‘Hold Israel accountable’: South Africans rally behind Gaza amid ICJ case

Fatima Seedat has been campaigning for Palestine for two decades. She joined the Palestinian Solidarity Committee in her first year at the University of Witwatersrand.

Now 39, the social worker and counsellor in Johannesburg still occasionally attends pro-Palestine rallies as a member of Healthcare Workers 4 Palestine (HCW4P South Africa), a group that has raised more than 100,000 rand ($5,000) to buy ambulances for Gaza and has held vigils in Cape Town and Johannesburg in solidarity with Palestinians.

HCW4P South Africa has also called for an “end to the targeting of healthcare workers, facilities, ambulances and civilians, including women and children” and “a permanent ceasefire and a diplomatic solution for lasting peace”.

“I’ve always been aware of the atrocities that Palestinians go through on a daily basis,” Seedat said.

But she is insistent that more needs to be done for Gaza. Like millions of protesters around the world who have taken to the streets against Israel’s war on the besieged enclave, Seedat said she had been horrified by the images from the Palestinian territory, where more than 23,000 people, including nearly 10,000 children, have been killed since October 7.

“Israel should be held accountable. They have led people to believe that they are fighting for their safety,” she said. “However, it is them that have continuously violated Palestinians’ basic human rights and right to live in freedom.”

It’s a sentiment that’s widespread in South Africa as the country’s government takes Israel to the International Court of Justice (ICJ) on charges of committing genocide against Palestinians in the Gaza Strip.

Pretoria compares the Israeli occupation to apartheid, the white minority rule that was in place in South Africa from 1948 to 1994. Veterans of the apartheid struggle, lawmakers in the ruling Africa National Congress (ANC) and the opposition Economic Freedom Fighters (EFF) all have supported the case before the ICJ, which began hearing arguments on Thursday in The Hague.

And it’s not just South Africans who grew up under apartheid who are sympathetic to the Palestinian cause. Sthabile Mthethwa, who says he was unaware of the conflict between Israel and Palestine before the war broke out on October 7, believes the killing of innocent children has to stop.

“If people have been killed deliberately, then, yes, they’ve committed genocide,” says the 31-year-old, who teaches isiZulu in Dainfern, just outside Johannesburg.