The Dangers of Comfortable Platforms: (How the Mail & Guardian placed arms-capital Zionism beside Winnie Mandela, Youth Day and Gaza)
The Mail & Guardian’s decision to publish Ivor Ichikowitz, founder of Paramount Group, one of Africa’s most prominent private defence and aerospace companies, as a moral voice on Winnie Mandela during its 1976/Youth Day period was an insult delivered inside a sacred commemorative space. Youth Day belongs to 1976, to Black children and young people who faced police bullets, detention, torture, exile, prison and the long machinery of the apartheid state.
Genocide Has No Soundtrack: Disruption, Resistance, and the Struggle Against Normalisation in South Africa
By: Nigel Branken What kind of protest is needed in a time of genocide? We are living in a moment of not only horrific violence, but also deep ideological struggle. The genocide in Gaza is not an isolated atrocity—it is a flashpoint in a much broader global crisis. We are watching the intersections of empire, white supremacy, capitalist extraction, and neocolonial control collide in increasingly visible ways. Here in South Africa, the echoes of apartheid are growing louder. The remnants of Afrikaner nationalism are once again stirring, framing themselves as victims of so-called “white genocide,” echoing lies about land expropriation without compensation, and fueling racist backlash. These narratives, though debunked repeatedly, are being amplified internationally. Alarmingly, the United States—which continues to provide Israel with diplomatic, economic, and military cover—is now adopting these talking points as part of its justification for exerting pressure on South Africa. In essence, U.S. threats against South Africa are not only about BRICS or economic autonomy—they are about punishing South Africa for daring to name the reality of apartheid in Israel, for standing before the ICJ, and for aligning ourselves with global justice rather than empire. But this struggle is not only global—it is deeply personal. Back home, we are witnessing another kind of violence: the silent violence of abandonment. Recently, USAID cancelled its global contribution to antiretrovirals. Many of my LGBTQI+ refugee friends—already survivors of religiously fuelled homophobia in Uganda, Cameroon, Kenya, Zimbabwe and Zambia—suddenly found themselves without access to life-saving medication. These are people who fled for their lives because of their gender identity or sexual orientation, seeking safety in South Africa, only to be met with systemic neglect. USAID’s withdrawal is no accident. It is empire shifting shape. Once described as a tool of “soft power,” it is now simply abandoning those most in need. And while its programmes may have always been entwined with neocon agendas, it is the poor, the sick, and the most vulnerable who pay the price when it disappears. Add to this the rise of xenophobic scapegoating within South Africa—the blaming of migrants for unemployment, housing shortages, and crime. Add the rise of right-wing political movements that mirror the fascist trends we see globally: from Trump’s deportation machine and assault on due process, to Europe’s externalised borders, to Israel’s supremacist occupation. We are watching empire double down, trying to preserve itself through lies, through violence, through economic control. Capitalism, like a caterpillar seeking metamorphosis, is trying to reshape itself—into greener, softer, more palatable forms—but its core remains extractive, supremacist, and dehumanising. This moment demands we wake up. It demands we refuse silence. It demands that we fight back—not just for Palestine, but for ourselves. For months, many of us have been standing on street corners with placards, shouting into the void. We’ve marched. We’ve cried. We’ve pleaded with the world. And still, the bombs fall on Gaza. The settlements expand. Children are buried beneath rubble. Entire families wiped out. And we ask ourselves: Is this enough? Is standing silently or marching politely doing anything to stop the slaughter? Israel has defied the International Court of Justice’s rulings. It has escalated its ethnic cleansing of Gaza and entrenched its violent occupation in the West Bank. Settlements continue to expand even as the world declares them illegal. The Israeli propaganda machine keeps churning, and the global normalisation of apartheid through culture, commerce and diplomacy continues unchecked. We are watching a genocide in real time. And as South Africans, with our own history of apartheid, we cannot look away. This moment calls for a different kind of resistance—one that moves beyond symbolic gestures. Some of us are beginning to experiment with it. A more direct one. A more disruptive one. Last week, we entered a Pick n Pay supermarket—a national chain that continues to stock Israeli goods. We didn’t ask for permission. We didn’t whisper. We made a public service announcement, naming the Israeli products being sold in the store and calling on shoppers to stand against genocide with their money. We urged them to make ethical choices and not to look away from their trolleys. Watch the action here: Pick n Pay disruption video: https://youtube.com/shorts/hg52FjPo5-U. Days later, we stood outside the Linder Auditorium at Wits University. Israeli pianist Yaron Kohlberg was scheduled to perform, hosted by the Johannesburg Musical Society. Over 100 of us gathered at the campus gate. A smaller group stood directly outside the auditorium doors. Another 10 were inside the theatre itself. We chanted. We called out complicity. We disrupted the performance. We cried. This wasn’t just about a concert. It was about the ongoing project of Israeli normalisation through cultural soft power—a project that seeks to distract from mass graves with piano notes. Let me be clear: Kohlberg is no apolitical artist. He served in the Israeli Defence Force. He has performed for the Knesset and the President of Israel. And though he once collaborated with a Palestinian pianist in a duo called Amal (“hope”), he came to Wits alone, without that context, and performed during a genocide. To sit through that concert without protest would be to accept the erasure of Palestinian life. So we did not. Watch that action here: Linder protest video: https://youtu.be/VI__2JR-3Pg. These actions are not stunts. They are not theatre. They are sacred refusals to let the killing continue unchallenged. This is the moment we are in. And the moment demands more. It demands that we refuse to be silent in supermarkets, in concert halls, in universities, on social media. It demands that we interrupt comfort, challenge neutrality, and confront complicity. That is why more of us are stepping into the streets, not just with signs, but with strategy. That is why we disrupted African Rainbow Minerals (ARM), a company complicit in profiting from global systems of extraction and oppression and, through its share in Glencore and Richards Bay Coal Terminal, complicit in the sale of South African coal to Israel, fuelling the genocide and illegal occupation. I was not present at the ARM protest, but I