Some foreign diplomats have protested to the Department of International Relations and Cooperation and will demand police protection after South African Minister of International Relations Naledi Pandor encouraged people to protest outside the embassies of what she called the “five primary supporters” of Israel and its military action in Gaza.

Pandor was speaking at a Palestinian solidarity event in Laudium, Pretoria, last week where she also warned any South Africans who joined the Israeli Defence Force (IDF) that “We are ready. When you come home, we are going to arrest you”.

Pandor didn’t name the embassies where she said people should protest but was very likely referring to those of the United States, the UK, Germany France and Canada. She urged her audience to stand outside the embassies with Stop Genocide posters for two hours a day.

“Our silence allows injustice,” she said, calling on her audience to be activists while her government pursued its genocide case against Israel at the International Court of Justice.

Daily Maverick understands that several embassies have raised their concerns officially at Dirco and announced that they will formally request police protection in accordance with the Vienna Convention which governs diplomatic relations between states.

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Among other things, it requires host countries to provide protection for foreign embassies and diplomats. One foreign diplomat said that by encouraging protests at embassies Pandor had created the potential for violence against the embassies.

Daily Maverick requested comment from Dirco several days ago but had received none before publishing this story. Embassies also did not want to comment officially.

Pandor also did not elaborate on her threat to arrest any South African who joined the IDF but it was likely she was invoking the 1998 Regulation of Foreign Military Assistance Act — often referred to as the Mercenary Act — which forbids South Africans from conducting any military activity abroad, without the South African government’s permission.

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Though the law has been brandished several times at South Africans for acting as mercenaries or joining foreign government forces, the only known conviction under it was of Mark Thatcher, son of the former British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher for providing a helicopter to fellow Briton Simon Mann in his attempt to topple the dictatorial government of Equatorial Guinea with a squad of mostly-South African mercenaries in 2004.

Even then, the state did not prove its case in court. Thatcher made a plea bargain with prosecutors and was fined R3-million and was given a four-year jail term, suspended. He said he was eager to get out of South Africa and back to his family.

One diplomat said Pandor’s call for protests at embassies “is completely unheard of in diplomatic relations, coming from a sitting Foreign Minister. But it’s elections season so it shouldn’t be overestimated…”

However, Pandor denied in her Laudium speech that she was merely electioneering, saying the ANC had supported Palestine for many years. DM