the Boer!" And yet, in your speech, you "unequivocally" condemn "all 
forms of violence from whatever quarter", particularly where civilians are 
targeted!

I fail to understand this contradiction. Is this a reflection of the 
difference between comrade Jacob and President Zuma? Do you, as president, 
think that Palestinians have no right to resist their occupation and 
dispossession? You even equate our resistance with the War Crimes and Crimes 
against Humanity committed by the Israeli Occupation forces in the West Bank 
and, in particular, in Gaza.

Is it too much, comrade Jacob, for us, representatives of Palestinian Civil 
Society organizations to ask your government to sever all diplomatic ties 
with apartheid  Israel, and endorses not to say lead the growing global 
Boycott Divestment and Sanctions campaign against Israel? Is that really too 
much to ask a democratic post-apartheid South Africa for?

Is this the embodiment of Fanon's prophecy about the "Pitfalls of National 
(Racial?) Consciousness?"  Is it because the Black Middle class which your 
government represents and which has taken power from the White Middle class 
is underdeveloped? Fanon, whom you  must have read while on the run from the 
apartheid police, says that this national middle class "has practically no 
economic power, and in any case it is in no way commensurate with the 
bourgeoisie of the mother country which it hopes to replace." Is this why 
you are prepared to kowtow to the South African Jewish community which "has 
been called one of the most tightly-knit in the world, overwhelmingly united 
in its support for Israel?"

Your government, Mr. President, turns a blind eye to the war crimes of its 
own citizens against Palestinians. The South African war criminal David 
Benjamin was allowed to freely move around South Africa and share his 
tactics of support and defence for the  Israeli Occupation Forces in its 
recent onslaught against the Gaza Strip with impunity. There are seventy 
other South Africans that are known to have links with the destruction of 
the Israeli Occupation Forces who enjoy the same impunity. It is left to 
individuals and civil society organizations in South Africa to take action 
against these criminals that should rightly be the task of the government.

Your post-apartheid government, Mr. President, unashamedly, supports the 
two-state solution: one for Palestinians (Muslim and Christians), and one 
for Jews. In other words, you support the re-birth of Bantustans, albeit in 
the Middle East this time. The two-state solution is a racist solution, 
comrade Jacob. If you did not accept it for yourselves in South Africa, why 
force it on Palestinians instead of supporting us as we demand the right to 
our homeland every single inch of it?

Mr. President,

A politics based on narrow-minded, selfish pragmatism was rejected by all 
anti-apartheid forces, locally and internationally during the years of the 
anti-apartheid struggle. What was promoted, instead, was adherence to 
universal principles of equality and dignity.

I truly hope you will reconsider. I know that it is my constitutional right 
as a citizen of the New South Africa - which I am proud of - to address you 
directly. I do so to express my deep disagreement and dissatisfaction with 
your government's Middle East policy and its continued support for the 
apartheid policies of the Israeli government, given that this support 
undermines and actively harms the Palestinian struggle for liberation and 
self-determination.

Sincerely, Professor Haidar Eid Gaza, Palestine

- Dr. Haidar Eid is Associate Professor in the Department of English 
Literature, Al-Aqsa University, Gaza Strip, Palestine. Dr. Eid is a founding 
member of the One Democratic State Group (ODSG) and a member of Palestinian 
Campaign for the Academic and Cultural Boycott of Israel (PACBI). He 
contributed this article to PalestineChronicle.com.