This letter was written by author and SAJFP member Megan Choritz. Originally published here.
Dear Helen Zille,
You are right. Genocide is a big word. Probably the biggest. Huge. Massive. Gigantic. It is so big it has taken some organisations like the UN two years to issue a report stating that what is happening in occupied Palestine is a genocide. “Israel has committed genocide against Palestinians in the Gaza Strip, the UN Independent International Commission of Inquiry on the Occupied Palestinian Territory, including East Jerusalem, and Israel”. Others came to the word faster and easier. WHO, Bet Tselem, UNRWA, and many more, including the Israeli press, Israeli historians and Israeli refuseniks.
Genocide is such a big word that it is impossible to escape. It may be a bit too big for you, though, because you believe that POC should just pull themselves up by their bootstraps and get on with it now that you have declared apartheid a thing of the past. I don’t trust you to call something a genocide even if you saw it with your own two eyes, which you have. You deny the existence of previously disadvantaged communities in exactly the same way that you are a genocide denier. The question is why? And I think I know the answer. Could it be that there are certain DA funders, and possibly even DA members, that support this genocide denial narrative, that it is in your own best interest to placate?
Or is that sort of disgusting, Trump style, AIPAC lobbying and influence too big for you to talk about?
Seriously, if genocide is a big word, how about the size of forced starvation, ecocide, ethnic cleansing, illegal occupation, cluster bombing, white phosphorous, sniping, forced evacuations, repeat displacement? What are the size of those words?
You are probably going to be mayor of Joburg, my home town that you don’t even live in, because the president and the ANC are weak and co-opted. But you madam, are a nightmare, and if you get voted in as mayor, the rich will rejoice and the poor will be punished. But those words are probably also too big.
You should be ashamed of yourself, but you won’t be. You are too self righteous and short sighted to recognise your innate cruelty and racism.