Mbalula’s Abuse of Human Rights Day for Anti-US Rhetoric

Fikile Mbalula, who is the Secretary General of the African National Congress (ANC), has announced on social media that his party intends to host a march on Human Rights Day. The march is being billed as a "People's March" but amounts to a slap in the face to the memory of those who fought for human rights in South Africa.

The 21st of March is Human Rights Day in South Africa. The day commemorates the Sharpeville Massacre of 1960. On that day, panicked police officers opened fire on protestors that were part of a nationwide anti-pass campaign initiated by Robert Sobukwe and the party he led, the Pan-Africanist Congress (PAC). The PAC was an early proto-Black Consciousness (BC) party established in 1959 following a fracture of the ANC. The BC movement, which grew from the PAC, was later eclipsed by the ANC, partly via a bloody internal struggle between South Africa’s liberation movements that saw tens of thousands of people killed during the later decades of apartheid.

The promotional material on social media for the proposed march includes the following hashtags:

• #SAWillNotBeBullied
• #DefendOurSoverignty
• #MarchForSouthAfrica

The march itself is billed as being “in defence of our sovereignty and democratic gains”.

The billing and the first two of the hashtags are references to the United States (US) and what the ANC regards as US interference in South Africa’s sovereignty.

In practice, there is a considerable degree of hypocrisy at play here.

Firstly, the promotional material for the march identifies only the ANC and its alliance partners as hosts. The PAC is still in existence, is represented in Parliament, and is a member of the Government of National Unity, but receives no mention at all.

Secondly, arguably the crux of the diplomatic rupture between South Africa and the US relates to Iran. Earlier this year, the Iranian leadership massacred an estimated 5 000 pro-democracy protestors during protests in that country. Both the ANC and the South African government soft-soaped that massacre. More recently they expressed condolences following the assassination, at the end of last month, of the Iranian Supreme Leader who had presided over that massacre.

The Common Sense has also reported in depth on the extent to which the Iranian leadership persecuted the ANC’s fraternal allies during the apartheid era.

The timing of the announcement of the march is important.

Last week, the US Ambassador to South Africa, Leo Brent Bozell III, was demarched by South Africa’s foreign minister, Ronald Lamola, under the pretext that he sought to undermine South Africa’s stability and sovereignty.

The march will therefore be read as a doubling-down on that position.

As this newspaper has reported at length, the US is not just an economic powerhouse; it is one of the few countries with the resources, technological expertise, and willingness to help South Africa modernise its economy. Yet, through their foreign policy positions, the ANC and the government continue to alienate that resource.

Human Rights Day is meant to honour the legacy of Sharpeville and to be a reminder of the sacrifices made for human rights in South Africa. Beyond that it is supposed to be a beacon of hope for oppressed people around the world that liberation is possible. To prostitute that memory in the manner that the ANC and its alliance partners seek to do is quite at odds with all of that.