In December of 2023, the Republic of South Africa filed an extensive application to the International Court of Justice, detailing the acts of the genocidal violence brought on by the Israeli government against the Palestinian people in the occupied territories of Gaza and urging the international community to take immediate action against this violence (International Court of Justice, 2023). Regarding the matter of why South Africa was the country to bring this case to court, Minister of International Relations and Cooperation Naledi Pandor stated the following:
“South Africa really has a moral responsibility to always stand with the oppressed because we come from a history of struggle, a history of striving for freedom, a history of believing that everybody deserves human dignity, justice and freedom; this is the only reason that we have taken this major step as South Africa.” (Pandor cited in Gopaldas & Singh, 2024)
Pandor’s mentioning of a history of struggle references apartheid: the system of institutionalised racial segregation present in South Africa from 1948 to the early 1990s (Thobejane, 2013). By relying on these narratives, South African government representatives like Naledi Pandor actively shape the South African identity as one defined by the country’s past struggle against apartheid. Its use in this context further implies that this history serves as motivation for the engagement of South Africans in global acts of solidarity with those who experience oppression. In this case, this would mean that South African solidarity with Palestine stems from South Africa’s history of apartheid.
Tied through apartheid
Both in an academic context as well as in broader social contexts, the comparison between South Africa and Israel as apartheid states has been a salient one. Journalist and author Jonathan Cook (2015) has extensively researched the legal restrictions imposed on Palestinians in Israel. He concludes that Israeli policies towards Palestinians share strong similarities with policies implemented under apartheid in South Africa, claiming that the Israeli constitutional laws effectively render Palestinians ‘degraded citizens’ (Cook, 2015). Ronnie Kasrils, a South African politician and former member of the ANC and South African Communist Party, has spoken out extensively on the parallels between the state of Israel and the South African apartheid regime (Pappé, 2015). He highlights the similarities of a colonial past and the early-on implementation of a colonial legal framework to legitimise settler rule. This legitimacy, he argues, has in both cases been able to extend far beyond the decolonisation of other regions worldwide, mainly due to the Western world’s indecisiveness in counteracting the oppressive regimes (Kasrils, 2015).
However, not only “critical” academics and politicians have drawn similarities between South Africa and Israel regarding their apartheid practices. Historian Ilan Pappé (2015) has highlighted the occasions on which Israeli politicians and generals themselves have used South African apartheid as a point of reference. He finds that commonly used reference is somewhere along the lines of one made by Rafael Eytan, former Israeli Chief of the General Staff:
“Blacks in South Africa want to gain control over the white minority just like Arabs here want to gain control over us. And we too, like the white minority in South Africa, must act to prevent them from taking over.” (Pappé, 2015, p.1)
Crafting the South African duty
Given the salience of the comparison between South African and Israeli apartheid, it is unsurprising that Naledi Pandor’s statement was one of many instances of the South African government drawing on these historical ties as grounds for an (inter)national call to action for the Palestinian cause. Nelson Mandela famously stated the following in his speech at the International Day of Solidarity with Palestinian People in 1997:
“It behoves all South Africans, themselves erstwhile beneficiaries of generous international support, to stand up and be counted among those contributing actively to the cause of freedom and justice. […] For we know too well that our freedom is incomplete without the freedom of the Palestinians” (Mandela, 1997).
The deliberate construction of a national identity can be understood through Billig’s (1995) theory on the reproduction of nationhood. Here, reproduction occurs constantly overtime in a top-down way to “remind” community members of their shared nationhood and naturalise collective identities and ideological distinctions. It is present both in political rhetoric, such as the narrative presented above, as well as more symbolic displays of nationhood such as postage stamps and sports teams (Billig, 1995). In the case of South Africa, the apartheid system actively imposed racial and ethnic identities onto South African society and its people (Cornelissen & Horstmeier, 2002). After the abolition of apartheid in the 1990s, the country became tasked with the construction of a post-apartheid South African identity. Barber (1994) describes how the development of the “new” South African national identity can be determined by the way in which a collective memory is formed around the country’s history of apartheid. When emphasis is put on a common heritage of overcoming apartheid rather than the endurance of divisions, a commonly shared national identity will be most likely to take shape.
In understanding how South Africa’s “new” national identity has developed, it is necessary to also consider non-governmental narratives on contemporary South African identity. Taking the suggested relation between South Africa and pro-Palestinian activism as a context, in 2024 I started to research how South African activists describe the South African identity in relation to their pro-Palestinian activism. Determining the extent to which there are commonalities between the government’s narratives and that of the activists on the ground serves to unpack further the link between pro-Palestinian advocacy and contemporary South African identity.
South African-ness in a Palestinian context
To better understand the bottom-up perspectives on the South African identity in relation to Palestine, I interviewed a diverse group of South African pro-Palestinian activists about how their activism relates to their identity, focusing on expressed feelings of “South African-ness”.
The interviews made clear that narratives about a collective struggle with apartheid play an integral role in shaping the South African identity of these activists. Activists' descriptions of their South African identity tell a story of an identity defined by oppression, resistance, liberation, and transformation. However, whereas government narratives exclusively describe struggle as part of the country’s history, activists also stressed the enduring legacies of struggle. When sharing narratives on South Africa’s transformation beyond apartheid, activists questioned the extent to which the “new” South Africa has moved past its history of apartheid. Interestingly, the emphasis on either perspective, “struggle as part of a closed chapter in history” or “struggle as having enduring legacies”, also varied between different generations of activists. Those who directly experienced apartheid focused more on narratives of historical struggle, while those from the post-apartheid generation emphasised the enduring legacies of the apartheid struggle within contemporary South Africa.
Yet, despite this difference, both perspectives served as motivation for engagement in pro-Palestinian activism. Activists from the apartheid generation described themselves as having a position of privilege from which they can now recognise other struggles. They mentioned a sense of duty in standing up for other struggles internationally. This sense of duty was expressed in a similar manner as in the statements by Mandela and Pandor, referencing a collective South African duty stemming from a history of oppression under apartheid. The younger generation of activists emphasised how the enduring legacies of the South African struggle resonate and inform their solidarity with other oppressed peoples worldwide, including Palestinians. Instead of seeing apartheid as merely a part of history, they focus on the persistence of structural inequalities within contemporary South Africa. Their motivation for engagement in pro-Palestinian activism stems from feelings of global solidarity amongst those who face oppression, rather than a privileged position of having moved beyond this oppression. This implies that while there is some overlap between the narratives used by the government in framing the ICJ case and those used by pro-Palestinian activists regarding South African identity and pro-Palestinian activism, the narratives are not completely aligned.
South Africa’s application to the ICJ can thus be seen as further reinforcement of the government’s narratives on the South African identity being shaped by a history of apartheid. While South African activists recognise the importance of this struggle in their engagement in pro-Palestinian activism, the younger generation of South African activists seem to be moving the discussion on the country’s ties to Palestine towards a more nuanced understanding of apartheid’s legacies within contemporary South African society. In doing so, they contribute to redefining South African identity as connected to global struggles for human rights and social justice through their own historical and contemporary struggle with the legacies of apartheid.
References
Barber, J. (1994). South Africa: the search for identity. International Affairs, 70(1), 67–82. https://doi.org/10.2307/2620716
Billig, M. (1995). Banal nationalism. Sage. https://doi.org/10.4135/9781446221648
Cook, J. (2015). “Visible Equality” as Confidence Trick. In Israel and South Africa: The Many Faces of Apartheid (pp. 123–160). Zed Books Ltd.
Cornelissen, S., & Horstmeier, S. (2002). The social and political construction of identities in the new South Africa: an analysis of the Western Cape Province. Journal of Modern African Studies, 40(1), 55–82. https://doi.org/10.1017/S0022278X01003810
Gopaldas, R., & Singh, P. (2024, 24 January). South Africa’s ICJ case has already altered its foreign policy space. ISS Africa. https://issafrica.org/iss-today/south-africas-icj-case-has-already-altered-its-foreign-policy-space
International Court of Justice. (2023, December 29). The Republic of South Africa institutes proceedings against the State of Israel and requests the Court to indicate provisional measures [Press release]. Retrieved February 25, 2024, from https://www.icj-cij.org/sites/default/files/case-related/192/192-20231229-pre-01-00-en.pdf
Kasrils, R. (2015). Birds of a Feather: Israel and Apartheid South Africa - Colonialism of a Special Type. In Israel and South Africa: The Many Faces of Apartheid (pp. 23–42). Zed Books Ltd.
Mandela, N. R. (1997, December 4). Address by President Nelson Mandela at International Day of Solidarity with Palestinian People. International Day of Solidarity With Palestinian People, Pretoria, South Africa.
Pappé, I. (2015). Israel and South Africa: The Many Faces of Apartheid. Zed Books Ltd.
Thobejane, T. D. (2013). History of apartheid education and the problems of reconstruction in South Africa. Sociology Study, 3(1), 1-12. https://www.researchgate.net/publication/275348289