Shame on these South African parliamentarians

During the apartheid era, there were many amoral sports stars, artists, speakers, academics and other supposed celebrities who infamously visited South Africa as guests of the racist Nationalist regime.

To counter the sporting and cultural ban, “low-key” tours of South Africa were organised. Their intention in organising and participating in these events or tournaments was to break the sporting and cultural boycott against the regime. 

As an ardent cricket fan, I specifically remember the English rebel cricket tour of 1990 led by Mike Gatting, which had to be aborted due to massive protests against these mercenary cricketers.

Like the delegation of South African parliamentarians who visited apartheid Israel on a very one-sided ‘fact-finding mission’, these Nationalist party supporters also reported via the mass media that they did not witness any human rights violations, racial discrimination or oppression in South Africa.

It is to be expected that these members of parliament who were Benjamin Netanyahu’s guests will not speak against their sponsors. It is a crying shame and a shearing indictment on them that for a short trip to apartheid Israel and a few blood-stained pennies, they ignore the gross suffering of the Palestinians and the ongoing genocide in Gaza and the West Bank.

Any individual with a modicum of dignity and self-respect would unequivocally condemn the barbarism of the Zionists and their chief ally, America.

MOHAMED SAEED  I  Pietermaritzburg