We call on SASCOC to continue the protest to expel Apartheid Israel from the Olympic family.
Johannesburg, Gauteng, Monday 14th August 2024: We condemn the participation of Apartheid Israel at the Paris Olympics and the detaining of the head of the Palestine Olympic Committee. We will continue to lobby South African athletes and the South African Sports Confederation and Olympic Committee (SASCOC), to object to their participation in the 2028 Olympics.
We express our disappointment SASCOC did not withdraw our team from the Olympics Closing Ceremony in protest against the presence of the genocide Zionist state of Apartheid Israel.
Have we forgotten that it was Apartheid South Africa that was expelled from the Olympic family in 1964 for far less atrocities. Yet we marched with the Apartheid Israel Olympic team that has nothing less than 30 athletes who participated directly in the genocide and who took a break from active duty of killing over 40 000 Palestinians in Gaza to participate in the Paris Olympic Games.
We call on all South Africans, all nations on the African continent, all in the Global South and all freedom loving people of the world to continue to support our call to expel Apartheid Israel from Olympic family and continue our campaign from today until the next Olympic Games in Los Angeles 2028.
The Paris Olympics have come and gone, and in one of the last days of the event, 100 Palestinians in Gaza, including many children as young as six years old, were targeted in aerial bombing that took their lives.
Notwithstanding the genocide that they are committing now, nor the war crimes, ethnic cleansing and crimes against humanity that they have committed over the past 76 years, the leadership of the International Olympic Committee (IOC) permitted Apartheid Israel’s participation in the Olympic Games despite massive public protest in Lausanne, Paris and Geneva.
Despite the outcome proclaimed by the IOC, we stand proud by the fact that we along with millions around the world raised our voices in protest, at Apartheid Israel’s participation in the Paris Olympics. This Olympics will go down in history as the Olympics that normalized genocide, as the Olympics that allowed the participation of murderers of babies, children, women, and innocent Palestinian civilians seeking shelter.
There are many who are funding the normalization of relations with Apartheid Israel in the realms of sport, culture, trade, and diplomacy and their participation at events such as the Paris Olympics is an act of condonation, complicity and scant regard for the lives of innocent Palestinian civilians.
We claim no easy victories and tell no lies. We protested at the Paris Olympics against the participation of Apartheid Israel, yet the IOC permitted their participation. We will continue to mobilise individual sport federations on all continents to start now and demand that the IOC ban them from the next Olympic Games in LA.
We know that it took us many years of protest, lobbying, campaigning and advocating before Apartheid South Africa was banned from the Tokyo Olympics. In fact our protest was only heard 8 years later. We therefore call upon all sports federations and sport codes not to give up the fight. The struggle continues. We believe in the just nature of the Palestinian struggle and we will continue to support their just cause.
We will not play games with genocide and we stand by our principled position that Apartheid Israel has no place in the community of nations, and certainly not in gathering of all the Olympic family that represents the pinnacle of human achievement. We shall intensify our protest against Apartheid Israel’s participation at Olympics 2028.
ENDS
Nkosi Zwelivelile
Royal House of Mandela
Mvezo Komkhulu
P.O. Box 126
Viedgesville 5102
Eastern Cape Province
South Africa
