Illustrative image | Palestinians walk in a street in Jabalia, Gaza Strip along the rubble of destroyed buildings. (Photo: Omar Al-Qattaa / AFP) | Songezo Zibi. (Photo: Darren Stewart / Gallo Images) 
Cancelled fundraisers. Cancelled sponsorships. Cancelled funding pledges.
This has been the experience of Rise Mzansi, the political party led by former Business Day editor Songezo Zibi, after speaking out against Israel’s onslaught on Gaza.
Zibi confirmed this to Daily Maverick on Wednesday, 30 July, speaking on the sidelines of Parliament’s meeting of the Standing Committee on Public Accounts, which he chairs.
“There are lots of people who had undertaken to support us, and had already been assisting us, who basically stopped,” said Zibi.
“Some of these were people unhappy on their own steam; others were people getting pressure from within their own community to cut ties with us. I really feel sorry for those people, because they have lost relationships along the way.”
Zibi says it is hard to accurately quantify the scale of the party’s financial losses as a result of its stance on Israel, because relationships with funders are built over time, but that it is likely to be in the millions.
He says the party was put under extreme pressure to take a line more supportive of Israel’s actions in Gaza.
“At fundraisers, people would say to me: ‘I’m told you support Hamas,’ which is not true,” said Zibi.
“It feels like there was an effort to shut down any narrative that was not supportive of Israel.”
Rise Mzansi received 0.42 % of the national vote in the 29 May 2024 general election, winning two seats in the National Assembly — filled by Zibi and Makashule Gana.
Party funding disclosures show that across the first quarters of 2023/24, Rise Mzansi raised close to R33-million from private donors, highlighting its surprise fundraising success for a newly formed party.
Rise targeted before the elections
Rise Mzansi was singled out for special criticism by the SA Jewish Board of Deputies before the elections, and accused of “anti-Semitic defamation”. The basis for this seems to have been the Twitter account of one of its senior members, Irfaan Mangera, who tweeted in support of the pro-Palestinian Boycott, Divest and Sanctions (BDS) movement.
In the South African Zionist Federation’s (SAZF’s) pre-election taxonomy of where local parties stood on Israel, Rise Mzansi was described as including in its ranks “individuals who support the antisemitic BDS movement and regularly promote anti-Jewish conspiracies and blood libels in public”.
Yet in reality, the party’s stance on Israel has been measured, especially initially.
It supported the South African government’s decision to pursue Israel for genocide at the International Court of Justice, arguing that the plight of Gaza required urgent global action. At the same time, its leaders cautioned against inflaming sectarian tensions at home.
Even the SAZF noted that the party had warned that support for Palestine “should not come at the expense of national unity or international isolation”, subtly rebuking the ruling party for conflating humanitarian and political stances.
In recent months, as the humanitarian crisis in Gaza worsened, Rise Mzansi adopted a stronger stance.
Its most recent statement on the conflict, issued on 29 July, began: “That the Government of Israel led by Benjamin Netanyahu is committing genocide against the people of Gaza, Palestine, is well established.”
Yet even here, the party took pains to distinguish Jewish people from the Israeli government.
“South Africa’s own history of struggle against Apartheid is littered with numerous Jewish heroes like Denis Goldberg, Joe Slovo and many, many others who chose to stand with the oppressed,” it stated.
“There are many like them in South Africa and throughout the world who stand on the side of peace and justice. This genocide is the Israeli Government’s doing.”
Spotlight returns to MPs who visited Israel
Moral outrage towards the plight of the Gazans appears to be peaking internationally as well as within Israel, with 31 high-profile Israelis signing a letter this week calling for “crippling sanctions” to be imposed on Israel for “starving the people of Gaza to death”. Among the signatories were a former attorney-general and the former speaker of the Israeli Parliament.
Against this backdrop, South Africa’s Good party has called for renewed scrutiny of the local MPs who accepted a free trip to Israel in April from the South African Friends of Israel group.
Zibi told Daily Maverick that he had been invited on the trip, but had declined.
According to the travel disclosures that all MPs are required to make to Parliament, each trip had an estimated value of R110,000.
Nine MPs declared the trip in Parliament’s register of members’ interests: the DA’s Darren Bergman, Katherine Christie, Bonginkosi Madikizela, Mlondi Mdluli, Nicholas Myburgh, Emma Powell and Glynnis Breytenbach; the Patriotic Alliance’s Ashley Sauls; and the African Christian Democratic Party’s Steve Swart.
Former DA MP Liam Jacobs was also on the trip, but did not submit an entry to the members’ interests register because he has since resigned to become the PA’s mayoral candidate for Tshwane.
Daily Maverick can reveal that the PA’s Millicent Mathopa did not disclose the trip, as she is required to do, despite being verified as one of the attendees.
What caused a particular outcry regarding the trip was a statement made afterwards to Daily Maverick by the SA Friends of Israel group in which they claimed that all 11 MPs who participated in the tour — which did not set foot in Gaza and seemingly involved no exposure to Palestinian activists — would be willing to testify that tales of injustice in Israel were a fiction.
“All delegates observed that, and will confirm with South African media, that there was no evidence of apartheid and, to the contrary, Israel is a vibrant progressive multiracial and multi-ethnic society, in which the rights of all citizens are protected and upheld by the rule of law,” stated the group.
Do MPs stand by claims?
On Wednesday, the Good party secretary-general, Brett Herron, said: “As images of starving children emerge from Gaza and the International Court of Justice continues to weigh evidence of genocide, the Good Party calls on the members of Parliament who travelled to Israel in April under the guise of a ‘fact-finding’ mission to answer one simple question: Do you still stand by your assessment that Israel is a paragon of human rights?”
Good has been outspoken in condemning Israel’s treatment of Gaza.
Asked by Daily Maverick whether the party had also suffered financial losses as a consequence, Herron responded: “We haven’t had any cancelled donations — yet — but there are definitely doors we would not knock on.” DM