Less than a month after the ANC at its national conference in December 2017 voted to downgrade the South African Embassy in Tel Aviv, the king of South Africa’s Zulu nation has urged the ANC’s leadership to do precisely the opposite – upgrade not downgrade.
Speaking on behalf 12 million Zulus – South Africa’s largest ethnic group – King Goodwill Zwelithini told a delegation of the ANC’s senior leadership that he had developed a close relationship with Israel and the South African Jewish community since his 2009 decree introducing medical circumcision for young men in a bid to halt the spread of the AIDS virus.
Tower od Strength. Advocate for strengthening ties with Israel, King of the Zulu nation, Goodwill Zwelithini kaBhekuzulu.
According to WHO (World Health Organization), there is “compelling evidence that male circumcision reduces the risk of heterosexually acquired HIV infection in men by approximately 60%.” More than 700,000 males have been circumcised since the decree was issued by the king.
“There are two clinics that have been built by Jewish organizations in this kingdom,” the king told the ANC delegation, whose members included the new party president, Cyril Ramaphosa, at last week’s meeting.
Referring to the South African Zionist Federation (SAZF) and South African Friends of Israel, the King said, “They came here because I requested them to come. They built these clinics the day I announced circumcision on December 6, 2009.” The two clinics, in Mathubathuba and Emondlo, provide HIV-related health services and education for the surrounding communities.
The king urged Ramaphosa and his colleagues not to enmesh South Africa “in wars that we know nothing of.”
Israel’s involvement follows the publication in 2005 and in 2007 of controlled trials conducted in Uganda, South Africa and Kenya demonstrating compelling evidence that medical male circumcision dramatically reduces HIV infection. The studies led the WHO, other UN agencies, the National Institute of Health in the US and a large part of the medical community to recommend to countries the inclusion of male circumcision in their HIV prevention packages.
It was in Israel – with immense experience performing adult male circumcision on a wide scale following the mass of adult Russian immigration in the 1990s – that the international medical community found a partner in the global fight against AIDS.
‘The King and I’. King Goodwill Zwelithini with Dr. Inon Schenker, initiator of Operation Abraham Collaborative (OAC) at special ceremony at the Enyokeni Royal Palace,Natal. The King announces that all of his warriors in the future must be circumcised and requested that OAC assist in replicating its model at Asiphile to as many clinics as possible throughout the province of KwaZulu-Natal.
In 2007, a United Nations AIDS report estimated that 5,700,000 South Africans had HIV/AIDS, approximately 12% of the country’s population of forty-eight million. The number infected was larger than in any other single country in the world. The other top five countries with the highest HIV/AIDS prevalence were and remain all neighbors of South Africa.
It was to this picturesquely beautiful yet stricken environment that Israel, through its Jerusalem AIDS Project, responded to the challenge.
Operation Abraham
“Israeli medicine and public health are positioned as a real asset in African countries,” said Dr. Inon Schenker to Israel Link of Operation Abraham Collaborative (OAC), the consortium that sends doctors and nurses to Africa.
“STOP AIDS IN SCHOOL” reads the pamphlet. Dr Eitan Gross (left) of Hadasssah Ein Kerem Hospital in Jerusalem and Dr. Moshe Westreich of Asaf Harophe Hospital near Tel Aviv, training local surgeons in Swaziland while voluntary patient being circumcised, reads HIV prevention material .
Dr. Schenker is a public health professional with expertise in global health, a researcher and a consultant to government ministries, the UN, and other international agencies, specializing in HIV/AIDS prevention. Since 2006, Dr. Schenker has headed the Operation Abraham initiative, responding to requests from African countries to help them act on the WHO recommendations to increase male circumcisions by assisting their local medical male circumcision teams.
Why the name “Abraham”?
Over 4000 years ago, in a covenant with God, Abraham circumcised himself and then his sons Ishmael and Isaac. In recent years, such surgery is providing an additional tool in the global fight against HIV and AIDS.
In clinics in Southern Africa, Israeli doctors trained their counterparts in male medical circumcision, so that their expertise in the ancient technique will help in the battle against the modern scourge of AIDS.
To the question of how difficult is it to enlist volunteers in Israel to go to Southern Africa on this project, Dr. Schenker said:
“It’s very easy. Our volunteers want to help Africa the best way they know how. They are not driven by materialistic incentives. Our volunteers are driven by the desire to make a difference in those parts of the world where they know they can help because of their expertise and experience.
As you know, the saving of lives is a value deeply rooted in our culture. In addition, we established a consortium of excellence which shows the depth and breadth of Israeli participation in the partnership.”
This consortium of Israeli medical institutions includes:
A wonderful spin-off of the project is that it brings Jewish and Arab Israelis together for a common cause.
Dr. Jamal Garah, an Israeli Arab pediatrician, was a volunteer to Swaziland. Experienced in performing male circumcisions, usually on babies or young children in Israel’s Muslim community, Garah expressed:
“It’s fitting that our project is named after Abraham, the patriarch of both our peoples. It sends the message to other people that we can work together.”
Arab nurse from Rambam Hospital in Haifa, Yasser Barakat training local South African nurses on the equipment used for circumcision.
In agreement was Yasser Barakat, a Muslim operating room nurse from Haifa’s Rambam Health Care Campus (RHCC). Part of an Israeli team of five doctors and nurses and a public health expert who spent two weeks at St. Mary Hospital near Durban, South Africa, Barakat was there to train local medical personnel at St Mary’s Asiphile Clinic. He participated in more than 160 operations.
“Most of the Zulu men who voluntarily came for the procedure,” says Barakat, “wanted to prevent HIV and other sexually transmitted infections. On one day alone, the team training performed thirty-seven operations with us.”
His job involved teaching each team “how to prepare the instruments before the operation; how the nurses need to perform during the operation and the aftercare and counseling.”
Some psychology was also required.
He had to advise the Zulu men that circumcision was not “a total protection against HIV and that they still had to take all the other measures. This is where proper counseling is so important,” says Barakat.
‘Dam’ Stupid
Apart from the fight against AIDS, King Goodwill Zwelithini emphasized to the ANC leaders, how Israeli expertise and technology in water management could benefit South Africa. Noting how the ANC were so misguided at its December conference against Israel, he cautioned that “we will find that the people that we involve ourselves with in their wars, are the same people that work in ways that can help us with our drought issues, which we are still facing because our dams are still not full. The Israelis can change that and make our dams our source of life.”
Joyous Jump. Leading the “Asiphile Jump”, now a tradition during a training course provided by OAC in Durban. Asiphile in Zulu, means “Let’s Be Healthy”.
Catastrophe! Call Israel
A country in distress does not even have to call – Israel responds rapidly. The Israel’s government, army, and aid agencies are always among the first to send material and expert assistance, whether it’s earthquakes in Haiti and Nepal, tsunamis in Sri Lanka and Japan, typhoon in the Philippines, or other mass disasters in Turkey, India, Mexico, El Salvador, Greece, Rwanda, Armenia, Indonesia, New Guinea and killer Ebola outbreaks and devastating mudslides in Sierra Leone.
In 2017, emergency response team from Israeli NGO IsraAID arrived in Puerto Rico, after Hurricane Maria devastated the country and other islands in the Caribbean. Israel also dispatched aid experts to Texas to provide vital relief and psychosocial support to the thousands of people who have lost everything in the catastrophic hurricane, Harvey.
“It is a part of our Jewish tradition of Tikkun Olam (‘repairing the world’),” says Operation Abraham head, Dr. Schenker.
When King Goodwill Zwelithini counseled the ANC leadership, he was following a long tradition of linkage between Israel and the Zulu nation.
Brush with the Past
There is not a child in Israel who is unfamiliar with the illustrated book, Lobengulu, King of the Zulu by Israel’s celebrated artist and writer Nachum Gutman. It was written during the late artist’s visit to South Africa in 1934, when he was commissioned to paint Jan Smuts on behalf of the Municipality of Tel Aviv. The book in Hebrew was serialized in 1935-6 and became a children’s bestseller.
In the Nachum Gutman Museum there is a room dedicated to Lobengulu King of the Zulu, which is an adventure story. The room is replete with colorful paintings of tribal and wild life in Africa, set in forests, mountains, open veld and rivers, replete with crocodiles, elephants, monkeys, and hippos.
The book reached out to the minds and hearts of children at a time when they needed an infusion of faraway fantasy.
Africa provided that relief!
It was during the turbulent period of the Arab Revolt in British Mandate Palestine where hundreds of Jews were killed and their property damaged. This was more than a decade before Israel was established, and local Arabs had already decreed Jews unwelcome.
The instigator of this revolt was the Grand Mufti of Jerusalem, Hajj Amin al-Husseini who would also call upon Adolf Hitler to remove the Jewish presence once and for all. Hitler was only to happy to oblige knowing he could count on the support of Arab Palestinians in his mission to exterminate world Jewry.
No wonder young Jewish children needed their minds entertained elsewhere, and Lobengulu King of the Zulu, provided some welcome escapism.
Aware of Jewish history, King Goodwill Zwelithini had at Israel’s 65th Independence celebrations praised the ability of the Jewish people to always rise above challenges, categorizing Israel’s history as one filled with paradox and tragedy, but ultimately triumph.
Israel’s ‘Operation Abraham’ honored. Dr S. Dhlomo, the Minister of Health of Kwa Zulu-Natal, (second left), salutes the support of OAC in pioneering ‘star-quality’ circumcision clinics at a gala reception hosted by Discovery Health in honor of Israeli medical delegations. From (l-r) Dr Penny Tlhabi , Head of Strategic Corporate and Public Affairs at Discovery Health, Dr Sibongiseni Dhlomo , Dr Maurice Goodman, Head of Health Professional Strategy at Discovery Health and Ruth Lewin, Head of Corporate Sustainability at Discovery Health.
Good Advice from Goodwill
Joining King Goodwill Zwelithini, in speaking out against the ANC decision to downgrade the South African Embassy in Israel were other leading figures in the Zulu nation.
Nkosi Bishop Phakama Shembe – a key leader of the Shembe Church launched in the early twentieth century, expressed that “for South Africa to prosper, we firmly believe that it must stand in support of Israel, not against it.”
The bishop emphasized that South Africa’s duty was “not to choose the path of boycott and disengagement, but to assist in whatever way we can.”
Listening attentively to this counsel, was Cyril Ramaphosa, long considered a potential presidential candidate and on the18 December 2017, he was elected the president of the ANC at the party’s 54th Elective Conference, and therefore on the path to the Presidency.
Hopefully, a new dawn will emerge in South Africa’s relations with Israel, which will benefit the people of both countries.
