Supporters of a free Palestine gather at the Western Cape High Court where South Africa's legal team submitted its Memorial to the International Court of Justice. Picture: Armand Hough / Independent Newspapers
While the world awaits the outcome of South Africa’s genocide charges against Israel at the International Court of Justice there are further steps South Africa must take to force Israel to the negotiating table.
The GOOD Party firmly supports call on the South African government by the late Archbishop Desmond Tutu’s legacy organisations in Cape Town to suspend diplomatic relations with Israel, and advocate for a package of boycott, divestment and sanctions similar to those that forced the apartheid State into talking.
Judgements of the ICJ are difficult to enforce. Although it’s a United Nations court, Israel has made its disdain for the UN clear over the past 13 months, and the UN’s ability to hold firm is hamstrung by its structure that affords veto powers to the US (and four other nations).
In the 1980s, the campaign to isolate South Africa economically, academically and on the sports fields was a major contributor to the National Party’s loss of belief that apartheid was sustainable.
Among the leaders of the campaign were Archbishop Tutu and his South African Council of Churches colleague, Beyers (Oom Bey) Naude.
Among the measures proposed by the Archbishop Tutu IP Trust and the Desmond & Leah Tutu Legacy Foundation on Monday was that South Africa’s Department of International Relations and Cooperation take the lead in advocating for SWIFT banking sanctions against Israeli banks.
The Society Worldwide Interbank Financial Telecommunications (SWIFT), based in Brussels, plays a key role in global banking transactions, authenticating millions of inter-bank transactions across thousands of financial institutions in more than 200 countries.
Cutting Israel’s economic pipeline would undoubtedly force it to re-consider its options.
More than 43,000 Palestinians have been killed since 7 October last year, with many more bodies believed to be trapped under the rubble.
Last week the UN's Human Rights Office released analysis of people killed in Gaza between November last year and April 2024. Children constituted 44% of verified victims, and women 26%.
A senior UN official briefed the UN Security Council last month that over the past 400 days, an average of 10 Gazan children has lost one or both legs every day.
South Africa may not be the most powerful country in the world.
But we do know, from our past experience as the unrivalled skunk of the world, that economic ‘sticks and stones’ ultimately broke apartheid’s bones while words at the UN hardly hurt the then-government at all.
* Brett Herron, Good Party secretary general and Western Cape MPL.
** The views expressed here are not necessarily those of Independent Media.
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