The heads of South Africa’s second-largest church visiting Israel in solidarity with the Jewish state said Sunday that the South African government is out of sync with the people in its stance on the war with Hamas.
The unequivocal remarks by the South African Christian leaders against the ruling African National Congress come just weeks before general elections in South Africa, which has emerged as one of Israel’s most vocal critics in the world over the last seven months.
“We are here to give Israel support after what happened on October 7,” said Inkosi Shembe, the leader of the South African-based Nazareth Baptist Church which has some eight million followers and is an amalgamation of traditional Zulu and Christian beliefs. “We see that our government is silent about October 7.”
The 15-member delegation visited Israel for one week and toured the areas of southwestern Israel which came under attack in the Hamas massacre which killed 1,200 people, saw 250 others abducted and which triggered the Gaza war.
Last year, South Africa brought Israel to the International Court of Justice on charges of genocide, in a move condemned by Western countries led by the United States.
“We are here to declare that what was done by our government does not represent the people of South Africa,” Shembe added at an event at Jerusalem’s Friends of Zion Museum.
The South African religious leader said that ignorant people are being blinded by propaganda and lies that Israel practices apartheid.
“We are going back to South Africa to spread the truth of what we saw that there is no apartheid in Israel,” he said.
“It is so important to have this voice,” said Israel’s Ambassador to South Africa, Eli Belotserkovsky, who is working out of Jerusalem in the wake of the crisis in relations between the two countries. “It is a huge change.”
He noted that the South African government was leading the war against the very legitimacy of the State of Israel at a time when terror organizations sought Israel’s destruction.
“The haters of Israel are trying to disconnect the Jewish people from the Land of Israel,” said Fleur Hassan-Nahoum, former Jerusalem deputy mayor during an event where the group signed a declaration of friendship between South Africa and Israel.
“Your government has done the worst thing that could be done with their bogus claims that everything that was done to us is being done to the Palestinians. The Government of South Africa has become the spokespeople of the worst perpetrators of human rights violations in the world.”
“The ANC is not South Africa,” said Bafana Modise of South African Friends of Israel. “The people stand with Israel.”
“Our task is how we convert this support to something tangible to show the political leadership does not support the voice of the people,” Shembe said.
