South African Jews for a Free Palestine (SAJFP) is shocked and angered at the use of rubber bullets by the South African Police Service (SAPS) during the June 16 Youth Day commemoration in Potchefstroom—injuring 67 people, some seriously. These bullets were fired at disadvantaged Black youths, who had gathered at the gates of the North West University (NWU) RAG Farm Stadium both to attend the June 16 event that was being held there and to give voice to their struggle for economic justice.
While it was initially understood that those shot at were protesters, a joint statement by the Informal Settlements Committee and Solidarity Action Committee Collective suggests that those injured were not protesting, but simply trying to attend the event to commemorate June 16 in solidarity with those in attendance, as well as to bring attention to their economic plight. We welcome the news that formal charges have been laid against the SAPS as a result of their misconduct at the event.
It seems that while the event was attended by wealthy elites, it was the grouping of disadvantaged citizens who were shot at—simply, it would appear, for trying to join them.
We are also angered to learn that the Patriotic Alliance’s Gayton McKenzie, currently South Africa’s Minister of Sport, Arts and Culture, spoke at the event. McKenzie has frequently engaged in xenophobic rhetoric, even actively supporting government actions that led to the death of 109 disadvantaged miners in Stilfontein. He has also shown consistent support for Zionism and Israeli action, even in the midst of a genocide that McKenzie fails to acknowledge. This makes him a deplorable choice of speaker for an event honouring the memory of the youth who lost their lives on June 16, 1976.
As South African Jews committed to justice, equality, and the liberation of Palestine as well as of all oppressed people globally, we are acutely aware of how all issues of injustice intersect. While the plight of those shot at the commemoration, the oppression of disadvantaged miners in the North West province in South Africa, and that of Palestinians facing an ongoing genocide may seem like three unrelated issues, this is not the case.
The link between the mines of South Africa and Israel’s settler-colonial regime goes back to the apartheid era and continues to this very day, with South Africa remaining a major supplier of coal to Israel through Glencore. There is a tragic parallel between the police shooting young, disenfranchised Black South Africans and those around the world being hectored, rounded up, brutalised and even subjected to genocide—all at the hands of one or another state. The actions of the SAPS are very obviously not consistent with the inclusive, just society that we have tried to create in South Africa since the dawn of democracy in 1994. It is especially reprehensible that all this took place at a commemoration of the Soweto Uprising—where hundreds of protesting Black students were gunned down by the apartheid state.
While it was bold enough to accuse Israel of genocide at the International Court of Justice (ICJ), our government continues to allow Glencore to fuel this genocide. And with all the grandeur of professing its human rights commitments at the ICJ, it has no hesitation in deploying its police force to shoot rubber bullets at disadvantaged youth.
All too recently, the South African government’s hands were stained with blood in its treatment of miners in Stilfontein, as alluded to above. These miners were trapped underground and denied food, water and medical supplies. The Palestinians themselves—although undergoing the forced starvation, electricity and internet blackouts, bombings, and shootings that accompany the ongoing genocide—even sent a statement of solidarity with the Stilfontein miners, making explicit the links between South African mining and Israel. “We implore the South African government to intervene, expedite a rescue operation and end the starvation and horrendous suffering of those underground,” said a representative of the New Federation of Trade Unions in Palestine in the statement.
The inclusion of McKenzie at the event in Potchefstroom makes a mockery of the deaths of these innocent people, who were forced to mine illegally by sheer economic desperation.
It is worth noting that the miners in Stilfontein were initially trapped because of Vala Umgodi (“plug the hole”), a SAPS operation that involved the ruthless sealing of entrance and exit points to the mine. The trapping and then forced starvation of miners is in line with this current behaviour of opening fire on disadvantaged youth. Both of these tragedies expose the hypocrisy of the South African state, which claims to champion human rights on the global stage while trampling on the rights of its own people at home.
SAPS, acting as agents of repression, has mirrored the tactics of the Israeli occupation forces—suppressing those already economically excluded from society with brutality so that the government can continue to avoid addressing the root causes of their poverty and marginalisation. The ANC government’s performative solidarity with Palestine rings hollow when it simultaneously sanctions violence against its own people.
We join the calls of the Informal Settlements Committee and Solidarity Action Committees Collective in demanding:
- An immediate independent investigation into the police violence in Potchefstroom, with accountability for all officers and officials responsible.
- The resignation of the Minister of Police for authorising the use of lethal force against community members in Potchefstroom and for authorising the Vala Umgodi operation in Stilfontein.
- The Government of National Unity (GNU) to review the inclusion of the Patriotic Alliance (PA) based on the xenophobia and genocide denial of its leader Gayton McKenzie.
The fight against apartheid and genocide in Palestine and the fight against economic apartheid in South Africa are intertwined. It is a system of oppression that enables the Israeli genocide against Palestinians, and it is a system of oppression that sees the South African state turn its guns on the vulnerable and disenfranchised. We refuse to stay silent while our government commits these betrayals in our name.
From Gaza to Potchefstroom, our struggles are one.
A luta continua!