However, there's an argument to be made that SA’s intervention – which included approaching the International Court of Justice (ICJ) to demand that Israel stop what SA and others have described as genocide – played a big role in forcing Benjamin Netanyahu’s government to the negotiating table.
Many a commentator and activist, over the past year, has expressed a sense of pride over SA’s courage to stand up to Israel at the ICJ and demand that mass killings and the destruction of people’s homes in Gaza be stopped.
In the eyes of the international community, especially the so-called Global South, Nelson Mandela’s country is lauded for emerging from the ruins of apartheid to become a dependable champion for human rights.
Our constitution, whose bill of rights emphasises everyone’s right to life as well as their “inherent dignity and the right to have their dignity respected and protected” is celebrated by all the progressives across the world. Yet, we continue to suffer tragedies, some self-inflicted, that often leave one wondering if this reputation of a world champion of human rights is deserved.
Preventable deaths of poor schoolchildren in pit toilets, Life Esidimeni, the Marikana massacre – these are the tragedies that should not be occurring in the type of society we claim to be. But they do.
At the time of writing this column, Sowetan and all other news agencies were reporting that 78 bodies and 246 survivors had been recovered from an abandoned gold mine in Stilfontein, North West. The figures are staggering, suggesting – as the Business Day rightly put it yesterday morning – that SA is “standing on the cusp of one of the worst post-apartheid tragedies” – but they should not come as a shock to anyone.
The tragic drama has been slowly unfolding in front of our eyes for years now, as the mining industry and law-enforcement agencies failed to deal effectively with illicit mining – hence allowing it to develop into an extensive multi-million enterprise controlled by armed criminal gangs and gold trading syndicates.
For years, authorities have mostly looked the other way – accepting the so-called zama zamas as a fact of economic life. But as the practice grew into a large network that is said to be siphoning tens of billions of rand from the country each year – and communities neighbouring abandoned mines started complaining about violent crime associated with heavily armed gangs of zama zamas – the authorities could not ignore the problem any further.
OPINION | SA’s pro-rights stance often falls short when theneed for protection of dignity arises at home
Image: REUTERS/IHSAAN HAFFEJEE.
As a relatively young nation, one of the attributes we pride ourselves on is our ubuntu. We are a people who – partly because of our traumatic history and what others did for us in those dark hours of need – are always among the first to demonstrate human solidarity in times of tragedy.
As most of the world celebrates a historic ceasefire that would hopefully be the first step towards lasting peace in Gaza and other parts of Palestine, SA’s vocal role in trying to stop the bombardments that had cost thousands of lives will not go unnoticed.
In terms of the deal, Israel will gradually withdraw its forces from Gaza and release Palestinian detainees from its prisons in return for the freeing of Israeli hostages kidnapped by Hamas in October 2023.
Much of the praise for the six-week initial truce would naturally go to the Egyptian, Qatari and US mediators who facilitated protracted negotiations between the Israeli government and Hamas. Others would even attribute the breakthrough to US president-elect Donald Trump who, since his electoral victory in November, has been threatening that “all hell will break loose” in the Middle East if Hamas failed to release hundreds of Israeli hostages by Monday, the date of his inauguration.
OPINION | Mbenenge's case is an opportunity to reaffirm the judiciary’s commitment to ethical conduct, accountability
However, there's an argument to be made that SA’s intervention – which included approaching the International Court of Justice (ICJ) to demand that Israel stop what SA and others have described as genocide – played a big role in forcing Benjamin Netanyahu’s government to the negotiating table.
Many a commentator and activist, over the past year, has expressed a sense of pride over SA’s courage to stand up to Israel at the ICJ and demand that mass killings and the destruction of people’s homes in Gaza be stopped.
In the eyes of the international community, especially the so-called Global South, Nelson Mandela’s country is lauded for emerging from the ruins of apartheid to become a dependable champion for human rights.
Our constitution, whose bill of rights emphasises everyone’s right to life as well as their “inherent dignity and the right to have their dignity respected and protected” is celebrated by all the progressives across the world. Yet, we continue to suffer tragedies, some self-inflicted, that often leave one wondering if this reputation of a world champion of human rights is deserved.
Preventable deaths of poor schoolchildren in pit toilets, Life Esidimeni, the Marikana massacre – these are the tragedies that should not be occurring in the type of society we claim to be. But they do.
At the time of writing this column, Sowetan and all other news agencies were reporting that 78 bodies and 246 survivors had been recovered from an abandoned gold mine in Stilfontein, North West. The figures are staggering, suggesting – as the Business Day rightly put it yesterday morning – that SA is “standing on the cusp of one of the worst post-apartheid tragedies” – but they should not come as a shock to anyone.
The tragic drama has been slowly unfolding in front of our eyes for years now, as the mining industry and law-enforcement agencies failed to deal effectively with illicit mining – hence allowing it to develop into an extensive multi-million enterprise controlled by armed criminal gangs and gold trading syndicates.
For years, authorities have mostly looked the other way – accepting the so-called zama zamas as a fact of economic life. But as the practice grew into a large network that is said to be siphoning tens of billions of rand from the country each year – and communities neighbouring abandoned mines started complaining about violent crime associated with heavily armed gangs of zama zamas – the authorities could not ignore the problem any further.
SOWETAN SAYS | State should have treated zama zamas differently
However, instead of addressing the underlining factors that draw so many South Africans, Zimbabweans, Basotho, Mozambicans and Malawians to such a dangerous activity – factors such as high levels of unemployment in the region, porous borders and lack of clear regulations for artisanal mining – the government responded by launching Operation Vala uMgodi.
While shutting all the known exits to the abandoned mines does help in combating the crime by, as one minister (in) famously put it, “smoking out” and arresting the illegal miners – it hardly addresses the problem. Those who have been “smoked out”, arrested and – if they are undocumented immigrants – deported would simply come back a few months down the line to do it again. More deaths would follow. A vicious cycle.
Undocumented immigrants or not, it should shame all of us that it has taken a court of law – at the instigation of human rights activists and the Stilfontein community – for our government to engage in a humanitarian rescue mission.
When the full extent of the tragedy finally weighs on us – and the “criminal activity” argument no longer sounds like enough justification for not acting early – we will be haunted by the same question that has haunted us since Marikana: Where was the ubuntu that is supposed to undergird our post-apartheid nation?
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