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How to Bring Down a Tyranny: Lessons from South Africa to Palestine


A few days ago, I watched a documentary at Lumière titled Ernest Cole, Lost and Found, which explored the brutal history of Apartheid in South Africa. As I was struck by the horrors unfolding before my eyes, I couldn’t help but notice a striking pattern — a thread connecting the political narratives, geopolitical dynamics, and the institutionalisation of racism of that era to the injustices we witness today. Most notably, it echoed through the widespread resistance to the ongoing Israeli apartheid, occupation, and genocide in Palestine. This parallel left me wondering: could the successful struggle against South African Apartheid hold valuable lessons for the future of Palestinian resistance? And what might we learn from the strategies that proved effective in dismantling such a system of oppression?



Impact of the BDS Movement


In 2013, at the death of Nelson Mandela, the British comedian and activist Mark Steel stated that Mandela managed to “prove that bastards and their bastard regimes can be overthrown, against seemingly impossible odds, by all of us, as no one knows which unsold grape was the one that finally brought down a tyranny.” This message perfectly encapsulates the appeal of the Boycott, Divestment, and Sanction (BDS) movement, originally created by Omar Barghouti in 2005. This campaign has the purpose of putting pressure on large corporations doing business with Israel, or those possibly having a bigger implication in the ongoing genocide (such as McDonalds), to cut ties with the country, in turn undermining Israel’s financial ability to continue their violent military operations in Gaza.


The pressure to divest from and sanction Israel is not only reserved towards businesses and corporations, but also intended (geo)politically. For example, a report from Brown University from October revealed that the United States has spent approximately 17.9 billion dollars in military aid to the State of Israel, since October 2023 — an all-time record. This is in line with former US president Joe Biden’s refusal to put conditions on US military aid to Israel in May, despite public outcry. “Israel derives a lot of its power [...] from being armed, funded and shielded from accountability by the United States, the UK, and so on. Without those links of complicity, Israel cannot maintain its entire system of oppression”, argues Omar Barghhouti in a recent interview for Al Jazeera.


Just like Western leaders such as the US and the UK refused to cut fiscal ties with or sanction the South African government due to its favoured geographic position in sea-trade routes and its production of diamonds and other rare earth materials, most of the same Western leaders today refuse to sanction the State of Israel for its documented war crimes in the Gaza strip, in part due to the geopolitical benefits of having an influential ally in the highly unstable region of the Levant, but also because of the “holocaust guilt” invoked by some countries like Germany.


However, measures such as an arms embargo, or trade and fiscal sanctions, are not the only way to boycott a country. Cutting cultural and sports ties can be highly efficient as well, hence why South Africa was banned from participating in the Olympics from 1964 to 1988. However, while Russia was excluded from the 2024 Olympics due to the ongoing war in Ukraine, following the same logic as South Africa, Israeli athletes proudly competed under the Star of David flag in Paris this summer.


Therefore, as most Western governments cannot seem to enforce any real sanctions towards Israel, the BDS movement appeared as an alternative for many citizens around the world. This mode of activism gained worldwide popularity in 2023, in the wake of Israel’s violent retaliation to the October 7th attack, due to how easily it can be integrated into daily life. However, many critics of the BDS movement argue that it lacks efficiency compared to other modes of activism, and does not have enough of an impact to deter Israel from continuing its offensive against Gaza — but history says otherwise.


(Economically) boycotting a country or a company in order for them to change actions we view as immoral is not a new concept — quite the opposite in fact. In Britain, around the end of the 18th century, anti-slavery activists created a campaign to stop purchasing sugar produced by slaves. 300 000 people participated, leading to an immediate and enormous drop in sales. This campaign is estimated to have had an important impact on the abolition of slavery in 1807, and more generally on the abolitionist movement at large.


In South Africa, while it is difficult to fully measure the impact of boycotts on the fall of Apartheid in the mid-90s — partly due to classified documents still unavailable to researchers —, there is no doubt that international pressure played a significant role in dismantling Pretoria’s racist segregation laws, such as the previously mentioned 24-year ban from the Olympics.


Apartheid didn’t end because the South African government woke up one day and suddenly realized racism was wrong. It ended because the white minority started feeling the consequences of their actions in their own lives. They faced international sanctions, economic boycotts, and isolation. Their businesses suffered, their children lost access to European schools and universities, and unrest in the streets made their daily life unsafe, as a constant reminder of injustice. The anti-apartheid movement disrupted their comfort, their privilege, and their peace of mind. Oppressors don’t relinquish power out of morality, or overnight enlightenment — they change when their way of life, their access to comfort and privilege, are directly challenged. When resistance is so disruptive that the status quo becomes impossible to sustain.


But internal resistance can only go so far. External solidarity, whether at a governmental or non-governmental level, is also a pillar in the struggle against imperialism and colonialism. We tend to underestimate the power held by the people when it comes to boycotts — in fact, research conducted by Harvard political scientist Erica Chenoweth showed significant political change can be achieved with the active participation of just 3.5% of the population. This power of collective action is clearly reflected in the growing successes of the BDS movement, which has seen great progress over the past year and a half. By the end of 2023, just three months after the boycott began, Starbucks' market value had fallen by 12 billion dollars. Additionally, Norway's Sovereign Wealth Fund pulled its investments from the Israeli telecom company Bezeq in April, following allegations that Bezeq was providing services to settlements in the West Bank, which are deemed illegal under international law.


Activists in the BDS movement often argue that it is more effective to focus boycotting efforts on a few ‘target’ brands, such as McDonalds, Starbucks, Domino’s, Amazon, Airbnb or Disney+. But in order to dismantle tyranny, multiple forms of resistance are crucial, and it goes without saying that boycotts should serve as merely one tool among many. Spreading awareness through different forms of media to fight misinformation, holding elected officials accountable for their support of the genocide, non-violent civil disobedience, protests, and financial support to the victims are other tools that should be used alongside boycotting.



Ignorance as a Social Process


During the preamble to the movie, Doctor Uli Muller, tutor at UCM, introduced the concept of willful ignorance by Melissa Steyn (2012): how individuals, particularly Western citizens seemingly unaffected by most geopolitical conflicts, consciously learn to ignore certain truths or realities to align with the micro-politics of their time. However, when it comes to the struggle for Palestinian liberation, our generation offers an interesting contrast. Instead of embracing willful ignorance, we have internalised this conflict as emblematic of the imperialist systems we reject, integrating Palestinian resistance at the very core of our collective identity, thus in turn challenging the prevalence of willful ignorance in the West, as seen through student encampments across the Netherlands. After all, just as white South Africans were once Europeans, most white Israelis also have European roots — so what makes us believe we are so removed from the genocide unfolding on our screens?


As the world is celebrating the news of the recent ceasefire agreement in Gaza — which may lead to a permanent ceasefire, although Netanyahu’s declaration that Israel retains the “right to combat”, backed by the United States, does not seem to promise any tangible efforts towards peace from the Israeli government —, it is important to remember that Israeli Arabs and Palestinians across Israeli territory, as well as in the West Bank and occupied Palestinian territories, remain under the rule of Apartheid.


But if there is one lesson we should take away from South Africa’s anti-Apartheid movement, it is that no “bastard regime”, in the words of Mark Steel, can indefinitely withstand the united will of the people.

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