Amid the horror of Gaza, South Africa’s act of ubuntu raises the bar of justice for all

When is South Africa going to challenge the genocide in Sudan, Yemen, China. Syria (to name but a few) in the International Court of Justice? I'll wait...probably forever. And don't forget the HIV genocidal denialism by Mbeki and the ANC. Hypocrites.

Aaaaah, the perpetuation of the ubuntu myth. Not a lot of ubuntu being shown within the borders of South Africa on a daily basis, but yes, trumpet the fallacy abroad.

Tendentious tosh. “Ubuntu” is usually mentioned in SA only by those who are angling for something, or by those who are partial to a culty operating system. SA’s application to the ICJ is riddled with hypocrisy and dirty hands.

Two Russian missiles have struck a hotel in Ukraine's second-largest city, Kharkiv, injuring 11 people, the Kharkiv governor says. O but SA cannot interfere!!

Hear Hear!

All war is reprehensible. What about the genocide within South Africa? Thousands die because our government fails its citizen's daily: * Health Care system that is dysfunctional. A proposed NHI that is a lame duck before its even implemented. * Lack of basic services, clean water and electricity. * Access to proper education, leaving the youth with little hope of gainful employment. Which has obvious consequences. * Carnage on our roads. * Rail network that has expired, leaving commuters and goods to the private sector = additional costs. * No consequential governance both in Parliament and local councils. * Luthuli house been a self serving corruptor at the expense of citizens, with a few elite benefiting. So while, the court action in the middle east is most noble, look within. It has been decades since we held the moral high ground. We have been reduced to the laughing stock of the world. A banana republic that relies on loans from all possible financiers, Governments/ World organizations etc. Look at our "bedfellows". China/Russia. You will understand , that to grow on the "envisaged" path, our country needs to "burn" and civil disobedience need to be the order of the day to keep this Parliament in check and do what they are supposed to do.... SERVE ALL IT'S CITIZENS

Anybody born before 1994 was, by definition, a child of apartheid. Ubuntu has not changed that nor will it, ever. The SACP/anc saint Nelson is dead, literally and figurtively. He cannot be resurrected.

If I had the money (lots) I would take the ANC government to that same court and demand equality for ALL in South Africa. The ANC apartheid policy is criminal.

Excellent article Ferial. And just as the SA legal team is attempting to hold the ICJ to the precedent they have set, we the South African people must hold our government to the precedent they are currently setting.

“It was a grand day to be South African and part of something potentially impactful for human rights.” No it absolutely wasn’t. After staying supposedly neutral in the war from Russia on Ukraine where one party is clearly the unprovoked agressor and the other the victim, now suddenly SA feels the need to take sides? Just months ago, we were a hair away from accepting Putin within our borders and ignoring the ICJ’s demand that we arrest him if he set foot on our soil. The Lady R saga was never cleared up, but it seems clear that SA has little respect for international sanctions on war criminals. Then there’s the 75 murders a day, the corruption, the fact that Zuma and his bedfellows are still walking around freely, the widespread and government-incited xenophobia against Zimbabwians, Congolese, and other foreign nationals in this country. How about the 10 people murderer by SANDF in the early days of lockdown in 2020? No justice for them either. This is obviously not about justice but about something else or surely these local issues would be dealt with with as much fervour and chest-thumping as this case before the ICJ. Hypocrites.

And what about the ANC’s hypocrisy in not taking their African brothers in Zimbabwe, Sudan etc to the ICC. The scale of death and destruction there makes Gaza look mild!!

SA Government is quickly to judge another country busy fighting their own war on their soil.................... But what about all the Farm Murders and all the clearly Genocide against the white people who are murdered and slaughtered on a daily basis within South Africa on their own soil!!!!! Why not sort that issue first before trying to sort another country's war where the ANC party is trying to make it a "Apartheid" things like they always do. Get real South Africa...........This is as clear as day that EVERYTHING the ruling government of South Africa see is all about "Apartheid" and nothing else!

"...SA's act of ubuntu..." UBUNTU??? Where is the ubuntu WITHIN SA? You tell me! Ubuntu is a myth - just like your forefathers.

Her name is Blinne Ní Ghrálaigh, not Brinny.

Yes and no Ferial. This move coming from the horrendous anc government just leaves a bitter taste in one's mouth as they are not worthy and totally dishonest, as is their DNA. Besides being in bed and supporting the most vile and murderous regimes in the world like Russia, Iran, Venezuela etc. and in the process trashing our human rights values and Constitution, where was this disgusting and stinking government when genocide was being committed by 1) when 20 000 ZAPU aligned folk were murdered by Mugabe and his North Korean trained brigade. 2) When Bashir from Sudan was killing hundreds of thousand Africans. 3) When their hero and master Putin was obliterating Chechnya and Grozny. 4) When Assad with the evil Putin were murdering hundreds of thousand Syrians. 5) Again when the monster Putin launched his illegal war against Ukraine and killings thousands. Not a squeak from this immoral, devious, unscrupulous and hypocritical government who are so biased and selective in what they want to see they condemn. Lets also not forget how they have betrayed and left in the lurch millions of South Africans. We all want peace in the Middle East - a just and secure peace for all, but coming from this rabid and wicked anc government - no thanks.

What about human life in SA? Why are there no earnest measures, funded to tackle all the "genocide" like circumstances in SA? You are playing to an audience

Oh will you quit navel gazing and wallowing in everything wrong with this country, its foreign policy… blah blah blah… and be proud for ONE minute that at least SA is doing SOMETHING to stop what is happening in Gaza? There is SO much wrong… but this application to the ICJ is RIGHT!! Can we PLEASE be proudly South African, if just for a moment?? ??

Organisation of Islamic Coooperation.....never have guessed! Long close relations with Israel......hardly, not the ANC, not Pandor, not Mbulula, not Ramaphosa Not bring any action against Hamas says it all!

It will be awesome to see if our cowardly hypocrites we have the pleasure of calling our government now decide to speak up against genocide in Africa, which in the thousands of times worse than we are seeing in Gaza. But they won't, because they have chosen schoolyard thugs to be friends with, just because they went to same school. Talk about scoring an own goal for our economy when we need it the least.

It's not an act of ubuntu, it's a bunch of well-paid lawyers benefitting from the ANC trying to rehabilitate its shattered image and campaign for votes on the taxpayer's dime.

I wish we had such an A legal team seconded to the NPA to clear out the backlog of corruption cases... wishful thinking.

Just about the only comment worth reading is the one by Amanda Simpson. The rest deal with perceptions of what is wrong with SA. So unreasonably negative and ultimately boring!

Reading these comments what can I say that hasn't been said about the way the government and ANC have broken this country. It's a pity that the same efforts and resources are not used to address the gross humanitarian crisis in South Africa. Its not that I don't sympathize, but the world is listening and watching Russia / Ukraine, Gaza / Israel with horror and sadness for all war and domination is a human instinct that sadly we don't seem to be able resolve or control. I ask myself, how can these 'smart' cats, the "excellent team"(inclusive of government officials) take the moral high ground, when so little is done for their own people. With little hope of even reducing the Corruption, looting, murder, rape, kidnapping, money laundering, poverty, employment .....who is listening to us..

Ubuntu? Isn't that only used when the anc wants something for free? You definitely cannot use ubuntu when you want something from the anc! Remember, stealing is wrong, but taking is ok! The editor is so blatantly subjective that she may as well place a "paid for" advert for the anc and Palestine!

All the criticism on this article seems to be based on the argument that, because the South African government has not done the right things in the past (and present), that invalidates doing the right thing now. The great irony is that, while you accuse the government of hypocrisy, such an argument is hypocritical in itself. Do two wrongs make a right now? While I agree with most of the criticism levelled against the government for not speaking out, or worse, condoning atrocities happening all over the world, surely that doesn’t mean that doing right thing for once is wrong? I personally don’t care for any of the reasons the ANC government is doing this, but the indiscriminate killing of civilians, including thousands of women and children must stop. There can be no justification for it. It is morally repugnant. And if it is our “degenerate” government that does something about it, then so be it.

Sorry Ferial, but I think this whole thing stinks of ANC grandstanding! If they were able to point to places like Russia, Sudan, China etc and say we condemn their actions too, then they would have ground to stand on. As it is, they are showing the world that they are completely immoral and are using this purely for their own political gain. Although funded by SA taxpayers, what are the people of South Africa going to gain from this?

Did this committee, sent to The Haque, have to be formed by 26 persons? Apart from the lawyers who are they?

What is happening in the Middle East is and has been unacceptable and evil for a very long time and from any point you may look at it. So is the war in Ukraine. The state of affairs in the Kongo, Mali, Libya, Somalia, Mozambique, Zimbabwe and South Africa. How the government has managed to get this together so quickly is surprising. Why is the case for a child drowning in a pit toilet less important and why does fixing the situation take years? Why do the powers that be not manage to take local thieves, thugs and criminal politicians to court? Why are we and our rights less important? What is in this for Cyril? Is he trying to score some Brownie points? With whom? Or is it simply to divert world attention away from his own pathetic circus and lack of leadership and spineless performance? If only our harbours were working, we could have at least gained something from the Red Sea fiasco, if there had been peace and prosperity on the African continent we would not have seen millions of displaced, starving people streaming into our country, if he had the balls to do his job, we would not be living with starvation, and a nation of frustrated, homeless uneducated and desperate people. watching their futures and the lives of their children coming to nothing.

So many of the comments above are merely, well deserved, ANC bashing but surely the issue here is whether Israel is committing genocide. It is an issue that has a bearing on what is acceptable currently among the human race. The issue needs to be resolved in the ICJ and which state brings the case before the court is to my mind irrelevant. The recent actions of both Hamas and Israel are barbaric and both are utterly misguided in the initial action of Hamas and the barn door obvious disproportionate response of Israel. Let the International Court of Justice determine whether Israel's response is genocide or not.

I guess when you’re the Ed you can publish any piffle you like. Are you also getting a pay off from Iran for this continued biased reporting? It’s clear to most sane (un-brainwashed) people out there that the SA legal team is a proxy for Iran in its ultimate goal of the decimation of Jews and Israel, something preached frequently in its mosques and openly written in its manifestos. That, Ferial, would be genocide. Perhaps other Muslim countries should take their brother and sister countries to the ICJ for the open genocides in their own counties. Ever wonder why Europe has a refugee crisis? That would be because of people fleeing persecution by Muslim regimes in their own countries. You’ve embarrassed yourself by using the word Ubuntu. More like Al Jazeera than Ubuntu.

I have commented too much of late, suffice to say that Ramaphosa and the ANC are hippocrites.

Why does it feel like straightforward antisemitism, and not at all like ubuntu?

I hope the ICJ finds in our favour be it by way of the provisional measures proposed to try and stop this madness. But even if it does, still may not have any real effect.

This article is utterly biased, deliberately misconstrued and one sided. The pathetic attempt to “balance” the article with referencing a few, and I mean a few words to the horrors of the Hamas attack, reveal more about the thoughts and intentions of this writer and other like minded people, than the actual facts on the war reveal about the terrible circumstances on both Israeli and Palestinian alike.

Pity the anc’s ubuntu is so selective