Solly Mapaila, the secretary general of the South Africa Communist Party. (Delwyn Verasamy/M&G)
Solly Mapaila, the secretary general of the South Africa Communist Party (SACP), has called on the person who emerges victorious at the ANC’s 55th elective conference to close “apartheid Israel’s” embassy in South Africa.
Regarding the conference itself, Mapaila said he was against slates and would support the person who emerges as the leader of the ANC.
“We have sent a clear message to the ANC that we need a leader who has moral high ground [and] who will be able to bring all social forces together to lead the renewal projects in our country.”
He added that the newly elected leader must instil confidence and rid state-owned enterprises (SOEs) of corruption. “We want to make a call that all those corrupt leaders in business that have corrupted Eskom and continue to corrupt SOEs are correctly and speedily dealt with so that we’re able to come out of this crisis of load-shedding.”
Regarding Israel, Mapaila said the atrocities against Palestine have continued. The ANC resolved in 2017 that it would downgrade South Africa’s embassy in Israel to a mere interest office, but this has not happened.
“Of course, we’re [also] disappointed that we still have an [Israeli] apparatus or an embassy here in South Africa; we should have closed that,” said Mapaila.
“And we have called for that to be just an interest office, where people can just facilitate travel documents or messages and so forth, but not at a full-scale as an embassy because Israel continued to play an extremely atrocious role against the Palestinian people”, he said.
Mapaila said apartheid, which was declared a crime against humanity by the United Nations, adopted by Israel towards Palestine involved measures that appear to be even worse than those that were imposed in South Africa.
This comes as Israel continues to evict Palestinians from East Jerusalem.
Mapaila said South Africa should boycott Israel for their continued violence which has put the lives of women and children in danger.
“So it’s a matter of the ANC reflecting on how they could not implement their own solution. The issue is that this matter was not implemented properly by the collective leadership. I mean, I led a march with comrade Jesse Duarte in front of the Isreali embassy.
“We took responsibility for all the problems, and all the witnesses that looked into how to rectify those mistakes so that you can implement these policies effectively, properly.”
Mapaila emphasised that the SACP called on world leaders to isolate Israel. “The SACP stands in unconditional solidarity with the people of Palestine in their resilient fight against the Israeli apartheid regime. We support all efforts across the world aimed at the strengthening of international solidarity, as well as democratic and peaceful activities in support of the oppressed Palestinian people.”
Last week, civil society groups called on the government to recognise the importance of the South Africa-Israel relationship in the lives of South African Christians and Muslims who were being killed in Israel.