Photograph by Nathaniel St. Clair

Will the Trump-Netanyahu deal at least pause the mass killing of Gazans? Maybe, and Gazans have every right to celebrate. But we have repeatedly learned how brief any reprieve in Israel’s genocidal attacks on Palestine can be. And as Hamas releases 20 living Israeli hostages and has no further internal leverage, can anyone trust Tel Aviv, Washington and the rest of the G7’s Axis of Genocide to allow sovereignty, reconstruction and an eventual liberatory process? Since the answer is obviously not, activists must not rest now.

Last week, the South African liberation leader Nelson Mandela’s grandson Mandla and five compatriots were kidnapped from the Sumud Flotilla’s ships of life by the Israeli military and taken to Ashdod. They were attempting to deliver humanitarian aid to Gaza –Ashdod is 20km north of Ashkelon, where ships of death berth to unload coal, which goes straight into the Rutenberg power plant’s furnaces, to empower the settler-colonial, apartheid economy.

Mandela and hundreds of others from the Sumud Flotilla were then tortured in a desert jail not far from Gaza. At a press conference at his October 9 homecoming at the OR Tambo Airport, Mandela made a call that should be repeated and repeated until it is heeded:

We will not rest until the genocide has been brought to an end. But let us enforce the resolutions undertaken by the Hague Group. We want you to read what the Hague Group has put out. They have said that all companies that are complicit must be arrested, must be prosecuted and must be dealt with. Now we call on our government. As you have been able to take the apartheid Israel to the International Court of Justice (ICJ) and International Criminal Court (ICC), we call on you to arrest all those that are complicit in fueling the genocide and selling coal to apartheid Israel. We call on the government with immediate effect to stop any coal that is being exported to apartheid Israel. We call on the government to ensure that all those that have participated in the genocide in apartheid Israel that have enabled the IOF to carry on its genocide and systematic ethnic cleansing of Palestinians to be arrested and prosecuted.

Mandela’s mandate must be taken seriously by local and international solidarity activists. For realistically, without much more intense pressure from all of us, we don’t expect South Africa’s (SA) President Cyril Ramaphosa to arrest the main Johannesburg residents complicit in coal sales to Israel., That is, his brother-in-law Patrice Motsepe of African Rainbow Minerals (whose co-owned Glencore coal mine has been shamelessly fuelling Israel since 2007); or Glencore senior independent director Gill Marcus( once Nelson Mandela’s spokesperson); or Swiss resident Gary Nagle, Glencore chief executive.

Ramaphosa himself was Glencore’s main partner in coal digging, before he became Deputy President in 2014. He helped the firm triple the price Eskom paid in the Eskom ‘War Room’ he ran in 2014-15, in very dubious ways.

Relentless ships of death sail from SA

Ramaphosa wouldn’t even halt the coal ships now on their way to empower Israel, including the Seafighter docking on October 10 at the main coal terminal, Richards Bay, en route undoubtedly to Ashkelon after departing late on October 12. Another ship arrived in Ashkelon with South African fuel for Rutenberg, on 1 October: Ernandin. And another, Navios Felix, is three weeks away from unloading more South African coal.

All carry 170,000 tonnes or more, and this supply allows the Israel Electric Corporation to generate nearly a fifth of the grid power used to oppress Palestine. Currently coal costs $83/tonne , so Glencore gains net profits of........

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