How a cancelled school tennis match escalated into a wider political battle over Israel, antisemitism, and boycotts.

By Marika Sboros

(First published in BizNews)

If you think the dust has settled over the “Roedean affair” – as the cancelled tennis match between two top Johannesburg private schools (one of them Jewish), is being grandly called – then think again.

The “affair” became public knowledge within days of Roedean Girls High School refusing to play the scheduled match against King David Linksfield girls on February 3, 2026.

From that moment on, the anti-Israel lobby has been hard at working trying to turn a tennis match into an international propaganda tool.

It has not let go. The lobby appears determined to keep the “affair” moving in its desired direction, supported by extremist, Islamist, jihadist lobbies.

That’s despite both schools moving in the opposite direction. Both have gone past claims of antisemitism and back to their core business of educating children.

Roedean has resisted the lobby’s undisguised fury at its public (though prompted) written apology to King David on February 12. The apology does not admit antisemitism but acknowledges the “deep hurt” to the Jewish community.

Roedean showed good faith by promising to reschedule the match, which further infuriated the anti-Israel lobby. If Roedean honours its promise, the lobby will likely use it to maximise political capital for its own agendas.

The drivers of those agendas are not difficult to spot.

These include barely disguised calls for ongoing sports boycotts of King David schoolchildren; revival of claims of “genocide” and “baby killers” against Israel and Jews who support it, with “apartheid” slurs thrown in for good measure; and support for South Africa’s ill-fated, ongoing ICJ (International Criminal Court) lawsuit against Israel on a charge of genocide in Gaza.

Ironically, South Africa lodged the case against Israel just weeks after a genuine genocide attempt by Hamas in southern Israel on October 7, 2023.

Underpinning these drivers is the anti-Israel lobby’s pathological anti-Zionism.

Legal and historical scholars say that anti-Zionism is a modern mutation of the ancient virus of Jew hatred known euphemistically in modern English as antisemitism.

It is also the lifeblood of the supposedly “pro-Palestinian” movement.

I say, “supposedly” because of the Orwellian manipulation of language lobbyists indulge in to justify support for groups that clearly don’t give a fig for Palestinians.

Hamas is a prime example. Video evidence shows it diverting humanitarian aid in Gaza into its own coffers, thereby worsening poverty and starvation, and shooting civilians who try to access the aid. 

It also routinely uses public executions to stifle dissent and oppress marginalised groups, including LGBTQ+ people.

Hamas does not typically employ the theatrical “rooftop execution” method associated with extremist groups, such as ISIS. Instead, it maintains a systemic environment of criminalisation, torture and extrajudicial killing of LGBTQ+ individuals in Gaza. 

It boasts of using its own people as “human shields” in conflict zones. On October 26, 2023, Hamas’s Political Bureau chief Ismail Haniyeh declared in a Lebanese TV broadcast: 

“The blood of the women, children and elderly … we are the ones who need this blood, so it awakens within us the revolutionary spirit …(and) resolve.”

Call me picky but I can think of adjectives other than “revolutionary” and “resolve” to describe spirits requiring such infusion to keep going.

Diabolical springs to mind.

I can also think of choice descriptions for Jews who voluntarily support groups that openly desire their destruction.

Unsurprisingly, among the first local anti-Zionist voices supporting Roedean and vilifying King David, was Jo Bluen, the public face of the bizarrely named South African Jews for a Free Palestine (SAJFP).

I say, “bizarrely named”, because there’s something unhinged about Jews voluntarily supporting groups whose goal is the same as Nazis intended for them in Germany.

The Nazis wanted to make their country “Judenrein” or “Judenfrei” – “cleansed” or “free” of Jews, according to the National Socialist term applied in the “Final Solution of the Jewish Question”.  Hamas and cohorts work towards the same goal extended to the entire world.

The best Bluen says about Zionism is that it is “a fascist project” and “settler colonialisation”. The worst? She accuses King David of being “prepared to sacrifice its own children at the altar of a wild and violent zionism (sic) that is deeply racist and misogynistic.”

No matter: to anti-Israel lobbyists, facts are less important than rhetoric and theatrics.

In a September 2025 article in an online magazine ironically titled Critical Thinking, Bluen accuses “Israel and its accomplices” of having “murdered nearly 700,000 Palestinians in the course of the genocide in under two years since 2023, half a million of whom are children.” 

Even Hamas’s own thumb-sucked figures on the civilian and child casualty rates since October 7 never reached such stratospheric heights.

At most, the terror group claimed around 70,000 civilian deaths in Gaza. Its Ministry of Social Development proved that false with its plans in early February 2026 to pay stipends to “50,000 widowed families.” In other words, to the widows of 50,000 combatants!

Bluen, like Hamas, continues a practice that the Nazis introduced of distinguishing Jews and other groups in concentration camps with inverted red triangles. Hamas uses the symbol to identify Jewish and Israeli targets. Bluen adopted it on a social media post celebrating the deaths of IDF soldiers in Gaza.

Anti-Israel lobbyists often resort to pulling the race card when all rational argument fails them. Bluen is no exception.

She calls Zionism a “patriarchal white supremacy” and claims that King David deliberately “targeted” Roedean’s (first black) principal Phuti Mogale. That was probably news to Roedean’s leadership and Mogale, who reportedly resigned rather than waited to be pushed.

Bluen and others also criticise King David schools as bastions of Jewish exclusivity, yet not all its pupils are Jewish. King David Linksfield’s high school’s head girl in 2024 was a Chinese girl and not from a Jewish background. King David schools routinely accepted black children who were not allowed to attend state schools during the apartheid era.

On the global stage, “pro-Palestinian” Islamist activists continue to amplify voices supporting Roedean’s tennis boycott of King David.

New York-based journalist Azad Essa writes for Middle East Eye, an independent UK-based digital channel focusing on the Middle East, North Africa and the broader Muslim world.

In an article on February 21, he frames the cancelled tennis match as a heroic, moral stand by the Roedean girls. He claims that they rightly refused to play King David schoolgirls because the school was “supporting apartheid and cheerleading a genocide.”

That’s a textbook study in the collective-guilt argument the anti-Israel lobby uses to demonise and delegitimise Israel.

Essa describes the King David school network as a tool of “settler-colonial ideology.” He quotes a parent comparing playing tennis at King David to “playing against a school still flying the apartheid flag.”

By this logic, Jewish schoolchildren are inherently complicit in the actions of a foreign state thousands of kilometres away simply by attending a particular school.

That’s not political activism. It’s the targeted exclusion of a specific community on the basis of their religion and cultural affiliation. It clearly violates South Africa’s Constitution.

In the South African Daily Maverick on February 25, Kalim Rajab, a Johannesburg-based, Oxford-educated corporate executive, plays the “Framing Game”. Rajab calls King David Linksfield’s “victory” over Roedean “pyrrhic”, with a “chilling” effect rather one that achieves due accountability.

He omits from his potted biography that he is Chair of the Helen Suzman Foundation (HSF). The HSF honours one of South Africa’s most prominent and beloved Jewish anti-apartheid activists, who was also a committed supporter of Israel throughout her life.

Rajab writes, as one critic puts it, with the “measured cadence” of someone who has learned the most effective way to delegitimise a community’s experience of discrimination – by calling it a “strategy.”

He describes King David supporters as “successful in their strategy of framing the narrative as one where the school and its pupils were victimised because of their religion as opposed to any overt political ideology espoused.”

He uses the word “strategy” strategically – to transform victim into perpetrator and a factual description of the “affair” into an allegation of manipulation. Facts that emerged from leaked phone recordings between Roedean’s Mogale and King David head Lorraine Srage tell a different story.

Rajab then does something disturbing: he offers a tactical manual for future boycotts of King David schools and not just on sports fields. These could involve “silent peaceful protests by visiting schoolchildren, including wearing armbands, pins or bodywear to show Palestinian solidarity,” he helpfully writes.

Pupils could “conscientiously object to taking part in interactions with King David.”

Really? A columnist in a prominent South African publication advising on more effective boycotts of a Jewish school? What if columnists in mainstream South African publications published blueprints for boycotting Muslim, Christian, Hindu, Chinese or other schools?

Other fringe, local and usual-suspects ranged against King David include the Media Review Network’s Iqbal Jassat and the ironically titled Jewish Democratic Initiative (JDI).

All show predictable, monomaniacal obsession with one issue, one state and one tribe.

What escapes them all is that Zionists are not cheerleaders for war or participants in any “evil”, as British writer, theologian and “English gentile” Mark Pickles puts it.

Pickles similarly tears through the “genocide” narrative with consummate ease. It is, after all, a modern iteration of the medieval “blood libel” – that Jews murder non-Jewish children (traditionally Christians) to use their blood for baking matzah during Passover.

Pickles argues that the genocide claim is “as irrational as it is evil…highly damaging and dangerous.” It aims to justify “the murder of Jews, and all attempts – economic, diplomatic, and kinetic – to destroy the sole Jewish nation.”

Groups and organisations with a notoriously long history of antisemitism continue to push the claim with impunity. Yet the “true perpetrators of genocidal intent,” he says, are Islamist factions whose founding documents explicitly call for the destruction of Israel and the murder of Jews.

The premise on which the anti-Israel, “pro-Palestinian” lobby hope to sustain the Roedean “affair” is that Zionist Jews are “complicit in genocide“.

That’s a shaky, dangerous premise.

As Canadian anthropologist Adam Louis-Klein warns, it is a way to mark Jews as “fundamentally stained and evil.” Anti-Zionists aim to “escalate all accusations toward the genocide libel… until it hardens into a global consensus,” Louis-Klein writes.

In this “new doctrine”, the Holocaust is no longer remembered but is “overwritten” to serve contemporary agendas.

This linguistic capture is likely what anti-Israel lobbyists hope will sustain the Roedean “affair” in their direction. The “quiet, student-led”, principled stance they claim to want will be the implementation of a hateful dogma against Jews.

It means that the time has come, as New York Times Jewish columnist Bret Stephens argues, for Jewish communities to end their “perpetual apology machine” in pro-Israel advocacy.

He calls for a shift toward “unapologetic Jewish confidence” and “moral clarity” over Israel’s existence and right to defend itself.

The shift is now more necessary than ever because, as British-Jewish columnist and Man Booker Prize-winning author, Howard Jacobson said:

 “Jews will never be forgiven for the Holocaust.”

Feature picture:
Empty Court. In early February, when a group of girls from Jewish King David High School in Johannesburg travelled to nearby Roedean Girls High School girls’ school for a tennis match, they found no one at the courts.

About the writer:

Marika Sboros is a South African freelance investigative journalist with decades of experience writing fulltime for the country’s top media titles on a wide range of topics. She started her career as a hard-news reporter in the newsroom of the now defunct Rand Daily Mail, a campaigning anti-government newspaper during the worst excesses of the apartheid era. She commutes between South Africa and the UK.

While the mission of Lay of the Land (LotL) is to provide a wide and diverse perspective of affairs in Israel, the Middle East and the Jewish world, the opinions, beliefs and viewpoints expressed by its various writers are not necessarily ones of the owners and management of LOTL but of the writers themselves.  LotL endeavours to the best of its ability to credit the use of all known photographs to the photographer and/or owner of such photographs (0&EO).

As South African leadership indulges in state-sponsored antisemitism, it should remember the Jewish state’s unique contribution in the transition to post-Apartheid.

By David E. Kaplan

Attending from Israel the South African Limmud Conference in Johannesburg in 2016, I recall a presentation by the then Israeli ambassador to South Africa, Authur Lenk. He fended off questions from a deeply troubled audience about a rumor of El Al reducing its weekly flights between Israel and South Africa. There were animated exchanges reflecting how concerned people were. It would not only complicate travel arrangements for a community that has many family members living in Israel but it would also send a “depressing and distressing message” to a strong Zionist community of increasing isolation. The fear was as much psychological as geographic.

The anxiety in 2016 over flight reduction would end up in March 2024 of El Al suspending all flights to South Africa.   

This termination of Israel’s national carrier flights that began in October 29, 1950, proved a metaphor for the flight path of diplomatic relations between South Africa and Israel, culminating with South Africa recent expulsion of Israel’s top diplomat in the country under the pretext of “violating diplomatic norms“. South Africa, who welcomes terrorists and their sponsors – Hamas and Iran  –  with red carpet fawning, declared Israel’s chargé d’affaires Ariel Seidman, persona non grata and gave him 72 hours to leave the country.

“Zionism” has become anathema to this South African government and its President, Cyril Ramaphosa, who probably is unaware that the South African Zionist Federation was established in 1898, the second country after the UK to do so, and one year after the first Zionist Conference in Basel in 1897.  It predates the establishment of the modern State of Israel in 1948, and the establishment of South Africa’s ruling party, the ANC, in 1912.

AGE OF TRANSITION

All this I was pondering from my home in Kfar Saba, north of Tel Aviv and thought while South Africa offends, insults, demonizes, accuses and kicks out Israel’s diplomats, I thought back in time and to a place only a few kilometers north of where I live, to a complex called Beit Berl and the enriching contribution it made to the emerging new South Africa of the 1980 and 1990s.

Back then, if you by chance were to stroll along the stone paths of the wooded Beit Berl Campus outside of Kfar Saba in central Israel, you would have been surprised to overhear conversations in Xhosa, Tswana, Zulu or Afrikaans. Participants of every shade of colour from South Africa’s “Rainbow Nation” were attending a unique ‘Community Development & Leadership Training’ programme. Why unique?

Well, there was no other country in the world – besides Israel – providing this essential training for South Africa’s future!

SECRET STUFF 

That it has been doing so without any fuss or fanfare may explain why so few Israelis or South Africans knew about it then or would even know about it today. Then it was a  closely kept secret – a programme running since the dark days of Apartheid.

On the day in 1997 that a delegation of the Kfar Saba branch of the South African Zionist Federation in Israel (Telfed) visited the campus, the atmosphere was vibrant. Met with traditional South African dance and music, the 28th group of participants from South Africa was celebrating the near completion of their leadership course with a farewell cocktail party. Among the graduates of the Beit Berl programme at that time were over two dozen mayors of South African towns and cities including the present mayors of the country’s two largest cities, Johannesburg and Cape Town, as well as those from smaller towns like Randburg, George, and Grahamstown. Adding to that list was Port Alfred’s mayor, Eric Khuluwe who addressed us:

“Port Alfred is growing at an enormous pace as people are streaming in from the rural areas, seeking employment. The job situation is bleak and we are finding it an uphill battle to provide basic civic services. We have sixty-one local councils in my district and we need to involve as many people on the local level as possible in decision-making. This is the policy of the ANC government and is indicative of the nature of our democracy that empowers people to determine their own destiny. The Beit Berl three-week intensive course was excellent; it widened my horizons and provided practical guidance on team-management. I feel far better equipped to return to my city now and impact on its future.”

From 1986 until that evening in 1997, over twenty South African Members of Parliament, as well as hundreds of local government officials and ministers of provincial councils had passed through Beit Berl. Patrick Adams, in charge of Emergency & Disaster Management for the Cape Metropolitan Council in Cape Town, had this to say:

“The course was very professional. I am in charge of Reconstruction & Development programmes in the Western Cape region, and my team is currently immersed in running numerous housing and community projects. Not only have I learned a new dimension of problem solving, but I have also been exposed to the problems in Israel and enjoy a greater understanding of the issues here.”

UNDERCOVER OPERATION 

What would seem inconceivable today in 2026 seemed routine back then 1997. Fascinated, I began to research on the genesis of this wonderful programme of South Africa/Israel cooperation and enriching partnership and learned that it all began in the undercover world of the early 1980s when clandestine contacts took place between progressive Israelis and the anti-Apartheid forces in South Africa. The Israeli powerhouse behind the project was Prof. Shimshon Zelniker, who masterfully manoeuvered between South Africans, Americans and Israelis, a fascinating amalgam of colourful characters that included Hollywood stars, Jewish politicos, civil rights activists, freedom fighters and donors. A professor of political science at Beit Berl and UCLA (University of California, Los Angeles), Zelnicker, was a member of Shimon Peres’ advisory team in 1982.

“I was given responsibility for third-world policies, and my first mission was making positive contact with leaders of the struggle in South Africa,” said Zeiniker.

COLOURFUL CHARACTERS 

The players in this unfolding theatre of clandestine operations spread across three continents. In South Africa, Clive Menell of Anglovaal paved the way by bringing on board Archbishop Benjamin Tutu. Soon other internationally renowned personalities like Jane Fonda and Tom Hayden joined the circle, as did Ethel Kennedy, who twisted the arm of a reluctant Tutu into meeting with the Israelis. This was the turning point, for what followed was a secret meeting in South Africa between a delegation of Israelis representing anti-Apartheid sentiment and prominent Blacks, such as Albertina Sisulu and Ntatho and Sally Motlana.

“We came out of the meeting with a clear mandate for action. Armed with an understanding that there would be no political manifestos and no pictures of politicians kissing each other, but a programme geared solely to assisting in the struggle, we approached Jews in the United States for support. In Israel, Yossi Beilin, Alon Liel, Ruth Baron and myself, among others, spearheaded the programme to be called the Israeli and South African Centres for International Cooperation” (ICIC) and would be based at Beit Berl.”

CLANDESTINE RECRUITMENT 

“The early days saw us,” explained Zelniker, “pounding the pavements in South Africa for some twenty months recruiting support and participants. The success of the operation was predicated on our ability to keep it under wraps.”

Asked how that was possible, Zelniker replied:

“You know how porcupines make love? Very carefully.”

The first group of twenty arrived in 1986 representing three constituencies:

– Soweto,

– the Cape Coloured community and

– Women’s groups.

“We brought in the Histadrut (General Federation of Labour) to help in the initial training,” said Zelniker. “After the success of that first group, it was easier to obtain more funding. We approached very prominent, radically anti-Israel, Black leaders in the U.S. and received their blessing. Individual Jews donated large sums of money in the full knowledge that they would receive no recognition, and the American Government very quietly also assisted us in funding.”

Zelniker’s shuttling to-and-fro between Israel and South Africa was not without risk.

“My associate Ruth Baron was also detained. There were many ways the South African Authorities could have derailed the programme and they made it crystal clear that physical intimidation could be escalated. We were worried about the graduates being whisked away on their return from Israel for interrogation and intimidation, which on occasion did happen.”

Despite all the harassment, including infiltration by the South African Bureau of State Security (BOSS), the programme flourished. At one point in the late 1980s, Thomas Friedman of the New York Times bumped into a group of Black trainees in Tel Aviv. He thought he had uncovered the scoop of the century:

 ‘ANC and AZAPO forge secret ties with Apartheid’s ally!’

“He telephoned me and said, ‘this is sensational. What’s it all about?” When I explained to him the need for secrecy, I thankfully managed to persuade him that the programme and South Africa’s future were far more important than his ego. He dropped the story.”

THE NEW AGE 

It was only a year or so after Mandela’s release in 1990 that the programme’s profile entered the public domain.

“In 1993, we introduced a rural community development programme in the former homelands, and it was then that we came out into the open,” revealed Zelniker.

The participants had such interesting stories revealing  the enormity of the challenges they faced in South Africa. Thabisile Msezane from Boksburg, who ran a daycare centre related that:

 “…in the Boksburg area there were no schools and children loitered aimlessly in the streets wasting away their lives. Each day I noticed a little boy roaming around the shopping centre where I bought milk. He would ask me for money to buy food. I thought:

“What kind of future does this child have? As I was starting a day care centre, I wanted to enroll this kid and so went in search of his parents. I was directed to a shabby compound behind a farmhouse, where I found them. While speaking to the boy’s father, the child spread the word amongst his friends telling them he was going to school. By the end of my conversation, I had enrolled another twelve children. Today I have 150 pupils, some of whom walk a distance of twelve kilometres to get to the school.”

Trevor Ngwame, a councilor from Johannesburg, was all praise for Israel’s ‘Beit Berl Programme’.

“We are dealing with the legacy of apartheid – no jobs, lack of housing and poor education. My approach is to offer people hope, and motivate them to organize themselves. We have seen how successful Israelis have been in overcoming insurmountable odds. Like South Africa, Israel has never been short of problems and yet it manages to advance amazingly. This is what we want to do. Of course, Israel’s problems are very different, and in the South African context we must ensure that people see a light at the end of the tunnel. I am not naïve to believe that matters are going to fall into place overnight. While the government must deliver the goods, the people also must rise up to the challenge and they need the tools to it. This programme has been a tremendous help in this regard.”

Reflecting on his role, Zelniker’s expressed to me:

“As a Jew, I have learnt that liberation is not simply about taking the people out of the ghetto. It means taking the ghetto out of the people. To say that I am proud of this programme would be an understatement.”

In the years that followed, this writer, together with fellow South Africans living in Israel became actively involved in the project offering home hospitality and engaging with the participants. One of the South Africans living in Israel taking a keen interest  in the project was architect and artist Prof. Arthur Goldreich, who years earlier had been recruited by Nelson Mandela to join uMkhonto weSizwe, the paramilitary wing of the African National Congress. Arrested during a raid at Lilliesleaf Farm, he would later escape from the Old Fort  prison in Johannesburg,  flee to Israel where he became a prominent figure at the famed Bezalel Academy in Jerusalem.  Such were the personalities that were involved in the Beit Berl project that had as its primary goal – to help the new South Africa emerge from the darkness of Apartheid.

Today, in 2026, I reflect back to those encouraging days of partnership as I observe what is tragically playing out presently in South Africa. Rather than focus on uplifting its people after three decades after Apartheid, the South African government is focused on:

– falsely accusing Israel of genocide

– expelling Israel’s diplomats

– sabotaging Israel’s offers of its expertise in agriculture and water management.

Worst of all it is fueling antisemitism like what transpired earlier this month when Johannesburg’s prestigious private girls’ school, Roedean, cancelled a scheduled tennis match against players from King David – a Jewish day school. It was revealed that some parents at Roedean argued “that the school should align with the government’s anti-Israel stance.” Little wonder what is unfolding has been characterized as “State-sponsored antisemitism.”

We have seen how and where unchecked vitriol leads to – the murderous attack at a synagogue in Manchester in October 2025 and the massacre on Sydney’s iconic Bondi Beach on the 14 December. Can anybody say they would be surprised if a terrorist against Jews was to occur in South Africa?

All this I reflected on and wondered where are all those graduates of Kfar Saba’s Beit Berl Programme today? What contribution did they make and what impact did they have on the lives of fellow South Africans?

And what would they think of how their country has so turned against the Jewish state that had voluntarily helped them to help South Africa and remains ready to help?

Feature picture: Participants from South Africa on the Community Development & Leadership Training programme at Beit Berl, Israel with members of the South African community and South African embassy staff in 1997. (Photo: D.E. Kaplan)

While the mission of Lay of the Land (LotL) is to provide a wide and diverse perspective of affairs in Israel, the Middle East and the Jewish world, the opinions, beliefs and viewpoints expressed by its various writers are not necessarily ones of the owners and management of LOTL but of the writers themselves.  LotL endeavours to the best of its ability to credit the use of all known photographs to the photographer and/or owner of such photographs (0&EO).

Roedean no-show at scheduled tennis match against Jewish Day School exposes deafening silence in mainstream South African society to antisemitism.

By Craig Snoyman

Johannesburg’s elite Roedean School cancelled an inter-school tennis match against King David School Linksfield

Something that seemed superficially normal, but by scratching the surface the puss of festering religious bigotry oozed out. The match wasn’t cancelled because of rain or injury or a genuine scheduling conflict. It was cancelled because a clique of parents demanded their daughters not play against Jews. This was not whispered bigotry; it was explicit and Roedean was too scared to deal with its internal demon. Roedean’s head of senior school, Phuti Mogale, in a telephone call to King David’s principal Lorraine Srage was candid – some parents were applying “significant pressure” not to play “a Jewish school.” This was religious and ethnic discrimination in its purest form — Jewish children excluded from a children’s sporting event solely because of who they are and what they believe.

Under any honest reading of the Constitution this is unlawful. Mogale did not know how to deal with the issue.  Whether she should have been left alone to solve the problem reflects very poorly on the Roedean school board that had not grappled with this intolerance and showed no desire to rebuke the parents urging this boycott. The real culprits, the bigots, would remain completely untouched:

• no identification
• no sanction
• no public shaming
• no mandatory re-education, nothing!

They, as part of Roedean’s fee-paying ecosystem, would remain protected while the school pretended the problem is administrative. Money talks, but bi money talks louder!

Roedean conducted itself shamefully. In two separate, statements, crafted days apart, and published by Flow Communications — a supposedly sophisticated PR firm that should know better — the school peddled outright fabrications: “prior school commitments,” “compulsory academic workshops,” “scheduling clashes,” “miscommunication.”

The second release on 10 February even wrapped itself in virtue-signalling piety: “We will place the best interests of young people first.” It promised an “independent review” and “facilitator” for vague “student concerns,” all while studiously avoiding the non-kosher elephant in the room. These were not clumsy errors. The audio clip of the telephone conversation between the two school heads has gone viral. These statements deliberately gaslighted the Jewish community, buying time, shielding the real perpetrators and deceived the South African public, casting aspersions on King David and indirectly the entire Jewish community. Flow allowed itself to participate in laundering antisemitism using nice polished corporate language. This was not benign PR, this was Bell Pottinger style propaganda. It tapped South Africa’s religious sensitivities, in suggesting that King David, the Jewish school, was lying. It disseminated falsehoods, it resulted in public social media attacks on the Jews and Zionists, and it ignored the humiliation of the young Jewish tennis players, and amplified the school’s denial.

The truth was on the audio clip between the two school heads. The statements were indisputably false. And at this stage Roedean’s house of cards collapsed. A reluctant school board was finally forced to take the first steps in confronting religious intolerance. A grudging written apology admitted that its actions were “deeply hurtful to the Jewish community” but studiously avoided any suggestion that its actions had been antisemitic. Phuti Mogale was under the bus – probably pushed but officially resigning. But in reality, she was the only person who tried to address this discrimination. She didn’t invent the excuses. She was not part of the deception. Somebody had to take the fall and she was the convenient scapegoat. An unwitting high profile non-Jewish African victim of an antisemitic incident, not of her making.

Let us not forget the deafening silence of the guardians of equality enforcement. The Gauteng Department of Education and the national Department of Basic Education — lightning-fast when a racist WhatsApp message from white pupils surfaces — didn’t utter a single word.

-No statement.

-No investigation

-No precautionary suspensions

-No public statements

-No condemnations

-No equality court referrals ISASA, the independent schools’ body that was just as culpable. It too, remained mute.

All the parties one expects to know better were on show, and displaying selective tolerance of antisemitism. The pattern is both unmistakable and shameful.  South African institutions normalised the exclusion of its Jewish citizens at the expense of “Palestine solidarity”. The South African Rugby Union banned Tel Aviv Heat from participating in a tournament in 2023. Cricket South Africa stripped David Teeger of his Under 19 captaincy because of Jewish identity and views. Universities like UCT have blacklisted Israeli academics. The climate of passive discrimination has created environments were Jews conceal their identities and opinions to avoid harassment. Forced declarations of anti-Zionism to join groups are now en vogue. What is framed as “principled politics” is really rank discrimination. But the principled politics of boycotting has been seen to work, and the Roedean parents simply followed the national playbook.

King David Linksfield and Lorraine Srage have shown what actual moral courage looks like: they recorded the call with consent, refused to accept lies, demanded truth, and ultimately accepted an apology so the girls could play tennis without politics poisoning the court. On the other hand, Roedean, its school board, Flow Communications, the bigoted parents, the mute authorities all displayed a spineless cowardice and a disregard for what is right.  This cannot be accepted as ‘politics as normal’. This is discrimination by another name. Religiously intolerant action was nipped at school-level, but the rot will spread.

The Roedean incident is not an outlier, it is not an aberration. It is the logical outcome of a society that has decided some bigotries are more equal than others. Until parents face consequences, until PR firms are held to account for lies, until school boards stop tolerating intolerant organisations that claim to teach about religious tolerance, until educational institutions take strong constitutional stands for what is right rather than acquiesce to the ethnic and religious prejudices of fee-paying parents and until authorities enforce equality without fear or favour, until people and organisations stand up and oppose this,  the guarantee of South African human dignity is worthless. Dignity should not be negotiable – and that applies to Jews as well.

About the writer:

Craig Snoyman is a practising advocate in South Africa.

While the mission of Lay of the Land (LotL) is to provide a wide and diverse perspective of affairs in Israel, the Middle East and the Jewish world, the opinions, beliefs and viewpoints expressed by its various writers are not necessarily ones of the owners and management of LOTL but of the writers themselves.  LotL endeavours to the best of its ability to credit the use of all known photographs to the photographer and/or owner of such photographs (0&EO).

Diplomatic ties hit all-time low between Jerusalem and Pretoria

By Rolene Marks

When the dark years of Apartheid came to an end, South Africa brimmed with promise. Humanitarian icon, Nelson Mandela became the country’s first black President, resigning the previous racist regimes to the garbage bin of history. Investment poured into the country. Sports teams like the national soccer and rugby teams, blessed with that “Madiba Magic” won the African Cup of Nations and Rugby World Cup respectively. The “Rainbow Nation” had been born and the future could not be brighter.

I can’t help but think if Madiba and the other icons of the struggle against Apartheid, saw what has happened to the country they fought so hard to bring a true democracy to, where everyone is equal, they would feel not only betrayed, they would be heartbroken. The dignified examples set by these stalwarts of the struggle to pursue reconciliation and dialogue – especially with those you disagree with, have been dashed by their successors who prefer capture over cohesion and ideology over ideas.

Nothing is more emblematic of this than the recent expulsion of Israel’s highest ranking diplomat in the African state. The story is quite mind boggling.

For decades, South Africans have experienced a lack of basic services due to government incompetence. Some report having no access to water for days on end or no electricity. Many public hospitals are in disarray and in parts of the country that are poverty stricken, there is barely any access to clean water or adequate healthcare. On the contrary, the State of Israel, a leader in so many fields including Agritech, water technology, medical technology and other industries, is perfectly poised to provide solutions. Israel faces some of the same challenges that many African countries do and over the years more and more countries have sought solutions from the Jewish state. Their foreign policy stances have been resolute – why do we have to choose sides between Israelis and Palestinians when we could make decisions that benefit our people?

It is a great pity and loss to the people of South Africa that their government’s foreign policy has been so firmly captured by the tyrannical Iranian regime that has and continues to slaughter tens of thousands of its own citizens. I do want to stress not all parties support the fanatics in Tehran whose “empire of evil” has traversed the region and beyond, leaving a trail of murderous terror attacks in their wake.

Which brings me back to Seidman. It beggars belief that in a country beset with so many challenges, the government would rather place ideological allegiances above the well-being of their citizens.

The crime that Seideman stands accused of is “a series of unacceptable violations of diplomatic norms and practice” that DIRCO said amounted to a direct violation of the country’s sovereignty. The reality? The embassy’s social media had criticized South Africa’s allegiance with internationally recognised terror organization Hamas. We know this was just the cover up so what was the real “crime” that had the South African authorities in a snit?

In recent weeks, Israel’s Foreign Ministry dispatched diplomat David Saranga to serve as a “visiting ambassador.” South African officials viewed the move as an attempt to impose a de facto ambassador without their approval. Declaring Seideman, the highest-ranking Israeli diplomat in the African country as persona non grata is largely seen by Israeli officials as a response to that.  

Israeli officials said that under an agreement between the two countries, holders of diplomatic passports are exempt from visa requirements. This allows Israeli diplomats to enter South Africa without prior approval. They said South Africa’s objections centered on what they described as the diplomatic profile Saranga maintained during his visits.

During his trips, Saranga had visited the province of the Eastern Cape, a part of the country beset with many challenges – one being access to clean drinking water.  Saranga met with the Xhosa king, a strong supporter of Israel who recently visited the Jewish state. Saranga offered Israeli solutions in the field of water management, citing shortages of running water and drinking water in parts of the country. Help was also offered for the repair of hospitals in the Eastern Cape that would give many better access to much-needed healthcare. Israeli officials said those initiatives embarrassed the South African government by highlighting deficiencies.

Israel’s response was swift. Israel’s Foreign Ministry said on X that it was expelling a senior South African diplomat, Shaun Edward Byneveldt, in response and ordered him to leave Israel within 72 hours.

Seidman was not officially informed by DIRCO (Department of International Relations and Cooperation) – instead he found out when he was door-stopped by the media after he returned to the embassy following an event that day.

Relations between Israel and South Africa at a diplomatic level have reached an all-time low. Israel’s solution is to engage people to people. That is how we move forward.

Foreign policy does not just affect bilateral relations – it is also filtering down on a micro scale. One example is the recent refusal of elite girl’s high school, Roedean, to play tennis against King David High School. The incident attracted international headlines. Roedean denied the charge that discrimination was at play when it didn’t show up for its February 3 meeting with the King David High School girls’ team. South Africa’s Constitution protects the rights to religious freedom and the freedom of association.

A leaked recording of a conversation days later between representatives from both schools seemed to show that Roedean was under significant pressure from parents to withdraw from playing against a Jewish school. “We’re facing a bit of pressure from our community and our constituents regarding just not playing against King David,” a teacher is heard saying with a tone of regret in the recording, which was leaked a few days later. “Parents are basically saying, because of the stance that the government took, we’re supposed to support that.” The remark was a reference to the ruling African National Congress (ANC) party’s anti-Israel stance.

Following a week of intense media scrutiny, the headmistress of Roedean, Phuti Mogale, resigned and the school has apologized to King David. One hopes that lessons in tolerance have been drawn from this.

It is no great secret that South Africa’s foreign policy has been duly captured by Iran with their pathological hatred of the Jewish state. In post-Apartheid South Africa, one of the tenets that South Africans have been so proud of is the spirit of Ubuntu. The word “Ubuntu” is often translated as “I am because we are” or “humanity towards others“. It reflects the belief that a person’s humanity is affirmed through their relationships with others and their contributions to the community. South Africa’s Jewish community is as an integral part of the country’s mosaic of people – as is Israel in the family of nations. One hopes that the spirit of Ubuntu extends to the Jewish community who are proudly Zionist as well as Israel’s envoys who seek to find the best possible solutions to deal with the challenges so many in the rainbow nation face. Recent events have eerie echoes of a past where discrimination was the order of the day. I can’t help but cry for the beloved country.  I think the founders of the post-Apartheid South Africa are crying too.

While the mission of Lay of the Land (LotL) is to provide a wide and diverse perspective of affairs in Israel, the Middle East and the Jewish world, the opinions, beliefs and viewpoints expressed by its various writers are not necessarily ones of the owners and management of LOTL but of the writers themselves.  LotL endeavours to the best of its ability to credit the use of all known photographs to the photographer and/or owner of such photographs (0&EO).

A tennis match that did not take place between two girls’ schools in Johannesburg exposes attitudes and antipathy towards Jews.

By Marika Sboros

(First appeared in Biznews)

Roedean was once one of South Africa’s premier private girls schools. It was even considered a “finishing school” for the country’s future leaders.

Some of its pupils have become strong, principled, polished young women, academically formidable, able to negotiate the frays of prejudice and party politics, no matter how petty.

The gloss on that reputation has been dimming for years. Roedean now remains mired in accusations of antisemitism for failing to honour a scheduled tennis match against King David Linksfield girls on February 3, 2026.

That’s even after offering what many consider a “sincere” apology in writing.

Roedean probably hopes the apology will put an end to the scandal. That’s unlikely, despite the school acknowledging that its actions “were deeply hurtful to the Jewish community.”

Roedean also conceded that its earlier public justifications of “communication challenges” for the failure to hold the match were “incorrect.”

It was not just incorrect. It was false.

Roedean admits in its apology that these “challenges” were not the cause of the cancellation of the match. It does not admit to antisemitism.

Leaked recordings of phone calls between King David principal Lorraine Srage and Roedean senior school head Phuti Mogale, who has since resigned “with immediate effect,” are revelatory.

Anti-Israel lobbyists either don’t or don’t want to know that in South Africa, it is not illegal (though not generally recommended) for people to record a conversation in which they are a participant for their record even if they haven’t told the other person(s).

Legal implications depend on what happens to the recordings thereafter. That’s according to RICA, (the Regulation of Interception of Communications and Provision of Communication-Related Information Act 70 of 2002). 

Lobbyists also ignore the fact that Srage tells Mogale upfront that she is recording and has recorded previous conversations. Mogale offers no objection whatsoever.

Who leaked the conversations and why is currently unknown. Perhaps, if Roedean had not lied publicly in statements from the outset about why it failed to honour the tennis fixture, the recordings may not have been leaked. 

In one, Mogale says clearly that the failed fixture began with pressure from Roedean parents who did not want their daughters playing against King David girls because this did not align with the ANC government’s anti-Israel stance.

When a startled Srage asks whether the parental objection is because the King David girls are Jewish, Mogale confirms it. To her credit, Mogale also says she told the parents that Roedean is “apolitical.” That clearly didn’t wash with the parents.

The mere fact that some supposedly well‑educated, influential Roedean parents would treat the ANC’s foreign‑policy posturing as a moral compass is a plot twist even Kafka might have rejected as implausible.

The same ANC refuses to condemn its close ally, Iran, for slaughtering more than 30,000 of its own people, many of them teenagers in the streets during the ongoing uprising.

Roedean has turned to PR spin doctors to handle the fallout from the failed tennis match. They’ve wasted their money.

The school first claimed in writing that the tennis match was cancelled due to “prior school commitments” and “compulsory academic workshops” and that this was “miscommunicated” to King David. Its first apology was on that basis alone.

That was disingenuous, as phone conversations showed.

EMPTY COURT

Roedean communicated clearly to King David the day before the match that all contentious issues were resolved and the match was going ahead. On that basis, King David girls turned up to play tennis against Roedean. On arrival, they were greeted by an empty court.

Mogale didn’t help herself or Roedean by claiming in conversation that the girls themselves didn’t want to play the match as they were still suffering “distress” and “trauma” after visiting King David’s campus last year to play tennis.

That raised the question: what on earth happened on King David campus to distress and traumatise them?

Mogale is heard saying (to a presumably gobsmacked Srage) that the sight of armed guards outside at King David’s school entrance had “disturbed” the girls. She’d have been wise to stop there.

Instead, she said the girls were also “traumatised” by seeing posters on King David campus. Poster of hostages, including children, babies and the elderly, still in captivity in Gaza after the horrific terrorist attack by Hamas against mostly civilian targets in southern Israel on October 7, 2023.

The problem for Roedean is that there was nothing distressing or traumatising whatsoever about the posters.

They were not images of bloodied young women dragged by their hair after being raped by terrorists, of children and babies in their pyjamas, tortured, mutilated, torn from their parents’ arms and homes.

The posters were of happy, smiling people before their savage kidnapping on October 7. Families supplied the photographs to raise awareness of the hostages’ ongoing plight in Gaza.

One might reasonably have expected Roedean’s tennis coach to have easily soothed the girls’ ruffled, sensitive feathers with non-distressing facts.

Facts, such as, that King David schools don’t post guards at their gates because they like the optics; armed guards outside Jewish schools as a sign that South Africa is a dangerous place for Jews; and antisemitic attacks are a real threat to Jews worldwide.

One would also reasonably expect Mogale not to have been so absurdly theatrical and hyperbolic in describing the feelings the posters evoked in Roedean girls as a “trauma”.

The only real trauma behind those posters was that suffered by hostages and their families and friends. Not the Roedean girls. Such moral inversion is as mystifying as it is a common driver of antisemitism.

National director of the South African Jewish Board of deputies Wendy Kahn is clear that the incident on Roedean campus on February 3 was blatant antisemitism.

On a Facebook post, Kahn defines antisemitism as:

 “prejudice, hatred or  discrimination directed against Jewish people, identity or institutions.”

She says that phone conversations make clear that the tennis fixture was a “Jewish day school issue” and that King David’s identity, like that of other faith-based schools, is based on the religious, cultural and historical life of the community it serves.

Roedean’s refusal to honour a sporting fixture based on the players’ Jewish identity, therefore, “constitutes an antisemitic act and is discrimination based on religion,” Kahn says.

It clearly violates South Africa’s constitution.

Section 9 of the constitution, as Kahn notes, provides that:

 “No person may be unfairly discriminated against, directly or indirectly, on the grounds of religion, belief or culture.”

Roedean’s leaders should have known that.

Anti-Israel lobbyists have been predictably quick to support the Roedean pupils’ refusal to play against Jews. One lobbyist said that students who raised “principled concerns about war, state violence or ideology” should not be made to feel that these were “illegitimate or hateful.”

That’s true but that’s not what King David was making Roedean pupils feel.

After all, Roedean had not expressed any “principled concerns” that the Roedean pupils had. Just intimations of miasmic “distress and trauma” at seeing armed guards and posters of happy faces.

Roedean’s tennis-match debacle does not exist in religious, political isolation.

In 2020, Roedean was one of several schools hit by waves of social media testimonials from alumni detailing experiences of institutional racism. Activists and ANC-aligned commentators criticised Roedean for being “too slow” to change and for maintaining a “colonial” culture that excluded Black students. White students also felt under pressure.

In 2023, Roedean invited the Ummah Al-Rahma madrasah to provide religious, spiritual programming – Ummah Heart – on its campus for Muslim pupils. It spun the initiative as a gesture of inclusivity.

It signalled something darker: a willingness to outsource moral judgment to the loudest ideological faction in the room.

The madrasah’s public record and associations had already drawn significant criticism and concern. It was accused of expressing sympathy and support for Hamas, including sharing or endorsing material aligned with Hamas and other jihadist causes.

That represented “school capture” as South African attorney and essayist Richard Wilkinson has argued. Roedean was not just accommodating Muslim pupils within a pluralist, school‑controlled framework. It was outsourcing part of its religious curriculum to a “fundamentalist Islamic provider.”

Critics have warned of the perils of combining ‘woke’, diversity rhetoric with a hard‑line madrasah. It allows reactionary, radical and religious politics to shelter under the language of “true inclusivity and belonging,” while narrowing the space for dissenting or minority views – particularly Zionist or even just openly Jewish ones.

Appeasing a particular worldview, including one openly sympathetic to a terrorist organisation, is not a smart move and not just for schools. Bringing a Hamas-aligned group onto any campus normalises rather than challenges a climate in which Jewish pupils are already vulnerable – and in which ANC‑style, anti‑Israel agitation quickly slides into open antisemitism.

To its credit, Roedean allowed the partnership to peter out. However, failing to honour a simple tennis fixture with Jewish schoolgirls has put its credibility and moral scruples again under a microscope that may linger.

It signals more school “capture”. It doesn’t take a Sherlock Holmes to work out where that can lead. It’s where ringing calls to “globalise the intifada” bring us.

Roedean statements, prepared and distributed by its PR company, Flow Communications, have been a study in obfuscation, euphemism and sophistry, beginning with the opening line of its February 10 offering: “We will place the best interests of young people first.”

Roedean demonstrably did not place the interests of its own “young people” first in this incident. It trampled over the interests of King David’s young people.

The only interests it did place first were those of the (hopefully) minority of staff, unnamed parents and students who don’t want to play sport against Jews.

Roedean has “engaged an independent party to review allegations.” It has also engaged “an independent facilitator to work with our students to resolve their concerns fairly and respectfully.” 

If there really was no antisemitism involved, then why the need for an “independent facilitator” to resolve students’ “concerns”?

And if concerns mean some Roedean girls don’t want to play tennis against Jews, they will have a problem in future. There are Jews in private schools other than King David. Presumably, Roedean girls won’t be asking every schoolgirl they face on sports fields whether or not she is Jewish?

Roedean’s apology on February 12 was a good move but did not go far enough. It does speak of intentions to learn from mistakes made. However, repairing the damage will require more than facilitated dialogues and public-relations-spun messaging.

It requires ensuring unequivocal future action to ensure that prejudice, discrimination and antisemitism, whether dressed up as politics, “distress”, “trauma” or scheduling confusion, will never again decide who is allowed onto Roedean’s sports fields.

Sport should be a crucible where differences are put aside. Women’s tennis, in particular, has a rich history of breaking barriers and fostering respect across lines of class, race, religion and nationality.

To see that ideal undermined by a narrative that says “we won’t play against you because of who you are, your religion, what you think” is to witness the descent of sport into the tribalism it should transcend.

Tennis is a simple game. Serve, rally, score. It requires focus, the ability to reset after a lost point and, crucially, respect for your opponent.

In contrast, Roedean’s handling of its tennis fixture with King David was all fault and no reset – a series of clumsy, unforced errors in strategy, empathy and communication.

It leaves Roedean with scrambled linguistic egg on its face. It has spawned a satirical, informal verb in the urban dictionary: Erodean.

It is defined as “stripping credibility from an institution by knowingly recasting antisemitic exclusion or hostility as a neutral, administrative error, while shifting responsibility onto the Jewish person affected, despite clear, contrary evidence”.

Here’s an example of common usage:

“Watching institutions attempt to erodean their way out of accountability has become a disturbingly familiar pattern.”

About the writer:

Marika Sboros is a South African freelance investigative journalist with decades of experience writing fulltime for the country’s top media titles on a wide range of topics. She started her career as a hard-news reporter in the newsroom of the now defunct Rand Daily Mail, a campaigning anti-government newspaper during the worst excesses of the apartheid era. She commutes between South Africa and the UK.

While the mission of Lay of the Land (LotL) is to provide a wide and diverse perspective of affairs in Israel, the Middle East and the Jewish world, the opinions, beliefs and viewpoints expressed by its various writers are not necessarily ones of the owners and management of LOTL but of the writers themselves.  LotL endeavours to the best of its ability to credit the use of all known photographs to the photographer and/or owner of such photographs (0&EO).

South Africa’s expulsion of Israel’s Chargé D’Affaires is looking like absolutely fabulous fodder for comedians.

By Marika Sboros

(First published in The Daily Friend)

South Africa’s expulsion of Israel’s top diplomat in the country,

Ariel Seidman, is also a prime example of the African National Congress (ANC) government’s hypocrisy and double standards whenever Israel and Jews get in its way.

The Department of International Relations and Cooperation (DIRCO) used the phrase, persona non grata, in announcing Ariel Seidman’s expulsion. The phrase has a pleasing, operatic ring to it – all Latin flourish and sovereign gravitas.

It is one of the “most serious tools in a state’s diplomatic repertoire,” says DA international relations spokesman, Ryan Smith. It is usually reserved for cases of espionage, security threats or serious breaches of international law.

Not the petty, public, political spat behind Seidman’s expulsion. 

If DIRCO meant the phrase to evoke images of strength and sovereign gravitas, it failed miserably.

It evokes images of ragged Eastern Cape children forced to walk kilometres for water when they should be in school; of patients of all ages, suffering unnecessarily, dying prematurely in under-resourced, badly maintained hospitals; and of fat-cat adults in Pretoria patting themselves on the back for defending a thin-skinned leader’s hurt feelings.

DIRCO has formally packaged its case for expelling Seidman in a way that is unfettered by robust evidence.

It has alleged a sustained campaign of “offensive” attacks on President Cyril Ramaphosa on social media, and “gross abuse” of diplomatic protocol and privilege affecting South Africa’s “sovereignty”. 

The most concrete “evidence” it came up with so far to buttress its claims against Seidman is two posts in November 2025 on the official Israeli Embassy X (formerly Twitter) account. Neither carries Seidman’s name. 

As Chargé D’Affaires, Seidman oversees the embassy’s official X and other social media accounts. DIRCO could easily have cut him diplomatic slack by addressing the messages in the “offending” posts.

Instead, it chose to axe the messenger.

The first post targets South Africa’s multimillion-rand lawsuit launched against Israel at the International Court of Justice (ICJ) on a genocide charge in December 2023. That was just weeks after a genuine genocidal attack by the Iran-backed terror group Hamas against mainly civilian targets in southern Israel on October 7, 2023.

That attack left 1200 dead, including children and babies, more than 6000 injured and more than 250 kidnapped and taken to Gaza as hostages. Hostages included infants, toddlers, young children and the elderly.

The post reads:

 “Value for money? The South African Gov’t has thrown away R100 million attacking Israel at the ICJ – with another R500 million to be wasted next year. 0% of value for South Africans, 100% political theatre.”

The second post responds to Ramaphosa’s comment that “boycott politics don’t work.” He made it after US President Donald Trump’s decision not to attend the G20 summit in Johannesburg in November 2025.

The post calls the comment a “rare moment of wisdom and diplomatic clarity from President Ramaphosa,”adding: “We totally agree…”

Were those posts sarcastic? Yes. Unsubtle? Undoubtedly. Worthy of expulsion? Definitely not. 

If sarcasm were a deportable offence, half of all diplomats on X would be back home by lunchtime.

The fact is that South Africa has made opposition to Israel a defining feature of its foreign-policy identity. It has downgraded relations, pursued its highly politicised ICJ case against Israel and aligned with extremists in the pro-Palestinian movement who increasingly move beyond policy critique into outright rejection of Israel’s moral standing as a state.

It remains deafeningly silent on the ongoing massacre of innocents, including many children in their teens, by its close ally, Iran. 

Ramaphosa did call for “restraint on both sides” recently. That doesn’t cut much moral or diplomatic ice.

Close alignment with Tehran’s jihadist mullahs alone should have been sufficient for DIRCO to be politically circumspect when dealing with common enemies.

After all, it’s one thing to support best buddies going through tough times. It’s quite another to support them when they mass-murder their own people in the streets for the “crime” of publicly protesting against injustice and oppression. 

The mullahs plaintively claim to have killed “only” 3116 citizens so far during the uprising, claiming that most were “terrorists”.

I can’t recall so many young, gorgeous, talented, cultured “terrorists” ever being slaughtered in broad daylight by a bunch of medieval-looking, Islamist extremists acting just like genocidal fanatics.

The closest I can come is the more than 300 beautiful young people attending a music festival for peace, who were among the more than 1200 civilians that Hamas tortured, slaughtered, beheaded, burnt alive and mass raped on October 7.

Hamas tried claiming that most concert-goers were its idea of “terrorists” – serving soldiers in Israel’s IDF. That proved nonsensical, as have so many of Hamas’s claims against Israel proved.

The estimated number of civilians massacred in the Iran uprising stands at more than 30,000, as cited by Time magazine in the US and The Guardian in the UK. That’s according to leaked hospital and security‑agency data, including a network of Iranian doctors whose hospital‑record tally of protest‑related deaths reached 30,304 up to January 8 to 9, 2026.

Hundreds of thousands more have been injured, many grievously, or are “missing”.

The numbers are climbing into the stratosphere.

One wonders how high they must go before the ANC finds the moral backbone to sever ties with its ally.

The trigger to Seidman’s exit most likely lies in the invitation from Israel’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs to South Africa’s AbaThembu King Buyelekhaya Dalindyebo, to visit Israel in December 2025.

The king is a cousin of former president Nelson Mandela and leader of the Thembu people in the Eastern Cape. In Israel, he met Israel’s President Isaac Herzog, Foreign Minister Gideon Sa’ar and other officials. He learned of advances in Israel’s technology, agriculture and water management.

His visit did not go down well with the ANC back home.

Nor did the reciprocal visit in late January 2026, by senior Israeli officials, accompanied by embassy staff, where they met the king and more than 50 traditional leaders in Mthatha. 

They openly discussed potential assistance with water infrastructure, healthcare and education. They visited hospitals and engaged universities and community leaders.

There was no fanfare. No ribbon-cutting. No ANC branding.

Israel framed the visits as building “people-to-people” ties, and a humanitarian initiative to supply potable water in an impoverished region.

The poor in the Eastern Cape saw Israel as offering longed-for relief.

The King’s spokesperson agreed. She called Seidman’s expulsion:

 “an attack on his people and an attempt to prevent assistance that the government has struggled and failed to provide.

“Our relationship with the Israeli Embassy is one we hold very close to our heart, as they have managed to help our people in a way that the South African government has not been able to do.”

That sentence alone should have prompted national introspection. Predictably, ANC leaders were outwardly wrathful.

DIRCO and the provincial leadership called the king’s support for Israeli assistance “sinister”. ANC secretary general Fikile Mbalula called it a “betrayal” and “surprising departure” from South Africa’s solidarity with Palestinians. 

Mbalula invoked the exile and liberation legacy of the king’s father, the late King Sabata Dalindyebo, to rebuke the son – as though inherited struggle credentials, not present-day responsibility, should determine who may bring water to the Eastern Cape

Support for Seidman’s expulsion has come from other elevated sources, including civil society “royalty”, among them Gift of the Givers founder and CEO Dr Imtiaz Sooliman.

Sooliman is not merely a humanitarian actor on the world philanthropy stage. He is among the most politically connected figures in South Africa’s NGO landscape. He boasts long-standing access to senior government leaders, as photos on his charity’s website and Facebook page routinely show.

Presidents praise him. Ministers consult him. His voice carries influence well beyond global disaster zones.

In June 2025, Ramaphosa appointed Sooliman a member of the loftily titled Eminent Persons Group to guide and champion South Africa’s National Dialogue initiative.

Sooliman operates in a fertile, political environment at the highest levels. His ecosystem includes former DIRCO head Naledi Pandor, now head of the Nelson Mandela Foundation, current DIRCO director-general Zayne Dangor and former South African ambassador to the US Ibrahim Rasool.

It is premised on broad-based, pre-existing hostility to Israel. It pervades the ANC, as Mbalula himself has openly acknowledged.

Sooliman publicly endorsed DIRCO’s decision with a post on his charity’s Facebook page. It reads:

“We commend DIRCO and the South African Government for taking a decisive, principled stand. As South Africans, we reject injustice, occupation, and the killing of civilians, and we oppose policies that result in the suffering and starvation of innocent people. Accountability, human rights, and international law must prevail.”

That’s a striking statement, not least because Gift of the Givers has for years been directly involved in disaster response and water and drought relief in South Africa and globally, often stepping in where states failed.

His record gives him unusual credibility to separate humanitarian necessity from geopolitical hostility.

Instead of being a moderating influence, Sooliman added fuel to fire of anti-Israel sentiment. He helped to collapse a discussion about water, healthcare and poverty into heated ideological confrontation.

That collapse quickly spawned public sloganeering by extremist anti-Israel lobbyists, riling up their base to reject “Israel’s bloody aid” and “bloody water”. Their ire aimed predictably at “Zionists” – the anti-Israel lobby’s code word for Jews.

It raises questions about the extent to which such framing has contributed to the broader political climate of over-reaction that caused Seidman’s expulsion.

DIRCO’s decision did not emerge in a vacuum. It unfolded within an environment primed to treat Israel not merely as uniquely illegitimate but also “evil” and, therefore, undeserving of diplomatic latitude.

Context gives meaning to actions. Expelling a diplomat for sarcasm, humanitarian engagement and inconvenient assistance looks less like principled diplomacy and more like ideological enforcement. Especially when set against a selective moral compass.

In a country where foreign policy, NGO advocacy and ruling-party ideology increasingly merge, it is reasonable to examine how moral narratives gain traction and shape outcomes.

Undeserved criticism risks shading into delegitimisation and, at its edges, something darker.

It makes South Africa a more dangerous place for Jews!

It leaves a question hanging in the ether:

When expert help is available to relieve the suffering of millions of South Africans in impoverished rural areas, why would anyone want to deny access to it?

About the writer:

Marika Sboros is a South African freelance investigative journalist with decades of experience writing fulltime for the country’s top media titles on a wide range of topics. She started her career as a hard-news reporter in the newsroom of the now defunct Rand Daily Mail, a campaigning anti-government newspaper during the worst excesses of the apartheid era. She commutes between South Africa and the UK.

While the mission of Lay of the Land (LotL) is to provide a wide and diverse perspective of affairs in Israel, the Middle East and the Jewish world, the opinions, beliefs and viewpoints expressed by its various writers are not necessarily ones of the owners and management of LOTL but of the writers themselves.  LotL endeavours to the best of its ability to credit the use of all known photographs to the photographer and/or owner of such photographs (0&EO).

Fear that independent scrutiny will expose false narratives, Israel’s opponents discourage “See for Yourself” visits to the Jewish state.

By Kenneth Kgwadi

In one of the most influential TED Talks to date, acclaimed Nigerian author Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie explores:

 “The Danger of a Single Story.”

She argues that to truly understand any event or conflict, one must consider multiple perspectives; relying on a single narrative inevitably leads to distortion and misunderstanding. Her message is particularly relevant to the Israel/Palestine debate, where too many overlook or dismiss Israel’s story while presenting Palestine as the sole victim.

The recent visit to Israel by King Dalindyebo of the AbaThembu nation illustrates this dynamic clearly. His trip triggered criticism from individuals who seem determined to prevent others from examining the facts for themselves. Instead of encouraging open inquiry and balanced engagement, these voices prefer that the public adopt their preferred narrative – one that portrays Israel as the villain through carefully crafted misinformation and propaganda. Their response reveals an underlying fear:

that independent observation may contradict the narrative they have worked hard to entrench.

The fiercest critics of Israel often rely on claims of apartheid, genocide, and other exaggerated allegations that do not align with the realities on the ground. Deep down, these naysayers fear that independent scrutiny will expose the inconsistencies in their narrative. Every year, numerous individuals and delegations travel to Israel on fact-finding missions to  see, experience and decide for themselves on the reports and agenda-driven narratives presented by international, local and social media. It would be profoundly irresponsible to accept  these narratives at face value without challenging the claims and allegations for accuracy, context, as well as the agendas of those who disseminate them. Hence the immense importance of visits.

Tensions between governments — such as those of South Africa, Israel, and the United States — should not influence the relationships between ordinary people in these countries. Communities should not be vilified for cooperating across borders simply because their governments disagree politically. Human connection is often driven by shared histories, mutual interests, and collective aspirations, not by diplomatic rifts.

It was in this spirit that King Dalindyebo chose to visit Israel and engage directly with Israeli officials. As a leader, he sought firsthand clarity on the long-standing conflict rather than relying solely on secondhand accounts crafted by the media. His decision reflects a commitment to informed leadership: he wanted to see the situation with his own eyes, hear directly from those involved, and explore opportunities to build constructive relationships for the benefit of the people he leads.

STANCE OF SILENCE

What is particularly troubling about South Africa’s foreign policy under President Cyril Ramaphosa is the growing inconsistency that seems to define it. On the surface, the country presents itself as a defender of human rights across the world, most notably through its strong support for the Palestinian cause. However, this principled stance is not applied consistently. In many parts of the world, innocent and defenceless people are being killed by oppressive regimes, yet South Africa remains largely silent.

A few weeks ago, hundreds of people were reportedly killed in post-election conflict in the Republic of Tanzania, a fellow member of the Southern African Development Community (SADC). Despite the seriousness of this crisis, South Africa took no meaningful action to hold those responsible to account. The same can be said about Sudan, where acts of genocide are unfolding before our very eyes on television, but no steps have been taken to sanction or pressure those who are responsible. Zimbabwe presents another example: for years, the ruling ZANU-PF has violated the human rights of ordinary Zimbabweans, forcing millions to flee the country in search of safety and economic security. Yet Pretoria has maintained a stance of silence and non-intervention.

This pattern of selective condemnation raises important questions about what truly drives South Africa’s foreign policy and undermines its claim to moral authority on the global stage. Blasted by so much mis and disinformation, the global ill-informed fail to understand that Israel is a functioning democracy, defined by an independent media, judiciary, executive, and parliament (Knesset), each operating without interference from the other. This is precisely why Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is currently facing corruption charges: the institutions of state have the autonomy to hold even the highest office-bearers to account. The left-leaning newspaper Haaretz is a clear example of a vocal and critical media outlet that conducts its work without fear or favour, often challenging government actions and policies in the strongest of terms.

VISIT AND VERIFY

There is a danger, like in all conflicts, of spreading lies to control the narratives, and people should be aware of that. Hence it is important indeed, essential for opinion makers, journalists, researchers, and all those who work in the business of information and knowledge to visit Israel and tell the story as it truly is, rather than relying on narratives circulated by others who may have political agendas to advance.

First-hand experience remains the most reliable antidote to misinformation.

About the writer:

Kenneth Kgwadi is a research fellow at the Middle East Africa Research Institute (MEARI).

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