South Africa’s case at the International Court of Justice has exposed Israel’s genocidal intent in Gaza. It is no accident that it has fallen to South Africa to bring the case. Israel’s treatment of Palestinians in the occupied West Bank has many parallels with apartheid and the ANC has a long history of support for justice for Palestinians. Conversely, Israel was one of apartheid South Africa’s closest allies. CHRISTABEL GURNEY looks back at Israel’s economic and military support for the apartheid regime.
'It's an entire nation out there that is responsible... and we will fight until we break their backbone' – Isaac Herzog, President of Israel
'Now we all have one common goal – erasing the Gaza Strip from the face of the earth' – Nissim Vaturi, Deputy Speaker of the Israeli Knesset
Whatever the ICJ’s ruling in the case brought by South Africa against Israel under the 1948 Genocide Convention, South Africa’s legal team have exposed the Israeli Government’s total inhumanity and lack of interest in any compromise which would enable Israelis and Palestinians to live in peace together.
The South African Government’s initiative is the latest chapter in a long and contradictory relationship between Israel and South Africa.
Evading the UN arms embargo
In the post-1994 rush to present apartheid as universally condemned, it is often forgotten how Britain and other Western countries supported South Africa with investment and loans. But Israel went beyond this, helping the apartheid government evade the 1977 UN mandatory arms embargo and update South Africa’s obsolescent military aircraft.
As early as 1974, Israel and South Africa upgraded their diplomatic missions to full embassy status. Two years later, Prime Minister Vorster visited Israel – only the third time he had travelled outside South Africa as prime minister. The result was a wide-ranging pact covering exchanges of South African coal and steel and Israeli military hardware, and nuclear collaboration. The ANC condemned the visit as ‘the highlight of a long-standing development of cooperation’.
Counter-insurgency
High on the agenda was Israeli know-how in counter-insurgency and border security. Vorster visited the Golan Heights during his 1976 visit to inspect Israel’s electronic border fence. Later, Israeli officers visited South Africa to give lectures on anti-guerrilla tactics. According to analyst James Adams, ‘South Africa’s counter-insurgency tactics evolved from lessons learned by Israel in the fight against the PLO’. According to a 1988 UN report, Israel encouraged South African Jews to travel to Israel to serve in its army for one month each year, and a spokesperson for the Volunteer for Israel Council said that over a two-year period more than 3,500 South Africans had done so.
The UN arms embargo impacted on South Africa by barring it from buying up-to-date aircraft and other weaponry. This led to the South African Defence Force defeat at Cuito Cuanavale in Angola in 1988, one of the turning points in the anti-apartheid struggle. But Israel helped South Africa in its attempts to evade the ban by sending technicians from its Lavi aircraft project to modernise South Africa’s Mirage fighters. The South African navy built patrol boats under licence from Israel and Israel supplied missile corvettes. South Africa’s Scorpion missile was a version of the Israeli Gabriel missile.
Nuclear collaboration
Israel’s most significant support for South Africa was in the field of nuclear collaboration. Ironically most of the evidence for this comes from US intelligence sources. In September 1979 a nuclear explosion was detected in the South Atlantic. According to the Washington Post, US intelligence told the US Government that this was part of a joint Israeli-South African test programme. In 1989 South Africa tested Jericho II and Shavit missiles from its Overberg range in the Cape, developed as part of an Israeli-South African missile development programme. The missiles could carry nuclear or chemical warheads. It was widely reported that Israel’s involvement was a quid pro quo for supplies of enriched uranium from South Africa.
Bantustans
US and British support for apartheid South Africa stopped short of any form of recognition for the Bantustans. Again, Israel went further, hosting visits by Lucas Mangope from Bophuthatswana and Venda chief, Patrick Mphephu. It hosted a visit by the entire 34-member Venda Chamber of Commerce in 1983 and accepted a trade mission from the Ciskei in Tel Aviv. In 1984 Ciskei’s chief Lennox Sebe opened an Israeli-owned factory in Ciskei manufacturing lingerie. Israel’s Koor Industries set up an agricultural chemicals plant in the Transkei ‘border area’.
According to a 1977 UN report, South Africa was exporting semi-finished goods to Israel, which were finished there and labelled as Israeli products. This served the two-fold purpose of helping South Africa avoid international boycotts and taking advantage of Israel’s free trade agreements with the EEC and US.
In 1988, a UN report stated: ‘The last ten years have witnessed an increasing collaboration between the two regimes [Israel and South Africa] amounting not only to a virtual alliance threatening the peace and security in Southern Africa and the Middle East, but also constituting a threat to international peace and security’.
South Africa’s reaction to Gaza
In November 2023 the post-apartheid government recalled its ambassador from Tel Aviv. South African civil society already had a growing movement calling for boycott, divestment and sanctions against Israel. South Africa won its democracy by a combination of internal resistance and international solidarity and boycott. The situation in Palestine differs in many ways from that in apartheid South Africa, but it is similar in that Palestinians have been dispossessed of their land and in the occupied territories face segregation and repression. Palestinians in Gaza are confronted by an Israeli Government which is showing itself even more brutal and ruthless than the apartheid regime.
In the face of complicity from Western governments, led by the US and UK, they need solidarity from civil society and individual citizens, on the same scale as the global anti-apartheid movement. In the words of one of South Africa’s legal team at The Hague, we should all ask ourselves: ‘Where was I when Gaza was going through genocide?’.