South Africans protest coal shipments to Israel, demand embargo

JOHANNESBURG

South Africans protested Thursday to demand that the government impose an embargo on all shipments of coal to Israel amid Tel Aviv’s genocide in the Gaza Strip.

Demonstrators carried placards that read: “Glencore is fuelling genocide, No South African coal for Israel, Ban coal exports to genocidal Israel, Stop fueling the genocide,’’

Mining company Glencore exports coal to Israel, which demonstrators said helps keep Israel’s electricity grid on, enabling its deadly high-tech military to function.

“We find it appalling that tons of coal exported from South Africa to the settler colonial regime fuels the regime's slaughter of Palestinians,” Iqbal Jassat, an executive at the Johannesburg-based think tank, Media Review Network, told Anadolu.

He said it is deplorable that South Africa would be dragging its feet instead of being decisive and principled in halting the supply.

Protesters marched to the offices of the Department of Trade, Industry, and Competition in Pretoria, Durban, and Cape Town, to demand that the government stop coal mining companies from exporting to Israel.

Mametlwe Sebei, president of the General Industries Workers Union of South Africa (GIWUSA), told Anadolu that the demonstration was to protest the hypocrisy of the government.

“As a country, which took Israel to the International Court of Justice (ICJ), we cannot again supply coal to Israel, which keeps its electricity grid on, supporting the industrial military complex it uses in carrying out the genocide,” he said.

Asked if the protest will force the government to stop Glencore from exporting to Israel, he said, “Well, we have protested. We have registered our views, but what the government does is what it chooses.”

Colombian President Gustavo Petro threatened last month to alter Glencore’s concession contract if it continued to export to Israel.

South Africa filed a case against Israel in late 2023 at the ICJ in The Hague, accusing it of failing to uphold its commitments under the 1948 Genocide Convention.

Israel has killed more than 62,100 Palestinians in Gaza since October 2023. The military campaign has devastated the enclave, which is facing famine.

Last November, the International Criminal Court issued arrest warrants for Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and his former Defense Minister Yoav Gallant for war crimes and crimes against humanity in Gaza.

Israel also faces a genocide case at the International Court of Justice for its war on the enclave.