South Africans should be watching carefully!
As frustrated Iranians protest “Enough is Enough”, how long too, before South Africans across the country rise and say enough of being fed a daily diet of lies, deception and corruption instead of jobs, housing, and services!
Instead of investing in their citizens, the Iranian Ayatollahs, are hellbent on squandering their resources on sponsoring global terrorism, acquiring nuclear weapons, and threatening Israel.
Could this be the direction of South Africa, which throughout 2017, strengthened its relations with the Islamic republic?
It would so appear going by what transpired at the 54th National Conference of the African National Congress (ANC), in December 2017.
The signs are ominous.
ANC 54th National Conference-2017 Photo Credit: SABC News
“A date which will live in infamy”
With time running out to address critical issues facing South Africa – a country where its fastest growing ‘suburbs’ are satellite squatter camps, where its disheveled and mostly unemployed residents suffer poor sanitation, inadequate electricity and water, and the only ‘commodity’ in abundance is violent crime – the people’s representatives to the ANC conference squandered time to discuss a region a continent away, where the issues to most are incomprehensible.
If they fail to find solutions to the plight of their own citizens, what contribution can they offer elsewhere?
None.
And so, while South Africa’s neglected millions living in flimsy shacks alongside ditches and pools of filthy, stagnant water where mosquitoes breed, their representatives allow their all-important conference to be hijacked under the smiling smug faces of invited Hamas terrorists, who stated aim in its Hamas Charter – a far cry from the ANC’s Freedom Charter – is the destruction of the State of Israel.
Far more important than addressing the plight of its miserable millions, the puppeteers steered the conference to devote precious time to hear speakers slandering Israel and pass a resolution to downgrade the South African embassy in Israel.
With not one speaker permitted to present an Israeli perspective, the ANC sent a chilling message to South Africa’s Jewish community. One such citizen, Howard Feldman from Johannesburg, and a contributor to Israel Link, said it best in his published Open Letter to the ANC:
“As a South African Jew who has woken up to the news that you have chosen “unanimously” to downgrade the Israeli Embassy, you have sent a clear message, not only to the Jews of the country, but to the rest of the world, exactly how you wish to be known.
You invited the terror organisation Hamas to your conference. And that is inexcusable. Ignorance is not a justification because all you needed to do was to glance over the Hamas Charter and you would understand that they desire the death of Jews. They are an Islamist terror group like ISIS and like Boko Haram. And you have invited them in to our precious and young democracy.
Their goals are not democratic – yours are. They persecute women and gays – you protect them. They do not allow freedom of speech – you do. And they believe in kidnapping, murdering and terrorizing the innocent.
To say that the ANC was once called a “terror” organisation is to sell your own history short and to rewrite every lofty ideal that the ANC stood for.”
Take heed South Africa.
Iran too, showed more interest in sowing discord in regions outside the country than addressing the issues of its citizens, hence protests in more than 1,200 cities and towns calling for the removal of the nation’s ‘Supreme Leader’, chanting “We don’t want an Islamic Republic” and “Death to the Dictator”.
Students protest in Iran Photo Credit: Center for Human Rights in Iran
High on the list of the Iranian protestors was the call to end its government’s costly expansionist projects across the Middle East, inflicting death, destruction from Syria to Yemen. With over half a million dead in Syria, and Yemen facing the ‘worst humanitarian crisis in the world,” Iran’s toxic tentacles bothers not the leaders of the ANC who it calls Iran, “Our friend”!
Iran murdered mercilessly throughout 2017 – even its own citizens were not spared. South Africa entered into joint ventures with the Islamic republic. The ventures followed meetings between the South African Minister of Science and Technology Naledi Pandor and his Iranian counterpart in the Ministry of Science, Research, and Technology Mansour Gholami who is reported telling The Teheran Times:
“South Africa and Iran have already cultivated relations and we are seeking closer ties between the two nations.”
While Iranians are taking to the streets in protest, South African National Assembly Speaker Baleka Mbete had no problem cozying up last September with the Iranian Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif who called South Africa a “friendly country.”
How do South Africans – whose country did away with the death penalty – feel when they read that the number of executions carried out by its “friend” Iran for 2017 exceeded 437?
And one must remember that under Iranian law, many nonviolent crimes, such as “insulting the Prophet,” apostasy, same-sex relations, adultery, and drug-related offenses, are punishable by death.
A demonstration at the University of Tehran on Saturday.
South African National Assembly Speaker Baleka Mbete meeting Iranian Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif. Photo Credit: Tehran Times
How do South African feel when they read that its “friend” Iran executes children?
On July 18, Amnesty International reported that “authorities had hanged Hassan Afshar, who was arrested when he was 17 years old and convicted of “forced male to male anal intercourse” At least 49 inmates on death row were convicted of crimes committed when they were under 18 years old.”
Are South Africans not ‘SHOCKED” when they hear how their “friend” Iran applies electric shocks to “cure” members of its LGBTI community?
Are they okay with their government wanting closer ties to a country that “cures” people with different sexual orientations?
How do South Africans feel about how their “friend” Iran discriminates against women?
Iranian women face discrimination in personal status matters related to marriage, divorce, inheritance, and child custody. A woman needs her male guardian’s approval for marriage regardless of her age and cannot pass on her nationality to her foreign-born spouse or their children. Married women may not obtain a passport or travel outside the country without the written permission of their husbands.
Proud of their constitution that enshrines freedom of expression, how do South Africans feel about how their “friend” Iran last Saturday cut off internet access in Tehran to try to stop the spread of unrest?
They should not be surprised. Authorities routinely arrest and charge journalists, bloggers, and online media activists for exercising their right to freedom of expression.
With protestors dying on the streets of Iran, where is the ANC, BDS and South Africa’s notorious propaganda mouthpiece against Israel, the Johannesburg-based Media Review Network (MRN). They are silent. Mention Israel, the vitriol pours out like a dam having burst its banks.
Where is the MRN’s most toxic writer, Iqbal Jasset who once proudly proclaimed during a TV interview that the man he has most admired of the 20th century was Iran’s revolutionary leader, Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini or his other gem, “I know that people say Israel is smaller than the Kruger National Park; but I don’t care if it is smaller than a postage stamp, it should be stamped out.”
Fragrance of Freedom
Iranians are not Arabs, they are Persians, but have the winds of change that brought in the ‘Arab Spring’ found there way to Iran?
“We’ve seen pictures of Khamenei ripped from the billboards at the sides of streets. We’ve heard protesters call for his overthrow,” reported Nic Robertson, CNN’s international diplomatic editor. One resident told CNN of witnessing a protester tearing down a poster of Khamenei near Tehran University on Saturday.
In one video circulating on Twitter , throngs of people could be seen gathering close to the university, chanting, “Dishonest! Dishonest!” as tear gas was dispersed.
With the world watching and South Africa turning a blind eye, the US State Department urged the international community to support the Iranian people’s “demands for basic rights and an end to corruption.” The Department’s spokeswoman, Heather Nauert had it right when she said,
“Iran’s leaders have turned a wealthy country with a rich history and culture into an economically depleted rogue state whose chief exports are violence, bloodshed, and chaos.” And what is the Iranian response? As expected, Iran’s media is already blaming the US, Britain and of course, ISRAEL – for fomenting the demonstrations.
Iran’s threat on Israel Photo Credit: Israel National News
Destroying Israel – Top Priority
South Africa’s “friend” Iran on June 23, 2017 held major anti-Israel rallies across the country with protesters chanting “Death to Israel” and declaring that destroying the Jewish state is “the Muslim world’s top priority.”
Addressing the demonstrators, Iranian parliament speaker Ali Larijani called Israel the “mother of terrorism” and said that in the “20th century, there was no event more ominous than establishing the Zionist regime.”
The rally also inaugurated a huge digital countdown display showing that Israel will allegedly cease to exist in 8,411 days. With a little bit of divine intervention coupled with the animated aspirations of the people of Iran, that Teheran clock ticking towards the demise of Israel, may in fact be sounding the death knell of the Ayatollah tyranny!
In the meantime, these today are South Africa’s friends Hamas and Iran’s tyrant leaders, both hellbent on Israel’s destruction.
It should come as little surprise that ordinary Iranians are expressing on the streets and squares of their country “enough” and why Jews in South Africa are feeling betrayed.
