Franchising “Apartheid”: Why South Africans Push the Analogy

Rhoda Kadalie & Julia Bertelsmann
Z-Word Blog
Originally Posted March '08

ON A COLD NIGHT IN Johannesburg last year, a bus pulled up outside the American consulate. It was the 40th anniversary of the Six Day War in the Middle East-June being a winter month in South Africa-and several dozen activists planned to mark the occasion by protesting U.S. support for "Apartheid Israel." The protest was organized by the Palestine Solidarity Committee and most of the demonstrators were South African Muslims.[1] Among their number, however, were black South Africans who shared the organizers' hostility to Israel.

Or so it seemed. A reporter discovered that some of the black demonstrators "were not pro-Palestinian activists, but homeless people bused in from the surrounding townships," he told Ha'aretz. "[M]ost of them refused to protest, opting to sit on the warm bus. The organizers refused to allow it. When I asked one black 'protester' if he was for Palestine, he replied: ‘I am for nobody.'" The organizers soon ejected the reporter. [2]

Like the ‘protester' on the bus, most South Africans feel indifferent towards the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, according to a study conducted by the Pew Global Attitudes Project in 2007. Of those with clear opinions on the matter, the majority sympathized more with Israel: 28 per cent of South Africans overall sided with Israel compared to only 19 per cent with the Palestinians. [3]

Nevertheless, South Africa has increasingly become the flash point of virulently anti-Israel demonstrations. Many of the country's leaders routinely compare the State of Israel to the apartheid regime that governed South Africa from 1948 to 1994 and imposed an oppressive system of segregation and discrimination on grounds of race. "End Israeli Apartheid" rallies are usually organized by radical Muslim organizations, but some black South Africans have also entered the fray.

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