Does South Africa’s premier university share today the same values as a supporter of terrorism against Jews?
By Lawrence Nowosenetz
The University of Cape Town (UCT) a formerly venerable university in South Africa, respected worldwide, has announced that it will be awarding an honorary doctorate to Dr Imtiaz Sooliman at its graduation ceremonies in March/April 2026.
The Doctor of Philosophy (honoris causa) is being bestowed on Dr Sooliman in recognition of his humanitarian work through his organization Gift of the Givers. In a statement by the Vice Chancellor of UCT, Professor Moses Moshabela, he described Dr Sooliman together with another doctoral recipient as a distinguished South African and “advanced values that lie at the heart of our institution.” He further lauded Dr Sooliman for “humanitarian leadership” and having served society with integrity. Qualities which he expounded are central to building a just, creative and humane society.
“For more than three decades, he has dedicated his life to humanitarian service without discrimination,” the Vice Chancellor continued. It is indeed so that Gift of the Givers, the organization which Dr Sooliman founded and still heads, has provided health care and supported communities and affected by natural disasters in South Africa, earthquakes in Haiti and Turkey, famine in Somalia and the conflicts in Gaza and Syria. However, the Vice Chancellor went further: “Sooliman’s work gives practical expression to the constitutional values of dignity, equality and freedom.”
The reality points otherwise. Dr Sooliman is an avowed Islamist and disciple of the Muslim Brotherhood. He supports Hamas and is a truculent and vocal inciter of anti-Zionist and Israel hatred. His record is abundantly clear and is well documented in his public utterances. In 2011, he received an award from the US designated terror organization Union of Good which (like Hamas) is a Muslim Brotherhood affiliate.
His thinly veiled antisemitic bigotry and hatred of Zionists leave nothing to the imagination. He publicly stated on 27 October 2025 and significantly at UCT:
“…we had to break the fear we have to break the money, and we had to break the thing antisemitism, and we know antisemitism is used to shut you up. So if we stand up against Zionists and they say you’re antisemitic because they want to cover their faults, then I’m 5000% antisemitic to speak the truth.”
A vicious tirade of inflammatory hate speech, conspiracy theories and demonization which would have made Dr Goebbels proud. It is hard to reconcile this rhetoric with the constitutional values of dignity and equality. In short, the cherished liberal democracy that UCT purports to uphold.
The very notion of constitutional values and rule of law have been rejected by Dr Sooliman who said he follows Koranic law, not man-made laws. In an interview on 7 October 2024, Dr Sooliman said:
“I don’t follow international law or human law. I follow Koranic law. I am a Muslim. I don’t need any permission from anybody in the world to tell me what to do. I break the laws all the time. Breaking the law is laws of the West and people and governments. It’s not Islamic law. I follow Islamic law, and Islamic law overrides any other law. … I don’t have to follow any law. My law is very clear to me. Allah himself has instructed me. I don’t need men to tell me what to do. I don’t follow them.”
This is subversive of the very values UCT should be safeguarding. South Africa prides itself rightly on its long and hard-fought constitutional democracy, the protection of fundamental freedoms, the separation of powers and secularism. The antithesis of Dr Sooliman’s benighted worldview. To honor a person who undermines so completely the raison d’etre of the Republic of South Africa is a travesty and betrayal of the most profundity and severity. An academic institution which is prepared to overlook this inescapable contradiction commits a gross lack of judgment and makes a mockery of not only itself but all South Africans who respect and show fealty to the Constitution. All the NGO’s and human rights lawyers who respect universal human rights should not abide this injustice. Hatred, racism and bigotry have emerged under the guise of the humanitarianism of Dr Sooliman.
The Koran is no repository of human rights and freedom. Among many other major shortfalls, women are suppressed, non-Muslims are not accorded equal citizenship under Islamic law. Christians and Jews historically were regarded as dhimmi or second-class citizens under Islamic rule. The separation of church and state as well as religious freedom are totally contradictory to the theocratic ideology of political Islam. Liberties such as freedom of thought, opinion and expression are suppressed. Nowhere is this more glaringly evident that in the Islamic Republic of Iran which has brutally suppressed dissent and murdered at least thirty thousand of its citizens, now in the throes of a war with Israel and the USA
Another egregious falsehood is crediting Dr Sooliman with providing humanitarian services without discrimination. During October and November 2024, Gift of the Givers posted at least 40 anti-Israel posts on its Facebook page. These posts did not call for peace, never condemned violence by Hamas and never mentioned Israeli victims or suffering. Certainly, no calls for the release of the hostages.
The humanitarian services of Gift of the Givers are partisan and far from neutral. While Gift of the Givers was active in Gaza providing aid to the local population, Dr Sooliman made no effort at all to assist the Israeli hostages held by Hamas over two years under appalling conditions. Such an egregious omission speaks to the lack of universality and integrity of Gift of the Givers as a humanitarian organization. This can be contrasted with the initiative of Gift of the Givers in negotiating successfully to secure the release of Pierre Korkie, the South African hostage held by terrorists in Yemen. He was however tragically killed by Al Qaeda shortly before his release.
The support of the South African ANC led government for Hamas and its backer Iran, indicates the state of capture by radical Islam. DIRCO, (South Africa’s Department of International Relations and Cooperation) and its foreign policy leans towards the global South, which includes undemocratic and unconstitutional countries which are not aligned with Western values. It is tragic to see UCT abandon these values and fall prey to the Islamist state capture of foreign policy.
Worth noting are the financial ties between at least two UCT Council members and Dr Sooliman/ Gift of the Givers. Dianna Yach, chair: HR committee donated R1 million to them in September 2025 through the Mauerberger Foundation Fund. Reeza Isaacs chair: Finance Committee and a senior Spar manager, appeared in a photograph on a Gift of the Givers Facebook page in February 2026, building Spar Group corporate partnership ties. These same persons sat on the UCT Council which approved bestowal of the honor. A more blatant conflict of interest and bias would be hard to find.
When a respected academic institution is prepared to bend its values and honor a person who is morally tainted and an outspoken adversary of traditional Western liberal values, there are no longer any standards left for UCT to support or teach. It becomes a broken institution.
*Feature picture: University of Cape Town
About the writer:
Born in Pretoria Lawrence Nowosenetz obtained his BA at University of the Witwatersrand and LLB at the University of South Africa. He has been admitted as an Attorney in South Africa and as an advocate in South Africa. He practiced at the Pretoria and Johannesburg Bar and worked as a human rights and labour lawyer at the Legal Resources Centre a public interest law firm. Lawrence was Awarded a Fulbright Scholarship and completed professional internship in the USA. He was a a labour arbitrator and mediator, part time Senior Commissioner at the Commission for Conciliation Mediation and Arbitration (CCMA) as well as a panelist at Tokiso Dispute Settlement. He was a member of the South African Jewish Board of Deputies and Pretoria Chairman. He has also served as an Acting Judge of the Hight Court, South Africa. He now lives in Tel Aviv.
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