Gaza, One More Bantustan
By Alain Gresh
During the Gaza war, South Africa expressed strong solidarity with the Palestinians. No one here has forgotten the collaboration between Pretoria and Israel under apartheid, and many see parallels between the Palestinian situation today and that of black and coloured South Africans back in the days of white rule.
Ronald “Ronnie” Kasrils looks just like the caricature of him drawn by the cartoonist Zapiro in November 2001. It showed him at the head of a line of Jews, including the Nobel Laureate Nadine Gordimer and Zapiro himself, escaping from a fortress. Kasrils has a big smile on his face. The fortress is emblazoned with the words “unconditional support for Israel”. The jailers are shouting “Catch them! Catch them!”
Kasril’s smile is the same today, as is his determination; his is a life that’s been devoted to moving mountains. He was born in South Africa in 1938, the son of Jewish immigrants from the Baltic states. It was not long before he encountered racism, notably in the Sharpeville Massacre on 21 March 1960, when the police fired on unarmed black demonstrators, killing dozens of people. The international reverberations of the massacre – the prelude to South Africa’s drift towards dictatorship, were all the greater as 1960 was the year in which the majority of African nations gained their independence.
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