ONE of the reasons the ANC adopted a resolution to downgrade Israel was not only its left-leaning ideology, but a fear of what happened to former Iraq president Saddam Hussein, former Libyan leader Muammar Gaddafi and African leaders who visit the International Criminal Court in The Hague.
In the collective wisdom of the ANC delegates at the 54th Nasrec conference, in December 2017, was the 2008 truce between Israel and Hamas.
On reflection, not a single Hamas rocket was fired until Israel invaded Gaza and killed six Hamas members.
Israel was advised by its highest intelligence officials that the truce could be renewed by easing the criminal blockade and ending military attacks.
But the government of Ehud Olmert rejected these options, resorting to Operation Cast Lead.
Internationally respected human rights advocate Raji Sourani analysed Cast Lead’s pattern of attack.
Bombing was concentrated in the north, targeting defenceless civilians in the most densely populated areas.
The goal, Sourani suggests, may have been to drive the intimidated population to the south, nearer the Egyptian border. But the Samidin, those who “resist by enduring”, stayed.
This is one of the contexts in which the ANC took the resolution.
How the practitioners of our foreign policy jettison this aspect of the
global tragedy in terms of implementing the ANC resolution remains a mystery.
Instead, this resolution is enigmatised by those who are sent to implement it.
Historically, the minister who began the implementation of this resolution paid a huge price. I guess her loyalty, conviction and commitment to ANC doctrine is what compromised her.
The question then arises; if you are not implementing an ANC mandate, whose mandate are you pursuing?
And how does your stance improve not only the revolutionary fibre of the ANC, but also the philosophy of South Africa’s international relations doctrine?
Is what you are doing what the ANC has asked you to do?
Let’s look at it from a political economy perspective. It is clear that South Africa is on the cusp of a political and economic crisis.
The political crisis is expressed in the ideological and policy paralysis, that remain unresolved since the 54th Nasrec conference that led to President Cyril Ramaphosa’s acsendency.
The size of the challenge facing the ANC if it is to recover its political authority is reflected much more emphatically in the 2019 elections.
Its 57% majority, the lowest since 1994, resulted from a massive electoral stayaway, reducing the ANC’s support to a mere 28% of voters.
A “new dawn” would drag the country out of its quagmire, we were relentlessly told by our overseers.
The “new dawn” has been all too ephemeral. A cursory glance through commentary in the press shows a significant loss of business confidence.
Plummeting share prices have affected the largest retailers, which were hitherto invincible powerhouses.
The construction sector has seen an immense and scarcely believable destruction of value over the past decade.
The manufacturing sector is in steep decline, with factory output having fallen for the fourth month running by September, and with nine out of 10 manufacturing sectors shrinking yearly, according to Stats SA figures.
Agriculture is experiencing the worst drought in years in at least more than one province.
In the business sector there is panic, demoralisation and a deafening hysteria in the calls to the current administration for urgent measures to pull South Africa back from the edge of the fiscal cliff.
There is a fear that as the budget deficit widens, the repeated failures over the past five years to reach economic growth and tax revenue targets will lead to a government default on its debt and those of state-owned enterprises, especially Eskom.
After meeting Ramaphosa, Business Unity SA president Sipho Pityana released a hard-hitting statement blaming South Africa’s economic and fiscal deterioration on the government’s reluctance to take the decisions required to stabilise public finances and create conditions more conducive to economic growth.
What the hysteria confirms, of course, is that behind the economic elite’s concern for the state of the economy is, in reality, their main preoccupation: the loss of profits. With this gloom and bleak economic depiction, how did the avoidance of implementing the ANC resolution to downgrade Israel improve South Africa’s economic situation? Let alone improving South Africa’s moral global standing.
* Mdekazi is a PhD student at Stellenbosch University.
** The views expressed here are not necessarily those of IOL.