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South Africa’s principled and courageous swim against the Western tide to lay criminal charges against Israel for perpetrating genocide in Gaza was rightly praised by believers in equal human rights across the world.

While taking Israel to the International Court of Justice may not have been good for bilateral relations with the United States, on the positive side it restored some of South Africa’s fading global stature as a progressive force for equality and justice. The ICJ’s judgement is still awaited; win or lose, South Africa will ultimately be adjudged as being on the right side of history.

Why then has South Africa been so mildly condemnatory and banally diplomatic in its response to ongoing barbarism in Sudan? There, as in the Holy Land, civilians are being blockaded, slaughtered, deprived of humanitarian aid, and increasingly facing famine.

The United Nations reported yesterday that on recent analysis more than 21 million people across Sudan are facing high levels of acute food insecurity – “the largest such crisis in the world”.

“Famine conditions are ongoing in El Fasher, North Darfur, and in Kadugli, South Kordofan, where families are trapped and surviving on leaves, animal feed and grass,” the UN’s news service said.

The challenge for the UN is that it has a perpetual spoke in its wheel due to its own antiquated systems that hinder its ability to reach consensus on just about anything of consequence. The UN was blocked from acting to stop the Gaza genocide by the US using its veto power. In Sudan its hands are tied by global indifference. Sudan, after all, lacks perceived geo-political or economic significance.

On the basis that evil flourishes when good people do nothing, my appeal on behalf of the Archbishop Tutu Intellectual Property Trust to the South African government is to be seen to be stepping up and raising its voice for the Sudanese people… to be seen to be leading. And, to build on its global advocacy for human rights.

Eleven years ago, in an opinion piece on the then-conflict in South Sudan published by AlJazeera.com, the late Archbishop Tutu wrote: “God is weeping because people were made for inter-dependence and love. Hatred is not a natural condition; it is manufactured and propagated by people. It is a condition that can be turned on its head by good leaders.”

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Statement from DR MAMPHELA RAMPHELE, Chair of the Archbishop Desmond Tutu Intellectual Property Trust. Distributed for the Trust by Benny Gool 082 5566 556/Roger Friedman 079 8966 899. 

A beautiful celebration of Mrs. Leah Tutu’s 92nd birthday with family, friends, and the sacred joy of the Eucharist.

Statement from Dr Mamphela Ramphele for the Archbishop Tutu IP Trust…

WE SALUTE MEMBERS OF THE GLOBAL SUMUD FLOTILLA 

We salute the organisers and sailors of the Global Sumud Flotilla for their brave contribution to keeping the flames of compassion flickering around Gaza despite the Israeli Defence Force’s efforts to bury humanity under heaps of rubble.

The Flotilla may not have reached its goal of getting desperately needed aid to Gaza, after being intercepted by Israeli warships last night and today, but it has more than achieved its goal of keeping the world’s spotlight on the plight of Palestinians.

The fact that the interception was carried out in international waters is but the latest example of Israel’s impunity for international law – for which it is not held accountable due largely to being protected by the US (and its dwindling group of EU friends) at the United Nations.

We say to the genocidaires controlling Israel: Treat the sailors you have abducted or imprisoned off the flotilla, including our own Nkosi Zwelivelile Mandela, with respect, and return them to their loved ones with the utmost care. They are heroes who represent the spirit of billions of citizens of more than 150 nations around the world who recognised the State of Palestine at the United Nations last week.

We call on South Africa’s government for moral consistency. Its courage in laying charges of genocide against Israel at the ICJ is diluted by continuing diplomatic and trade relations between the two countries.

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Statement from DR MAMPHELA RAMPHELE, Chair of the Archbishop Desmond Tutu Intellectual Property Trust. Distributed for the Trust by Benny Gool 082 5566 556/Roger Friedman 079 8966 899.

Statement from Dr Mamphela Ramphele for the Archbishop Tutu IP Trust…

Welcoming Jeremy Corbyn, Youmna El Sayed and Mustafa Barghouti to Desmond & Leah Tutu House today.

*****

Press Debrief Hosted by Journalists Against Apartheid:

14h30 on 30 September 2025

Desmond & Leah Tutu House

Buitenkant Street, Cape Town

*****

On behalf of the Archbishop Tutu IP Trust I extend warm collegial greetings to Journalists Against Apartheid which is hosting an important media briefing on the abomination in Gaza, at Desmond & Leah Tutu House in Cape Town today.

The briefing will be delivered by Jeremy Corbyn, Youmna El Sayed and Dr Mustafa Barghouti, whose collective work for justice and humanity in the Holy Land would have met with the late Archbishop Tutu’s wholehearted support.

Corbyn is a British politician and former Leader of the Labour Party who, like Tutu, condemned the UK’s decision to go to war in Iraq in 2003 on the false pretext of stopping Iraq from deploying alleged weapons of mass destruction. El Sayed is a television journalist who was forced to flee Gaza with her children after repeated security threats and displacements. Dr Mustafa Barghouti is a Palestinian physician, activist, and politician who serves as General Secretary of the Palestinian National Initiative, and heads of the Palestinian Medical Relief Society.

The Tutu IP Trust, which is responsible for managing the Archbishop’s archives, will take the opportunity to show the visiting delegations artefacts of particular interest reflecting the late Archbishop’s special relationship to the pursuit of justice in Palestine.

The artefacts include a silver Jerusalem Cross inscribed with the words Beit Sahour, the place near Bethlehem where Archbishop Tutu delivered a Christmas Eve sermon in 1989 outlining parallels between the situation in the Israeli-occupied territories and apartheid South Africa.

Also in the archive is a Palestinian stone representing the First Intifada, dated 8 December 1987. Tutu first visited the Holy Land in 1966.

The Archbishop Tutu IP Trust reiterates its call on Israel to immediately cease its genocidal actions in Gaza and engage in real talks for a settlement that will secure peace and justice for both the people of Israel and Palestine.  

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Statement from DR MAMPHELA RAMPHELE, Chair of the Archbishop Desmond Tutu Intellectual Property Trust. Distributed for the Trust by Benny Gool 082 5566 556/Roger Friedman 079 8966 899.

Statement from the Archbishop Tutu IP Trust                             

SUDAN: “WE AFRICANS CONCLUDE THAT DOUBLE STANDARDS APPLY TO OUR CONTINENT”

Unlike the Holy Land and Ukraine, which hold special status as key pieces in the international geopolitical puzzle – and where people with relatively pale skins live – the double-edged catastrophe of civil war and famine that has Sudan in its grip holds little interest to the power brokers of the global north.

The scale of Sudan’s suffering is staggering; it is currently the world’s greatest humanitarian disaster, but few people know about it and even fewer appear to care.

According to the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine’s Sudan Research Group, more than 61 000 people have died in Khartoum State, alone, since the war began in April 2023. About 26 000 of those deaths was directly attributed to violence, with preventable disease and starvation the leading causes of death across the country.

According to the World Food Programme, more than 25 million people are facing acute hunger, with famine – already confirmed in long-suffering Darfur – threatening another 13 regions. More than eight million people have been displaced since the conflict began approximately 18 months ago, nearly three million of them fleeing to the neighbouring countries of Chad and the Central African Republic.

According to the United Nations’ Sudan Fact-Finding Mission, Sudan’s Rapid Support Forces, who are fighting the Sudanese Armed Forces, “are responsible for committing sexual violence on a large scale in areas under their control, including gang-rapes and abducting and detaining victims in conditions that amount to sexual slavery”. The Mission also documented sexual violence involving the Sudanese Armed Forces and allied groups.
The UN Refugee Agency has reported a wave of cholera in Sudan, with up to 60% of the population unable to access health services. The World Health Organisation estimates that 3.4 million children under the age of five are at high risk of epidemic diseases, including measles, malaria, pneumonia, diarrhoeal diseases and cholera.

In common with the wars in Ukraine and Palestine, the only immediate beneficiaries of the tragedies are the suppliers of arms. Amnesty International recently reported that French military hardware was being used in the conflict, mounted on vehicles in Darfur supplied by the United Arab Emirates – in violation of a UN arms embargo.

In 2006, in an opinion piece published in the UK, the late Archbishop Desmond Tutu compared the world’s response to violence in the Holy Land to its response to violence in Sudan. “We Africans conclude that double standards apply to our continent,” he wrote.

The following year, the Archbishop joined protestors around the world, with celebrity film stars, Matt Damon and Cate Blanchett, calling for ceasefire in Darfur, the deployment of a UN force and an end to the system murder and rape of women in Darfur.

Seventeen years later, there’s little to add, besides that December holds special significance for billions of people around the world who subscribe to the Abrahamic faiths, including most Sudanese, Palestinian and Ukrainian people. 

Our plea to the world is to respond to these crises on the basis that all people – including Christians, Muslims, Jews, and every other person on earth – are equal members of one human family, with equal rights to compassion and justice.

The suffering of the people in Sudan is a blight on all human beings. 

Signed: DR MAMPHELA RAMPHELE, Chairperson of the Archbishop Tutu IP Trust.

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Distributed by Oryx Media (Benny Gool 082 5566 556 / Roger Friedman) on 11 December 2024.

11 November 2024

Statement from:
Dr Mamphela Ramphele and Mr Niclas Kjellstrom-Matseke
Desmond & Leah Tutu House
Cape Town

SA MUST EXPEL ISRAEL’S DIPLOMATS AND BORROW ANTI-APARTHEID TACTICS TO IMPLEMENT GLOBAL SANCTIONS MOVEMENT

If the daily sight of child and women victims of Israel’s ongoing annihilation of Gaza, now spreading to Lebanon, is insufficient to persuade powerful nations of its wrongfulness, less powerful nations, which don’t necessarily have veto powers at the UN, have responsibilities to step into the void.

Over the past 400 days the US has repeatedly used its veto to reduce the world body to a talk-shop, while Israel recently announced the banning of the UN Relief and Works Agency and described UN Secretary-General Antonio Gutterres as persona non grata.

It is not only Palestine that is under attack, but the integrity of the rest of the world to correct human made crises.

According to the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute, the US supplied 69% of Israeli arms imports in 2023, with Germany its second largest supplier, followed by Italy, the UK, France and Spain. Three of those countries retain the veto powers that came with permanent membership of the UN Security Council granted to them in 1945.

As Archbishop of Southern Africa Thabo Makgoba aptly put it: “Any nation which arms a party to the conflict, whether directly or indirectly, implicitly makes this war its war too.”

The rest of the world cannot be innocent bystanders. Nations must use their collective powers to squeeze the State of Israel – diplomatically, economically and reputationally – to force it to negotiate a just and sustainable solution in which both the people of Israel and Palestine can live in peace.

We are reminded of the late Archbishop Tutu’s teaching, that there’s no place for neutrality when an elephant is standing on the tail of a mouse’s tail. If you don’t call out oppression you agree with it…

There is no doubt left, given all the world has witnessed over the past 13 months, that, regardless of what formal label is applied to its strategy, the State of Israel’s objective is to clear Palestinians from Palestine.

South Africa’s principle in charging Israel with genocide at the International Court of Justice is worthy, as is its support for Türkiye’s recent initiative, joined by 51 other countries, to call on the UN Security Council to support halting arms shipments to Israel.

But South Africa can do more. It can double down on its efforts by using the same non-violent toolbox of boycott and sanctions to isolate and force Israel to the negotiating table as were used to isolate and force change in apartheid South Africa.

Government must enact the parliamentary resolution passed a year ago to cut diplomatic ties with Israel, and draw on its experience of the power of sanctions and boycotts to apply renewed impetus to the struggle for the equal rights of all in the Holy Land, including Muslim, Jews and Christians.

Cutting formal diplomatic relations need not preclude South Africa from participating in multilateral talks aimed at resolving the crisis in future. 

South Africa’s Department of International Relations and Co-Operation must take the lead in proposing SWIFT banking sanctions against Israeli banks. The Society Worldwide Interbank Financial Telecommunications (SWIFT) is based in Brussels. It authenticates more than 20 million inter-bank financial transactions daily, linking over 11 500 financial institutions in more than 200 countries.

SWIFT has previously been used to apply pressure on Iran and, less successfully, on Russia which switched to selling oil in currencies other than the US Dollar.

The Archbishop Desmond Tutu Intellectual Property Trust and the Desmond & Leah Tutu Legacy Foundation associate themselves with the Statement of Patriarchs and Heads of Local Churches in Jerusalem, issued on 7 October 2023, which read:

“We unequivocally condemn any acts that target civilians, regardless of their nationality, ethnicity, or faith. Such actions go against the fundamental principles of humanity and the teachings of Christ, who implored us to ‘love your neighbour as yourself.’” (Mark 12:31).

It is important to acknowledge the many citizens of Israel, and members of the Jewish diaspora, who have had the courage and self-esteem to raise their voices against the appalling injustice and breakdown of international law in the Holy Land. They are important allies in the global struggle for human rights and equality.

Last week, Gaza’s Health Ministry, which the UN regards as reliable, said more than 43 300 Palestinians had been killed over the past 13 months. Many other bodies are believed to remain under the rubble.

The UN’s Human Rights Office released an analysis of people killed in Gaza between November last year and April. They found that 44% of verified victims were children, and 26% were women. Of the children, most victims were five to nine-year olds.

Last month, the UN Security Council was informed by a senior UN official that Gaza was home to the largest number of amputee children in modern history, with an average of 10 children losing one or both legs per day.

The UN has also reported a 300% spike in miscarriages and mothers’ dying in childbirth.

Psychological trauma is intense, rippling outwards, from families and neighbours, across the border to Lebanon, to the rest of the world.

The world body is long-due for a structural overhaul, reducing the powers of individual nations to act against the interests of the group. In the meantime, countries that support the human values of Ubuntu, of common principle and common purpose, must act.

Signed by:

1. Dr Mamphela Ramphele, Chair of the Archbishop Desmond Tutu IP Trust; and
2. Mr Niclas Kjellstrom-Matseke, Chair of the Desmond & Leah Tutu Legacy Foundation

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Distributed from Desmond & Leah Tutu House by Oryx Media. Call Benny Gool +27 82 5566 556 or Roger Friedman +27 79 8966 899.