Pretoria - Student representative councils from five top local universities on Monday announced the adoption of a resolution to join the academic and cultural boycott of Israel.
They are from Unisa, Cape Peninsula University of Technology, Durban University of Technology, Mangosuthu University of Technology and the University of the Western Cape.
The student leaders from these universities announced the decision at a media briefing at Unisa.
In so doing, they joined the students of Wits University and the University of Cape Town that became part of the academic boycott of Israel in 2012 and 2014.
The University of Johannesburg terminated its relations with Israel’s Ben Gurion University in 2011.
Maduduzi Mabuza, student leader at Unisa, said the resolution followed a 2011 mandate by the South Africa Union of Students, a body of student representative councils in the country.
In terms of the resolution, student groups and other youth structures should strategise and implement a boycott of Israel and its campaigns. The union declared that all South African campuses must be apartheid-Israel free zones.
Mabuza said the decision was in support of Higher Education Minister Blade Nzimande, denied a visa to Palestine because of his public utterances against the illegal occupation of Palestine by Israel.
The minister was originally expected to attend Monday’s briefing, but was not present. He had wanted to go to Palestine on a six-day working visit.
“From here onwards, we will be writing to and approaching the senate and the councils of our various institutions to implement the academic and cultural boycott of Israel.
“We will be auditing our investment funds and service providers to ensure that companies violating the call and complicit in the Israeli occupation such as G4S Security, Caterpillar, Veolia, Alstom and Cape Gate are excluded from funds and contracts,” Mabuza said.
The students were against all forms of racism, including anti-Semitism and Zionism, he said.
The Israeli regime was proving to be anti-children, anti-student and anti-education, said Mabuza.”We stand for peace, justice and equality. It is less than a year after Israel killed more than 2 000 Palestinians of which 500 were children under 18, and attacked 200 schools, including one for disabled children.”
“The struggle continues until Palestine is free,”he said, for Unisa graduate Nelson Mandela had said, “our freedom is incomplete without the freedom of the Palestinians”.
Pretoria News