SACP joins call for Sea Robbers to pull out of Maccabi match

The SA Communist Party (SACP) has jumped onto the bandwagon of organisations pleading with Orlando Pirates to pull out of its planned pre-season friendly match against Israeli’s Maccabi Tel Aviv.

SACP’s call comes after Boycott, Divestment, Sanctions Coalition this week urged the winners of Premier Soccer League 2022/2023 season’s MTN 8 and Nedbank Cup champions, to withdraw from the game in solidarity with the Palestinians.

The ANC and its affiliate ANC Veterans League have also made similar calls.

Solly Mapaila, the party’s general secretary, said: “The SACP urges Orlando Pirates Football Club to reconsider its stance, withdraw from playing Israeli’s Maccabi Tel Aviv in a pre-season friendly match, in solidarity with the people of Palestine who are under apartheid occupation and oppression by the Israeli regime. On behalf of the SACP, I will ask for an urgent meeting with Orlando Pirates FC to discuss this important call,” he said.

In response to the criticism, Pirates on Monday said it was participating in a pre-season camp organised by a Fifa match agent involving numerous clubs from Africa, Asia, Europe and Middle East.

“Orlando Pirates has no hand in organising the event. In fact, Orlando Pirates needed to fulfil a criteria qualifying us to participate. Orlando Pirates had no liaisons with any participating club or the organisers relating to fixtures. The fixtures were arrived at independently by the organisers. It is an important fact that all the participating clubs are Fifa affiliates regulated by Fifa statutes.

“Orlando Pirates’ core functioning is governed by rules. It is to the rules that Orlando Pirates went when confronted with calls to withdraw from playing Maccabi Tel Aviv. There is no cultural boycott or boycott of any form by either the South African government, Fifa or the host country that Orlando Pirates can base its refusal to play against Maccabi Tel Aviv on. Heeding a call from any other body would create a conflict within Orlando Pirates that would undermine the club’s values and history irreparably,” read the Pirates’ media statement.

Mapaila said: “The agent that Orlando Pirates refers to in its statement, who has arranged the match, is throwing the club into a deep reputational crisis that could erode its historic legacy and make it difficult for the club to recover from the subsequent negative impact.

“Agents cannot automatically be viewed to be neutral or immune from political influence by powerful forces on the global political and economic scene. The response by the club management threatens to roll back the Orlando Pirates value system. Year in, year out, the apartheid Israeli regime attacks the Palestinian people, killing many, including children, and women. It will be un-Orlando Pirates to ignore this injustice and the fact that Israel is occupying dispossessed Palestinian territories.”

Mapaila added it was true that Pirates “has its roots in a conflict-ridden SA and has been an active participant in the dismantling of apartheid”.

“To uphold this history, Orlando Pirates should still observe the fundamental principles adopted against apartheid SA.”

He said active expression of solidarity with the Palestinian people against their dispossession and apartheid conditions imposed upon them by the Israeli regime will be in line with the assertion in Pirates statement, that the club “is a socially conscious club that fully understands that it exists for the community and society.”

“The Palestinian people do not fall outside the global community and society – they deserve the solidarity that Orlando Pirates and other South Africans benefitted from against apartheid,” said Mapaila.